New simple home network advice

[Nebul0us]

Hello everyon! First of all thank you for any help you are able to offer. It is much appreciated. I recently built a new PC, with a motherboard that supports gigabit LAN. Since I have connected it, my whole network (laptop & PC) has been consistently losing internet access at random times. This morning, I lost it about 6 times in a row, every ten minutes. Usually a power cycle (remove power cord from modem & router) fixes it but only temporarily. I have noticed my router (linksys WRT110) does not support gigabit LAN. I am wondering if this has anything to do with my connection drops? In addition to looking for a fix for this problem, I am seeking advice on buying a switch and/or router to upgrade to gigabit LAN. Do I need a switch? I have heard they provide another level of security? The router I am looking at is something like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320131R
I have a USB 3.0 external hd that I want to network with it. All your advice is much appreciated, thanks!

Oh and both machines are running Win7 Ultimate x64. My PC that I connected when the problems started has an ASRock Pro4 motherboard and is connected to the router via cat5 cable.

 

[RealBeast]

Your motherboard Ethernet port is backward compatible to 10/100Mbps, so that is not an issue. You do not need a switch and that would not help in your situation.

Check the cable that you are using, try a different LAN port on the router, and also connect both the desktop and laptop with Ethernet and see if that helps the issue.

Have you had more than one computer using this router before? Is the DHCP set up and assigning addresses, and the computers automatically obtaining an IP or are you using static addresses?

With both computers on, type ipconfig /all in a command prompt window and see what IP address each has and what the default gateway address is for your router.

If any hardware is failing, it is more likely your old router than the LAN port of the new motherboard. That is a great router that you linked.

 

[jgutz2006]

another thing, inside your adapter properties, i've seen many times when routers/switches and NIC's get wacky during the auto-negotiate process. you could try setting your adapter to force 100 full duplex from your new desktop and see if that helps.