This is a church office setup.

They have BT broadband using a BT router to connect two PCs for network and internet access.

One of the PCs has two ethernet cards.
Card 1 is used to link to a large (huge) multi-print printer, copier, etc which requires an ethernet connection.
The card linked to the printer has the TCP/IP propertities fixed. It apparently has to be fixed.
IP address: 198.98.198.5
Sub Mask: 255.255.255.0
Preferred DNS: 129.168.1.1 (not a typo)
Alternate: 192.168.1.1

Card 2 is connected to the BT router for broadband/network, and the TCP/IP setting is to obtain IP address automatically.

The other PC has the IP address set to obtain automatically.

Now the problem. The BT router shows via the Hub manager that the speed is approx 7mg, but the performance is very poor. Slow speeds to connect to internet (if at all), e-mails time out.

Could the "fixed" IP address be causing the speed and connections to the internet and e-mail.
If so, should the other cards be setup as fixed IP addresses.

Regards,

rannoch

Update.

Disconnected everything.

Unscrewed the front plate of the main phone line socket, and plugged the router drectly into the the "source" socket.
Changed filters.

Used a laptop with a "clean" XP setup (but does link easily to internet and e-mail from another network). Installed the BT CD stuff, and connected the router.

The router said that the speed was around 7mb, but the "speed" was awful, and although I could get small e-mails to send, any with an attachment (even a small file - 30kb) would timeout. Exactly the same results as happened with the original two PCs.

Internet access was also very slow - faster with dial-up.

Also tried another router (D-Link G604T), but not sure I have the right settings for BT, and I'm not sure what the userid/password to put in to get connection. But, again it showed a speed of around the 7mb mark.

At this stage I'd say it's the external line, but why would the routers be giving a reading of 7mb.

Any ideas.

Rannoch

check your cables make sure the correct type of cables are used. From router to computer network card you should have straight cable. Orient the both ends of the cable the same way toward you (i.e. the clips pointing away from you). start looking at the pins from left to right. Make sure the color of the wire connected to each pin is the same for each corosponding pin). That makes that a straight cable.

I am assuming that your printer has network adapter card. Normally this kind of printers are connected to a hub (or a router). If it is directly connected to the your computer network card, then it propably uses a crossover cable. That means, when you compare both ends of the cable as described above, colors won't match for some of the pins. The thing is, make sure from computer to the router you do NOT have a crossover cable.

Try using a fresh straight cable with your laptop directly connected to the router, with everything else disconnected from the router. If that laptop was working great on another system, but it has a lot of problems working thru that router (with everything else romoved from that router-no printer or computer attached to that router, just the laptop), then something is wrong between the router and your ISP.

Originally Posted by joeofeg

Try using a fresh straight cable with your laptop directly connected to the router, with everything else disconnected from the router. If that laptop was working great on another system, but it has a lot of problems working thru that router (with everything else romoved from that router-no printer or computer attached to that router, just the laptop), then something is wrong between the router and your ISP.

That's exactly what I've done.

The router is the BT Home Hub (the tall thin white one). When the laptop is connected to my home network, the network connections shows the router in the "LAN or High-Speed Internet" section of the Network Connections as Local Area Connection.

When the laptop was connected directly to the BT router, it showed up in the "LAN or High-Speed Internet" section of the Network Connections as Local Area Connection - which is fine.

But there was also an entry under "Internet Gateway" called Broadband Connection which had a status disabled and disconnected, and which I could not delete as the delete option was greyed out.

It only appeared when the BT router was connected. It wasn't there when I tried the D-Link router.

Another piece of information is that the same problems existed using another isp.

That leads me to think it's the line, but if so I can't understand why the two routers I have tried both say the line speed is around 7mb.

Any ideas greatly appreciated..

Rannoch

This is a bit of a long shot but it's worked for me before: Check the 'Duplex' settings on the network card. If it is set to automatically set the duplex level between half and full, adjust it so that it only works on half duplex. I've seen slow PCs and servers on one particular network immediately spring into life and start giving proper network performance after changing that setting.

Gone back to basics to try and make the broadband link simpler, and hopefully highlight the problem.

Have an original BT Broadband CD, and a BT Voyager 100.

Used a laptop with clean XP system. installed the BT CD which loads the drivers, and asks for the BT userid.
Took of the front panel of the main phone socket, plugged in a filter, and then the Voyager 100 to the source.

Speed indicated 5 mb. Access to internet was reasonable. E-mails able to send and receive OK - with one e-mail with an attachment of 2mb file sent no problem.

Next day. Tried the same process as above.
Speed indicated 5mb. Access to internet very very slow - 30 seconds to get a page (e.g. www.bbc.co.uk).
e-mails received OK, but cannot send any e-mails with attachments even small (e.g. 20kb).

Contacted BT, and said I wanted an engineer to check the line, and was willing to pay. BT said the line was showing a speed of 5mb, and no fault to report to BT Wholesale,and so no engineer.
The guy then tried to connect to my laptop - no luck.

I don't get fast speeds at any time, but I can send and receive e-mails,and get access to the internet, and then it slows right down,and e-mails can't be sent - timeout errors.

The same problems occurred with the previous ISP (Demon). That was the reason to move to BT.

Totally stuck.

Any help, advise, ideas, etc very much appreciated.

Rannoch.

Originally Posted by rannoch

Next day. Tried the same process as above.

Did you do the exact same thing on laptop (loading cd, etc) or you did that on the other computer?

Sorry, what I meant was that I used the same latop as I had left it the previous day. Same setup, I didn't add or delete anythng. Just plugged it in to the phone line.

Subsequent days have been the same - connection OK (not fast) for a time, and then next to nothing.

I have recently taken the laptop, and added it into a network using Virgin Media, and another to one using Talk Talk. Speed was excellent on both.
No problems.

Then back to original, and same problems. I can only think that it's the line, but if it's running at 5mb to 6mb how can it be?

Rannoch

Is there anyway you can bypass the router and connect the laptop directly to your modem (this may require some IP configuration if DHCP is not enabled)?. We need to find out wether the problem is happening inside router or somewhere else. So, at the EXACT time when speed is VERY SLOW, connect laptop directly to the modem. If speed still is slow, that means router is ok and problem is in the modem and/or beyond. If possible, do that and provide some feedback.

If it is not possible to bypass the router (when router and modem are both in the sam package), then you can do the following to see if the problem is with the line or the router.

You have to do this when you detect the internet line is very very slow (not when everything is ok).

In this situation, both the laptop and the pc should be connected to the router.

You should have setup the LAN and file sharing such that you can copy file from laptop to pc.

Select a very large file (mor than 10M) rom your laptop and copy it to your pc on a temporary folder.

Deponding on the size of the file (10M or so), it should take a few seconds to copy this file (no more than 30 seconds), If it takes much much longer than that, then at that moment there is a problem with the router. That means that the line is ok. If the tranfer speed is fast, then at that moment the line is bad. Do this and provide some feedback.