download hangs with no error on DSL under Windows 2000 pro

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G

Guest

Hi,
my config is the following:
one DSL line to external world
a Belkin DSL modem and wifi router
a laptop with Windows XP home. It connects to DSL via wifi G
a desktop with W2K pro service pack 2. It connects to DSL with cable thru
a Realtek 10/100 8139 Ethernet card

Description of problem is:
downloading files bigger than 500KB via HTTP works fine on laptop using
the wifi AND via the onboard ethernet chip using the cable of the desktop.
on the desktop the donwload hangs with no error, just stops responding

Test and analysis performed:
anti-virus and firewall disabled on desktop (not on the belkin router)
many realtek drivers intalled for that particular ethernet card
flow-control and tx-rx buffer modified with many different values (except
2KB that is not available from the driver paramaters setup. However the doc
of this card explicitely mentions that this is the size of its buffer.
Question is to know id the buffer value set in the param of the card meant to
match that buffer size or a local buffer on windows?)
use of CAPSA network analyser shows that file is transferred by segment
of 1476 bytes from the web site, then the desktop answers with a packet of 54
bytes (I guess it is an acknowledgement. The CAPSA demo does not decode the
packet sent from the desktop). And so on until the web sends two times 1476
bytes each time that the desktop replies with its 54 bytes. I guess here that
there is an overflow but where ? within the windows code, in the erhernet
card, not on the router because it works with the laptop.
a test to transfer enormous files between the laptop and the desktop thru
the router (on the LAN) works fine and is very very wuick !

My conclusions:
I doubt it is the network card or cable because everything is fine in LAN
mode.
I doubt it is the driver of the card because the effects are the same
with all of them
I have look in the knowledge base of MS but found nothing to convince me
yet to install a new service pack on windows 2000.

Any ideas or facts to convince me or to explain what I could have forgot to
test?
Thanks in advance, kind regards
Vincent
 
What app were you using to download via HTTP?

Often times servers stop responding during large downloads for whatever
reason. I've had that happen a lot in the past. Is it hanging at the same
spot every time?

If you haven't already, try downloading another browser to verify that's not
the problem. Firefox is a good choice.
 
hi DC,

you are right, good questions and remarks. I forgot to mention a few things:
I tried with HTTP and FTP over HTTP to download the files, BUT....
it also happen with simply surfing on web pages, and the limit of 500K I
mentioned is not correct. It happens with whatever size and , ...
it hangs at different spot, not always at the same size limit
it does not matter that the download is started from IE 5 or Firefox 1.0
!!!

I thing i have forgot something else but I don't remember right now.
Regards, Vincent
===============
 
Hi, again Folks,

I just add Windows XP beside of my W2K OS and it works perfect without any
other hardware change.
This thus means that there is well a SW param (or bug) somewhere in W2K that
could solve the problem. Well to be honest the Realtek driver under XP is not
the same. I'm going to try to use this one under W2K just to see...
Regards,
 
Final hello World,
My problem is solved and I want to tell you what is was.
Well I don't know EXACTLY the reasons but well the cause. As I told you in
the previous message I rebuild my config with XP and it worked. Then I
decided to restart from scratch and rebuild the PC with W95 first and W2K in
second place (just to see). And I saw it worked with no special driver and no
change in the config.
I was happy and continue with the rebuild of the PC and installed SWsss and
finally I installed ZoneAlarm. Everything worked fine (when talking about
connection to internet in and out) excepted that I was again in trouble when
downloading pictures or files....
When I wrote this question in the forum in first instance, I also had added
zonealarm, but I had removed it because I knew it could cause problem if
incorrectly configured. However the difference with this final rebuild is
that, this time, before removing ZA I had NOT modified any driver concerning
the Realtek network card. So ZA was properly removed, the driver were still
as they were before the installation and the download was back OK.
The conclusion is that ZA made some "changes" on the TCP/IP connection that
disturbed the exchange. I say this because there absolutely no alarm or error
mentioned by ZA or even by the OS, and ZA was correctly configured.
Voilà, hope this can help someone in the future.
This question can be closed.
Regards,
Vincent.
 
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