Intermittent Internet

Hi there,

Im at my wits end with an internet issue. I have several laptops in the house that have had no issues but my desktop seems to have intermittent connection issues. I ended up formatting and reinstalling windows, reinstalling LAN drivers, Ive tried swapping the ethernet cables from the desktop to the wall and the wall to the router and still no luck, all to no avail. So, I think Ive narrowed the problem down to either the wire in the wall (house isnt even 6 months old), the router (brand new and installed with completion of home), or the NIC (Ive pinged loopback when it has gone down and everything looked good, so i dont think its the NIC).

Before I formatted, the internet connection would fail every five to ten minutes, after I formatted it seems to be ok, however when I put a heavy load on the internet connection (ie installing several games on steam, netflix) the connection goes down until i shut some of it down. The issue is very annoying as movies on netflix get paused for 1-5 minutes at a time.

Id like to try adding a NIC card but would rather not spend the money if it can be helped (I realize theyre uber cheap, but so am I)

Is there a way to check the wire in the wall for issues/poor installation, check the router for a failing ethernet port/issues, or check the NIC for issues?

Any other ideas as to what the issue might be caused from?



heres my build if that helps at all:
800 watt xfx psu
xfx 750i mobo (with integrated potentially defective NIC)
2x 2 gig sticks of centon ram
2x Nvidia 9800 gt gpus
intel q9400 cpu
nvidia edition cooler master case


thanks much,
Jon Hayhoe