My router is being an arse.

[Lucca]

Hi RPGFan. I need some help to figure out where to start on fixing my saucy router.

Here's the deal.

About two weeks ago I noticed my internet was falling into a weird, daily pattern. I'd be surfing the internet (both oh my wired and wireless devices) and my internet would slow to a crawl, then stop all together. Resetting both the router and modem seemed to instantly fix this problem. Then, about 24-36 hours later, it'd happen all over again.

This happens on both my wired and wireless stuff. I've been thinking for a while it's my modem, since there was some yardwork in my front yard and they accidentally spliced through the internet cable (this was fixed, though). However, today I decided just to reset the router, and low and behold, it fixed itself. So at least I pinpointed which device is doing this.

My router is a D-Link DIR-655. I did upgrade it to the latest firmware about a week or two ago, but there's no way to downgrade it if it is the problem. What would cause my router to do this, and what settings should I look at to pinpoint the problem?

Thanks guys, hope you can help :)

[D-Rider]

Out of curiosity, is your modem one of those modem/router combination units?  Your problem sound identical to a problem I used to have because my modem/router and wireless router were conflicting.

[Lucca]

Out of curiosity, is your modem one of those modem/router combination units?  Your problem sound identical to a problem I used to have because my modem/router and wireless router were conflicting.

No, the cable modem is seperate. This is a basic wireless N modem with some ethernet/wired plugs in the back.

I didn't consider my actual MODEM conflicting with the router though. Hm.

[Fei]

Your modem itself isn't conflicting with the router; D-Rider meant that the built in router in his combo was conflicting with the wireless router it was also connected to. 

Anyway, If you do a lot of torrenting, it could be that the router's NAT table is filling up, preventing new connections.  We had a similar issue here and ended up blaming the people using bearshare.  Researching the issue was pretty complicated and I don't think we came to a simpler solution than to reset the router and refrain from using bit torrent or anything like bearshare, but I am no expert.

Thinking back, the computer we were using frequently had adware/malware/whatever on it back then (we used it as a public machine) and since it seems to be working fine now (it's been reformatted a zillion times) with the same router, I'll assume that malware probably filled the NAT table, forcing us to reset the router.

Just something to consider.

[Lucca]

I actually don't torrent that much, so that's probably not the issue. Malware, though, I haven't considered. It's been a while since I used a malware only program. Is Spybot still considered the best?