XP and Netgear Wireless Router

I have XP Pro and use a Motorola Cable modem, Netgear wireless router. Have a Windows 7 computer, 2 iPads and a laptop that hook up wirelessly.

When the iPads come onto the system usually get a concurrent TCP/IP connection error in the event manager and have to reboot wireless router to have Internet connection again. I am also much slower loading pages from the Internet than use to be on the XP Pro machine. ISP company has been out and helped on the upload speed which was very slow and now is close to the ISP's max speed for upload.

Pages are still loading slow on the XP machine and when the iPads or other wireless devices come on line can still drop Internet connection. I have done the direct cable connection to the XP machine and it does not speed up the loading of the pages from the Internet.

What other settings in services or elsewhere can I check to regain old very good speed, lack of drops and page loads? AV and malware/spyware report no problems and the computers are up to date with any Windows patches.

Thanks!

 

First step is to confirm that either router and all connecting devices are setup to use dynamic IP's (preferred) or all are setup to use static IP's (each device is assigned an IP from router and configured in networking to use that IP).

Using static IP's is a PITA and from your description at least one is trying to use a static IP which your router has already dynamically assigned to another device.

 

Hello Wildfire,

The wireless router is setup for DHCP (as tcp/ip in windows) as are the connecting devices. However it does seem that something somewhere is interested in a static number. I get the concurrent tcp/ip connection and unable to renew device and conflicting IP error messages in event manager periodically. I know XP is allowed 5 concurrent and Pro 10 concurrent connections. I have checked all machines with multiple spyware/malware software and each is showing clean. It seems the iPads make the situation worse but that could be my bias attitude speaking

Should I perm assign an IP in my wireless router for each device? Never have before and have used wireless for 6 plus years. No major changes to any system in home that I am aware of or can see easily. This has been happening for couple months occasionally and now all the time.

Thanks,

 

You could try static IP's but they are a major headache when devices connect to other networks. Any chance some unauthorised user is using your network?

To be honest networking is not my forte but I'm sure Tony or someone else will stumble across this thread soon.

 

Wildfire,

I would really like to avoid the PITA static addresses also. The security is set as WPA-PSK [TKIP] on the router with a secured password which was changed from the default. In my router it shows the attached devices and I have never seen anything attached that I am not aware of what it is.

I am really wondering if it is a setting in windows (XP Pro, the main machine and the one the cable modem and router are running thru) and not router. Although that would not totally explain why other devices within my home knowing the password are getting kicked off also.

A bad router may explain the internet connection going down with multiple devices attached but not the slow loading times on my computer or when I even use a direct cable connection for testing.

 

I want to thank everyone for their input and suggestions and for trying to help me out. I got to the point where I just wiped my router clean and rebuilt the settings and did a firmware upgrade. I had to do the firmware upgrade via ftp because my router would not even allow the upgrade once I logged into it. Well between the upgrade of the firmware and rebuilding all of the settings I think all is working well again. The last 2 days have been trouble free. I just keep my fingers crossed it will remain that way.

This thread may be closed and again thanks for the help.

PS: The ISP company came out at my Insistence and finally did a new drop from the street to my house - wow - good page load times again. So I was fighting a router problem and a bad drop cable from the ISP at the same time.