Computers suck!

[dr_st]

They sometimes behave in totally unpredictable stupid manners.

I am sitting on my desktop, and all of a sudden the internet connection slows to a crawl. Websites barely open except some that work sort of fine. Pings are OK though, so I suspect that maybe it's the browser.

I decide to go to my laptop. It hasn't been powered on since I hibernated it two weeks ago before going on a trip. Turn it on, it boots, and can't detect my wireless network. Or any wireless network. Wireless card appears fine in device manager and network connection, but Fn+F5 shows it as "disabled" and no way to enable it.

Reboot the laptop - wireless card is enabled now, but off. Turn it on through Fn+F5 - everything works, websites load fine. Same websites still barely load on the desktop. Whadda you know - it was an issue with the computer and not the network.

So now I have to reboot the desktop, for the first time in weeks.

[ozzymud]

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C:\>uptime
\\BEDROOM has been up for: 14 day(s), 19 hour(s), 41 minute(s), 48 second(s)

C:\>

last rebooted to check boot times in response to a thread here
MS Windows uptime.exe

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root@tv:~# uptime
 11:01:13 up 35 days, 14:18,  3 users,  load average: 0.57, 0.42, 0.37
root@tv:~#

last rebooted cause of a system update

Other then that, both my main machine and the tv stay up 24/7 with average uptimes in the 4 to 6 month range... I usually have the most issues similar to yours after upgrading hardware until I get the drivers sorted out. This is the #1 cause of junk like you describe... wierd drivers OR hardware being either cheap or flaky some other way.

[Neil]

Yep...suck a lot of time! I used to have "free" time before I started messing around with computers...not any more!

[A31]

I never really leave my pc on stand by or sleep or whatever, I shut it down when I'm not using it. Never understood why people just put them to sleep, uses power... try actually shutting it down when you're not using it and you may find these problems tend to go away. It's usually silly things that cause these things.

[ozzymud]

Yep...suck a lot of time!

ROFL... yea, in that aspect i 100% agree... this is a hobby-->job-->retired hobby-->ADDICTION gone awry for me

@A31: My brother in particular just doesn't seem to get this... he sleeps his 90% of the time... calls me with an issue, I get him to reboot... issue solved

[Tasurinchi]

I never really leave my pc on stand by or sleep or whatever, I shut it down when I'm not using it

+1

Same case here. Why consume unnecessary power? (Even if the consumption it's minimal). And since SSDs are affordable there is no excuses for long booting times anymore (at least with newest OS's)

[ozzymud]

Most of our machines in house are off when not in use. But two are always on, my "tv" in the livingroom (runs MythTV with 3 tuners that record a LOT)... and my main pc, runs a FTP server, has scheduled tasks to keep backups of my offsite webserver, works as our telephone answering machine, VNC server, streaming music server, and a few other full time tasks... plus I'm sitting in front of it much of the time

When my wife is home, hers is on with Skype & Ventrillo running... she generally "sleeps" it during daytime hours when she's not around and only shuts it down at night.

So yea, I can see many reasons to have a pc on 24/7 or close to it.

[Tasurinchi]

I'm not saying there is no reason to keep hardware running 24/7. There might be plenty of them. But I think that for a stand alone PC/notebook/netbook that has no need to run continuously I think it's more environmental friendly to shut it down.

But I have this kind of discussions very often with friends and/or colleague and don't really want to start a new one here

[ArtShapiro]

I'm not saying there is no reason to keep hardware running 24/7.

I almost never power down my main desktop, despite being a fairly big box and an obvious power hog. My company requires various industrial flavors of Symantec AV in order to connect to the corporate network, and that atrocity does a few hundred thousand I/Os when the machine is rebooted, causing a ridiculous time before a freshly-booted machine is available for real use. Hibernate and wakeup isn't completely reliable on this machine.

Also, being a rather fitful sleeper, I'll sometimes walk into the computer room if I hear an email coming in in the middle of the night.

As soon as Asus releases an itx Z68 motherboard, this monster desktop is history. That I might hibernate at night, as I suspect that with a SSD and totally up-to-date motherboard and processor there won't be any problems doing so.

Art

[dr_st]

I should rename this thread to "Routers suck..."

Turns out my broadband router (a 4-year old Edimax 6204Wg) finally decided to bite the dust. Probably something went haywire with the internal Ethernet switch - once any amount of traffic is attempted from the net to any of the wired ports - it stutters and traffic simply doesn't flow. But the wireless connection works like a charm.

So time to look for a new router (this time, 802.11n and Gigabit switch - for sure). In the meanwhile - wiped the dust off my TP-Link wireless PCI adapter and connected my desktop wirelessly to a router that's literally 15cm away from it.

[ThinkRob]

Asus RT-N16 running TomatoUSB.

Accept no substitutes.

[ozzymud]

Asus RT-N16 running TomatoUSB. Accept no substitutes.

+2 for that (cause +1 just ain't enough )

I am amazed at the Asus, stock firmware left a lot to be desired, but I bought it cause of Tomato compatibility

[dr_st]

They don't appear to be selling it here. But just out of curiosity - what makes this router so cool in your eyes?

[RealBlackStuff]

That is a nice router, but with a big BUT!
It uses only one bandwidth, the (over-used) 2.4/2.5GHz! It can not use the (better) 5.0GHz band.
For the ultimate dual-band Gigabit N router, look at the Asus RT-N56U instead.
http://www.asus.com/Networks/WiFi_Networking/RTN56U/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833320062

[Tasurinchi]

What about the Netgear WNR3500L? Is this a good one? Tomato should run on it...

For the ultimate dual-band Gigabit N router, look at the Asus RT-N56U instead.

Can you use other firmware with it?

[ozzymud]

RT-N56U: Nice router (like the N16 flaky with stock firmware)... but it is Ralink based... this is not a Tomato router, nor will it ever be i doubt. Gotta stick with Broadcom based stuff for Tomato, dd-wrt might support it eventually, but for me, Tomato is my preferred flavor of firmware. I had a WRT54G that I had tried many flavors of firmware on, when I got around to Tomato... i was hooked... the features are awesome, and TomatoUSB is even better on routers that support it.

Also the RT-N16 has a very spacious case, the RT-N56U is a slim model, I am a modder... there would be no room for an internal fan if I decided to add one for overclocking (note that once you go aftermarket firmware, this is just a mini Linux box)

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Tomato v1.28.9054 MIPSR2-beta K26 USB vpn3.6
root@router:/tmp/home/root# uname -a
Linux router 2.6.22.19 #8 Tue Nov 30 14:58:27 EST 2010 mips GNU/Linux
root@router:/tmp/home/root# uptime
 05:56:40 up 77 days,  3:40, load average: 0.02, 0.01, 0.00
root@router:/tmp/home/root# df -h /dev/sda2
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3           1.4T    699.9G    697.4G  50% /opt
root@router:/tmp/home/root# cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type             : Broadcom BCM4716 chip rev 1 pkg 10
processor               : 0
cpu model               : MIPS 74K V4.0
BogoMIPS                : 239.20
...

[ThinkRob]

That is a nice router, but with a big BUT!
It uses only one bandwidth, the (over-used) 2.4/2.5GHz! It can not use the (better) 5.0GHz band.

True, but not that important IMO.

You get control over the channel width and sideband, and it performs exceptionally well even in congested areas. I've got many, many other SSIDs visible to my laptop right now, and I have no problem sustaining near-optimal throughput all over my house.

Tomato offers rather fine control over the various throughput-related parameters as well as over some of the interference mitigation techniques, so while use of the b/g spectrum might be problematic if you're planning on running the stock firmware, it's not such a big deal if you're planning on flashing it (and especially not if you're willing to spend a couple minutes choosing a low-contention channel and doing some tweaking.)

They don't appear to be selling it here. But just out of curiosity - what makes this router so cool in your eyes?

Excellent performance, USB support, flawless support under the various Tomato/TomatoUSB firmwares, cool operation, nice (moddable!) hardware, and a healthy tolerance for overclocking. Oh, and it can actually sustain 1Gb/s (lots of cheap "gigabit-capable" APs/routers can't actually sustain those speeds.)

[thePCxp]

They sometimes behave in totally unpredictable stupid manners.

Well, let me be the first to tell you all (for those who either don't know or have forgotten) that we humans behave that same way too. So I think that what I'm trying to say is: People suck! (Plus it makes total sense if you think of it, I mean, some people are so cruel and mean towards other people-particularly towards those who are "different" from the "norm"! )