Wired internet connection randomly 'gives up' loading webpages.

[imayhew]

So when I plug in my PC directly to the router I get strange things happening with my internet. When I try to load a page it seems to randomly load only a portion of the page.

Take Youtube for example. If I load the home page sometimes nothing at all will load, only the text will load, or only half of the thumbnails will load, sometimes it all loads. Every time I refresh the page it's a new random result. The pages do not load slowly, this happens in less than a second and the page does not load any more if I wait around.

If I try a speed test I get good speeds at first but after a second or two it pops up a message saying there was a socket error.

I've tried a few different cables and all the various ports on the router and it's the same thing for each. It's been a long time since I've tried to use a wired connection instead of wireless so I don't know when the problem began.

I'm going to do my best to answer the stuff from the sticky thread. I apologise if I get some of it wrong:

-Make and Model of my router: Its a 2Wire 3800HBV-g
-Make and model of my modem: Modem section in system information is blank...
-Make and Model of motherboard: HP h8-1569
-Make and Model of power supply: I'm not sure how to find this.
-Make and model of wifi adapter: not sure if relevant but it says Broadcom 802.11
-OS and driver version: Windows 10 Home 10.0.17763 Build 17763
-ISP and connection type: Sasktel and it's DSL and not cable.
-Number of devices connected: There are 2 TVs connected directly and everything else is wireless. The number varies between several phones/tablets and one laptop (in addition to my desktop).
-Make and model of switches and how many ports are on each switch: I'm not exactly sure what this is asking but the 2wire has 4 ethernet ports
-Whether or not a NAS (Network Attached Storage) or regular server is connected to the network: There is no NAS
-Whether or not a Wifi router is connected to the network and/or switch: Yes there is a Wifi extender.
-If you are using the internal LAN connection on your motherboard, a USB dongle, or external PCI card: Not sure exactly what this means but in system information the network adapter says 'Microsoft Kernel Debug Network Adapter'

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[bill001g]

Do you have another device you can try to use on your internet. This could be a problem with the browser.

To test network you can do the following.

Open a cmd windows and let a constant ping run to your router ip. This should test the basic network connection inside your house. You can also run a constant ping to 8.8.8.8 to see if you have data loss outside your house.

Your problem could also be DNS related. Try to hard coding the dns to 8.8.8.8 in the nic setting for the ethernet port.

 

[imayhew]

Thank you for your reply. Other devices work fine, it's certainly my computer that is the problem. Ran a ping to my router for a few minutes and it was 1ms average with no loss. Ping to 8.8.8.8 was 56ms average with no loss. I changed the DNS to 8.8.8.8 but problem persisted. I also downloaded and tried using Firefox but the problem was the same.

But now I have a new problem in that when I plug in the ethernet it shows up as an unidentified network and I have no internet access at all. Maybe the hardware itself is just busted or something.

 

[bill001g]

No the ping pretty much says your hardware is fine. You could try a download with steam if you have that. If you get a reasonable download rate then it also likely is not hardware.

These tend to be very hard because it can be pretty much any program that is running. You could see if there is a newer device driver for the ethenet but I doubt it is the problem. I would try the wifi again and see if it still works. It would let you know if it is some issue in general or is related to the ethernet. If it is only the ethernet I would double check there is no firewall stuff setup for the interface.

Software that causes issues like this tend to be things like vpn that did not completely uninstall or some of the so called network accelerator software. Unfortunately it can be any software.

 

[imayhew]

Thanks again for your help. So restarting the computer made it so that the ethernet was no longer coming up as an 'unidentified network' so at least we're back to where we started. I uninstalled and downloaded a game on steam and it seemed to go smoothly except there were 2 instances where for a few seconds the DL speed dropped to 0. My wifi works fine, it's what I'm using now in fact. I deactivated the windows firewall and also my avast shields and the problem remained. I also tried booting in safe mode + networking and the problem remained.

I did try out a VPN for a few months a while back and looking through my programs list I found that there was still some 'support files' installed. Also in my device manager there was something called 'tap-windows' in my network adapters and apparently this is something installed by VPNs so I uninstalled both those things. I also uninstalled my ethernet adapter and reinstalled it and the drivers. I was very excited that this would fix the problem but after a reboot I'm still having the same issues 🙁

A few details that may be important:

Sometimes when a page doesn't load it pops up it says it cannot find a secure connection "ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR" or it will say my connection is not private "NET::ERR_CERT_INVALID" but after a few refreshes everything works fine.

Occasionally I notice my dropbox icon goes offline and when I hover over it says it is unable to find a secure connection.

I still get the following error on speedtest.net after a few seconds:
"A socket error occurred during the download test. A firewall could be blocking the connection or the server might be having some issues. Please try again later. Alternatively, check out our free Speedtest for Desktop apps for more reliable testing."
I downloaded the desktop app like it suggests and when I do not only do I get better speeds, but it finishes the test without issue.

 

[bill001g]

Steam stops every now and then not sure why but when I watches the actual packets in wireshark it is not getting any errors the server just pauses for a bit.

I would check the date and time on your computer ssl errors can be caused by the time being off. Some anti virus software also can cause ssl errors....more it blocks stuff it thinks are errors. If you are using a anti virus other than microsofts I would uninstall it and use microsoft to see if the errors go away

 

[imayhew]

So i completely removed Avast from my computer but no change. Also the date and time is correct.

 

[bill001g]

It really looks like it is a browser only problem. You never said what browser maybe try another one

 

[imayhew]

It does seem that way. I'm using Chrome but I tried Firefox and even Edge and it was the same problem with both. I've been trying to find a website that is not https to see if it works normally but I'm having trouble finding a good one. There is one called neverssl and it seems to load ok every time but it's such a small page that it could just be happening too quick. Do you know of any sites that are still not https that I can experiment on?