Fixed my Internet

Last night I finally fixed my Internet! I have a Cisco 857W router for my ADSL connection (thank you eBay) but had problems with it. Every so often, it would simply stop passing traffic. The router wouldn't report any particular issues but wouldn't pass any traffic down the ADSL line. Everything else on the router appeared to be normal.

So, being the network engineer, I downloaded the latest IOS and updated my router. Not only did this not fix the problem but it introduced another one. It would appear that every new connection would loose the first few packets. A ping would loose the first packet, telnetting to port 80 on a website, would delay for several seconds before responding.

It was enough of a problem to prevent the ABC's iView on the PS3 to stop working which was annoying.

Normal web surfing would still work but felt a tad slower. Speed tests would show the expected bandwidth but have a horrendous ping response (> 1000ms).

So last night I downgraded slightly but went from an ED release (Early Deployment in Cisco speak) to an MD release (maintenance release) and found that all these problems have gone away.

I guess this says that there are problems with the latest ED release for my router. It remains to be seen if this MD release fixes the original problem that I was trying to fix.

Wish me luck!