I have a home network consisting of 1 Linux box running Fedora 13, a laptop running Windows XP, and an HP Officejet Pro L7780. With the Fedora 13 box I have Firefox 3.6.4. I have noticed in the last couple of days a very sluggish response seemingly one site, amazon.com. I'll connect to the site but Firefox remains loading the page and parts of it will be missing. If I search for a particular item it takes forever to display parts of the newly requested page. I have hit stop and then refresh and sometimes the page will then come up although it's never 100%. Eventually I'll loose my router (which by the way is a Linksys BEFSR8.1 v3.01), in that if I ping it I'll get the error that it is unreachable. The laptop also looses access to the router. I'll then reset it (unplug/plug) and it'll come back up ok until I go back to Amazon and start searching again.

My question(s) are:
Can a router go bad and just show up bad with one site initially? In other words is the router slowly dying?

Can a problem with a site affect the router this way?

I have also changed my namserver settings in /etc/resolv.config and on the router with no real change in symptoms. It's always Amazon and I don't seem to have issues with any other sites that I visit. Any clues?

Hi,

You say no other site access problems. What about another browser and try the site again? Plugin problem(s) for the browser?

I've just started toying with that idea this morning. I may have to start disabling my plugins and see if that's it. It was something that had just started I would say 2 days ago. Prior to that all was fine. But now late yesterday when I went to print to a queue that I don't normally use I got a not connected message. I have 4 queues all going to the same physical HP Multifunction Network printer. So based on that it may be the router/switch. I've only got Firefox 3.6.4 currently I may try another one, any suggestions?

a different browser to check: chrome http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

Can a router go bad? sure its just hardware like anything else; but more likely some internal file / cache is getting bad. If the different browser doesn't make a difference, reset your router to factory default (theres typically a button on the back for this) and re configure it; I've had to do that a few times myself.

I've been thinking about checking out chrome for a while, now may be a good time to do so.

I've seen routers go before just not this way being so selective. I've worked with 2600 series CISCO for several years mostly in Frame Relay setups and 4000 series routers that went through ATM switches, but that was another lifetime. I'll probably give chrome a shot before doing the reset to default on the router. Although it could very well be the router as it is a few years old and there have been a couple of other subtle issues that I had ignored before but now putting it together does seem to point to that. It just seems like a different world between commercial products and consumer products. I had worked with commercial routers that were several years old and still running without any problems, consumer products on the other hand seem to be designed to die for high consumption.

Misread and deleted.

Oh completely. Enterprise hardware is in a completely different world than consumer hardware. Good luck.

Hi,

Personally I have several consumer grade network equipment. Everything is protected and isolated. No loss since the last major lightening strike. Nothing can protect you unless the equipment is isolated. Most of my subsystems utilize a UPS so adding a router is not that much of a load.

If my requirements were that of a 24/7 commercial setup then of course pay the bucks.

Finally got a chance to check out different browsers. Chrome had the same issue with Amazon.com as Firefox. Opera and Seamonkey did not. I went back to my profile directory for Firefox nad deleted the 3 _CACHE_00N_ files and the _CACHE_MAP_ file, restarted Firefox and no more problem. Must have gotten some trash in my cache.

Also onebuck I do have my router/switch and DOCSIS Modem on my UPS and the Coax Cable goes through a surge protector, even though I unplug everything during stormy weather, ever since the cable feed 2 buildings down from mine in complex we lived at at the time blowing out my TV cracking the 36" CRT.