Internet disconnecting reconnecting

[Englebretson 1st MRB]

Lately my internet seems to go out for 1-10secs and comes right back and its completely at random times. It is getting really fucking annoying please help me :|.

[M. Duke]

Do you bittorrent or regularly do any other activities that require a large number of ingoing/outgoing connections?

[Englebretson 1st MRB]

I use bittorrent from time to time but never leave it on. I dont know what else could be causing this in my background either.

[Dillon 1st MRB]

Are you in a place where you can see your modem or your router? My money is on a bad one of those. However, your NIC could be bad as well. Does it only affect your computer or does it affect others as well?

[M. Duke]

A lot of routers (especially cheap ones) are unable to handle too many connections at one time. I don't mean the number of computers connected to the router, but the number of connections that the router has to handle to send and receive data.

Many bittorrent clients have the default number of connections set way to high for most routers to handle. When the router can't take any more it will basically stop all connections for a short period of time (usually less than 30 seconds in my experience). When this happens you will appear to still be connected to the internet, but nothing works.

If you don't think bittorent is the culprit it might just be a router going bad. NIC and modem could also be the culprit, as Dillon suggested, but I'd start with the router first.

As a test take the router out of the equation. Connect a line directly from the modem to your computer and see if that fixes the problem. Also try connecting directly to the router instead of using wireless.

If one of those fixes the problem then you've found the culprit. If neither helps then I would consider the possibility that it is your ISP. However, I'm willing to bet it is the router.

I've had a lot of router problems in the past. I finally did my research ( http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/view ) and bought an Asus WL-520GU. I can run torrents and play DOD:S on my computer, stream netflix to the kid's computer, netflix to the TV, regular browsing from my wife's computer, and run a minecraft server from my daughter's computer all at the same time. Never had a single hiccup or dropped connection (I still can't get the damned print server to work though!).

I'm not recommending that you purchase this specific router to fix your problem - but if you remove the router from your setup and experience no more problems, you should do some research and get a better router!

[Ford 1st MRB]

I use bittorrent from time to time but never leave it on. I dont know what else could be causing this in my background either.

Herpes.