WRT54GL bandwidth spikes - wired

[TheGrunger]

I have weird issues with my desktop computer and Linksys WRT54GL router; every few seconds bandwidth drops resulting in loss of connection in various apps (such as IM software).

I have Tomato firmware and I can see some big jumps and drops when looking at the bandwidth graph, which usually lags for a few seconds right before a big jump (connection timeout), the suddenly drops.
It jumps from about 500KB/s to about 2MB/s and then drops to 100KB/s or lower, then again back to about 500KB/s - looks quite similar to heartbeat graph. This happens every few seconds, occasionally once a minute.

The speed is much faster and very consistent if I connect the computer directly to the modem.
Computers using wireless connection don't have this problem. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Psychoteddy]

Run a tracert to Google and post your results here. I suspect latency spikes...

 

[TheGrunger]

It's uTorrent.

I've tested it by downloading OpenOffice here (the torrent is advertised as great for testing on uTorrent's site) - connected to modem and router. There were issues both times.
Actually, just having uTorrent opened with torrents inactive causes issues.

I'll try to find out what is the cause of this and will post here when I do found out.

 

[Psychoteddy]

I would still run the tracert to see what's going on. It could also be your ISP throttling your connection.

 

[TheGrunger]

I did these before I found it was uTorrent:


Directly to modem, without uTorrent:

Through router, with uTorrent:

This is the farthest I could get out of 5-7 tries. It usually failed very early.


Here is how it looks in Tomato's graph (first spike appeared a bit after launching uTorrent):

This is right before next big spike, always happens after "Warning: 10 second timeout" message at the bottom.

 

[Psychoteddy]

Sounds to me like your ISP is playing dirty. Who do you have?

 

[TheGrunger]

I don't think it's ISP. I connected another computer to router with wired connection, launched uTorrent after a few minutes and everything was fine, no spikes.
I also left uTorrent open on the problematic computer and received BSOD few hours later, saying it's my NIC driver (rt64win7.sys). I've then updated the driver and again left uTorrent opened to see what will happen.
I then received another BSOD few hours later (tcpip.sys). Reinstalled the driver again (cleaned registry with ccleaner, rebooting between each step this time), but uTorrent still caused spikes.
Then I did these things, testing uTorrent after each step:
-reset TCP/IP
-applied a hotfix from MS
-tried restoring OS to the earliest restore point (one week ago), since I don't know when the problems began. The restore point appeared to be too long ago because it opened system repair wizard instead, so I'm back at the same point.

So now I'm thinking about doing a clean install of Win7.
I've installed the OS 10 months ago, always tried my best to keep it clean, but I've been using this computer for web (and software) development and since IDEs and other tools setup various stuff, I'm thinking that combination of them and windows updates might cause some issues.

Here is the second BSOD: http://pastebin.com/fjCz7t8y

I will try another restore point.

 

[Psychoteddy]

I don't think it's ISP. I connected another computer to router with wired connection, launched uTorrent after a few minutes and everything was fine, no spikes.
I also left uTorrent open on the problematic computer and received BSOD few hours later, saying it's my NIC driver (rt64win7.sys). I've then updated the driver and again left uTorrent opened to see what will happen.
I then received another BSOD few hours later (tcpip.sys). Reinstalled the driver again (cleaned registry with ccleaner, rebooting between each step this time), but uTorrent still caused spikes.
Then I did these things, testing uTorrent after each step:
-reset TCP/IP
-applied a hotfix from MS
-tried restoring OS to the earliest restore point (one week ago), since I don't know when the problems began. The restore point appeared to be too long ago because it opened system repair wizard instead, so I'm back at the same point.

So now I'm thinking about doing a clean install of Win7.
I've installed the OS 10 months ago, always tried my best to keep it clean, but I've been using this computer for web (and software) development and since IDEs and other tools setup various stuff, I'm thinking that combination of them and windows updates might cause some issues.

Here is the second BSOD: http://pastebin.com/fjCz7t8y

I will try another restore point.

Yeah if you're getting BSoDs and other client-related errors it's definitely not an ISP issue. Try to do a clean uninstall of your network drivers in Safe Mode and reboot. Install the latest drivers after this.

 

[TheGrunger]

Did this, but the problem with uTorrent is still there. I'll leave it open now to see if I'll get BSOD again.
Have you looked at the BSOD message I wrote above? I'm not an expert when it comes to these things, I hope you'll understand it better: http://pastebin.com/fjCz7t8y

Thanks for the help!

 

[Psychoteddy]

Here is the most important part of the error: "An attempt was made to access a pageable (or completely invalid) address at an
interrupt request level (IRQL) that is too high. This is usually
caused by drivers using improper addresses."


This is definitely a faulty driver. It could possibly be a memory issue but I doubt it. You can run memtest86 if you'd like to check that off the list.

 

[TheGrunger]

I've decided to just replace uTorrent with Vuze (ex Azerus) and everything seems to be working alright now, haven't had any BSOD since and it doesn't turn my bandwidth into spikes.

I agree that it's the drivers though. The hardware ID of the card is PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_E0001458&REV_01, from which I assumed that I have RTL8168 model.
I've installed a driver from Realtek's site under Network Interface Controllers -> 10/100/1000M Gigabit Ethernet -> PCI Express, where my model is listed, and Lan driver for my motherboard from Gigabyte's site.
Is there any other driver that I should install?