Home network intermittent internal outage

[J Spangle]

I have a wifi home network with several devices (laptops, all but one are win7, and a wireless printer) connected through a dsl modem/router (a NexusLink 5631) to each other and to the internet. The laptops can all access shared folders on each others' hard drives, and all can print wirelessly to the printer.

Until ... after a few days of happy camping suddenly none of the devices can 'see' each other (can no longer find any other device on the network) and none of the laptops can access the wireless printer. However, internet access is never disrupted; each laptop can still happily surf the net no problem.

I am somehow able to rectify the problem by rebooting the dsl modem/router, updating the connection settings on the printer, going back and doing it again, turning round three times and twitching my nose ... after fiddling for a while to no good end everything comes back as it should. And I don't know why.

I have contacted my dsl provider (Frontier, in Ohio) who own the modem/router and they say it's nothing to do with them. As long as I have internet access they're not interested.

I called them because, interestingly, all this only happened when I switched from my old) cable provider to the dsl provider. When I had the old cable modem/router this issue never occured.

Any ideas?

 

[J Spangle]

* bump *

* bump *

 

[edwar]

Could be something very simple like the computer browser going down, that is the system that looks for and records all devices on the LAN.

Yes this happens and most of the time a Reboot of the computer will fix it.

Best thing to do for the printer is assign it a Static IP so it never changes.

 

[J Spangle]

By 'computer browser' do you mean on an individual PC? If so why would they all go down at the same time?

I've no idea how to assign the printer a static IP but I'll look into it, thanks.

 

[edwar]

The Computer Browser service runs on every PC. One PC is Elected to be the Master Browser, that holds all the info for all computers on the LAN that are turned on. These Elections are all done behind the sense so you never see them. But if a New Election happens or the computer that was designated as the Master Browser is turned off then the network will go down for a period of time. That does not mean you can't connect to the other computer that are turned on. To do that from a Win Explorer window you type in the PCs computer name like this \\computerName and then hit the Enter key.

Once you have connected to a computer it should always show in the Network section of the Win Explorer window.