WRTP54G problem: Web pages are slow to load

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 10

Hey everyone,

I finally switched from my dreaded Linksys WRT54GP2 router to the WRTP54G and am happy to report that I no longer have a router that randomly resets itself every 20 minutes. =) Oh joy and rapture.

Now, however, I am experiencing a new problem: web pages take at least 4-5 times as long to load when I'm wired (I haven't tested page load speeds wirelessly). Anyone have any ideas why?

Additionally, I performed a speed test and I get 4013 kbps down and 285 kbps up... so my bandwidth is not a problem; and it's not web-site specific, it's any web site I go to. For example, it takes 9 secs to open www.csus.edu just to get some kind of anything to display, and then another 7 secs to load the rest of the page.

The router is fresh out of the box and the only settings I have changed are that I enabled UPnP, and secured the wireless portion of the router by enabling WPA security & turning on the MAC Address Filter.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mike

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

Mike,

2 questions.

1. Have you tried connecting to it wirelessly and do you experience the same slow web access?

2. If you answered no, (i.e. slow access only when it is wired), then you have experienced what I had when I first got a wireless router. It turned out that my NIC on my desktop, wired directly to it, was experiencing the same slow downloads. The reason was that my NIC was so old that it couldn't autonegotiate with the router. I had to preset the communication speed to 10Mbps instead of auto-negotiate and it worked like a charm.

hope this helps.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 10

Hey Mundy5,

I just tried wireless, and it's the same results: the status bar of the browser indicates it's "looking up www.whateverwebsite.com..." and hangs there dormant for about 5 seconds. Then after it finds the website, the Title Bar changes to the website's title, then a couple seconds later the shell of the website loads (sans pictures) and then by about the 10th to 15th second I get the pictures.

=(

Thanks,

Mike

P.S... It's also 8am on a Sunday, so not exactly what you'd call "prime time" for internet usage.

Posts: 282 · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 10:20 am Post subject:

I know this will sound very basic, and you may have already tried it, but if not please try it before making yourself crazy trying to fix this - reboot everything - Modem, Router, PC. A lot of problems are cured this way.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 10

ChrisFix wrote:

I know this will sound very basic, and you may have already tried it, but if not please try it before making yourself crazy trying to fix this - reboot everything - Modem, Router, PC. A lot of problems are cured this way.

Hey I'll try anything, basic or otherwise. I tried your suggestion and have no difference in slow performance. when I download files from the web or elsewhere, the speeds are terrific. But when I just want to view a web site, the performance is horrible. I have tested both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and both browsers perform at the same level, with Firefox edging out IE6 by just a few seconds.

Posts: 282 · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 4:05 pm Post subject:

Did you test browsing before making the few changes you did in the router configs? If not, reset the router to "factory defaults" - it's under the Administration tab on my WRT54G, so I imagine it is something similar on your .

Have you connected the slow browsing PC directly to your modem to see that you can rule out / rule in the router causing the problem vs the ISP or PC settings?

Just some basics to look at.

Posts: 282 · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 4:34 pm Post subject:

Something else to consider - do you have the latest firmware installed on your router. I did a search and that theme seems to come up alot with this of router. Here are a couple of links I found that you should take a look at - it may give you some ideas. Based on these, at least you're not alone!!

http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic6836.html+slow
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic7174.html+slow
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic7144.html+slow

Posts: 423 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Oct 03, 2005 Posts: 423

try opening a web page by IP address to see if it loads faster that way - this way you can tell if its a DNS problem. open your web browser and paste in this address

http://216.109.118.74

see what happens

Posts: 9 · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 12:32 am Post subject:

Hi sac86738,

I just exchanged a WRT54GP2 last week for the same reasons you did, and so far my new WRTP54G is working well after a few setup issues.

It took me a few days to figure out the WRTP54G; it sounds like you are having the same DNS issues I experienced. Try entering your ISP DNS addresses (#1 & #2) and it should solve your issues. You may also try disabling "DNS Proxy", both settings can be found in the basic setup menu.

Good luck.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 10

bman192k wrote:

Hi sac86738,

I just exchanged a WRT54GP2 last week for the same reasons you did, and so far my new WRTP54G is working well after a few setup issues.

It took me a few days to figure out the WRTP54G; it sounds like you are having the same DNS issues I experienced. Try entering your ISP DNS addresses (#1 & #2) and it should solve your issues. You may also try disabling "DNS Proxy", both settings can be found in the basic setup menu.

Good luck.

Tried that and .... My GOD! So THIS is what cable internet is supposed to feel like! Dude, full steam ahead, Cap'n! Thanks for that tip, it totally worked. I went over to BroadbandReports.com, found a list of DNS servers (4.2.2.1 - 4.2.2.6) and tracerouted each one using PingPlotter (free, and oh so useful utility)... found the two with the closest hops, and I'm now at Ludacris Speed! (Spaceballs reference).

Thanks again and if anyone else has this problem, there is your answer! I love these forums.

Mike

P.S. - I did not have to disable the dns proxy as mentioned in the quote above. the simple solution to my problem was to specify which dns servers to use.