home LAN hiccups

[tart666]

I am having intermittent problems on my LAN. I have 4 w2k PC's, netgear RT314 home router, TCP/IP file sharing, and here's the issues:

- Occasional long DNS resolve (~10 sec)
- "network resource unavailable" in the middle of copying large groups of files, followed by "server unreachable". Everything comes back in 1-2 minutes.

Any help?

 

[spidey07]

How's the cabling? How often does it happen?

 

[dbwillis]

I think there was a fix for that error in Networking in 2000..I think..not sure though, it does sound familiar

 

[tart666]

The cabling is good, sandra tested.

I am at a loss as for further troubleshooting. I did disable some services on some PC's, like RPC and others that looked useless. Is there a site that lists what should be on for a very simple home LAN ?

Also, zonealarm is on, it could be wreaking havoc, no?

 

[spidey07]

Sandra doesn't test cables.

But anyway, most weird network problems come from flaky cabling. Can you take all the machines into a room and use store bought cat5 patch cables with your switch/router and see if the symptoms persist?

zone alarm could be causing problems with your browse list (table of servers and services announced by hosts) so try turning it off on all computers.

 

[tart666]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Sandra doesn't test cables.

But anyway, sandra reported about 70Mbit/s throughput, which is pretty close to theoretical, no?

I will try to reproduce the problem later today. It was really irritating as I was trying to move files before removing a PC from the network, I ended up taking the HD out. Now that PC is out, I will see if the others are having same issue.