Problems with LAN

[avx]

Hey guys,

I'm having a reoccuring problem with this LAN, hopefully you guys can give me a helping hand. This is the network.

3 Desktops and 1 laptop that is sometimes hardwired and sometimes wireless, but mainly wireless, only really hardwire when things start going wrong.

1range extender in the shop for the wireless notebook, and one dumb router for the extra port for the computer in back.

Atleast 2 are always being used at the same time.

Sometimes the network apparently just crashes for no reason. A main problem is that when we have the notebook in the shop, and we try and print something, it wont print. Or the DSL will crash and there will be no internet access. I have checked ALL connections twice. Ive been in the device manager and it said that everything was working fine. I checked the printer ports and made sure they are set to the right one. I just cant figure it out...I know this problem has been going on for a while...and I know they used to have earthlink DSL and they blamed them for this problem, so they switched to bellsouth DSL and its still happening, Im thinking it might have something to do with the wireless setup, but Im not to firmiliar with wireless so hopefully you guys got a couple of ideas for me.

Its a netopia router/modem if that helps.

[DragonNOA1]

I didn't catch if this was a networked printer but I know my modem would sometimes go poop when I had split/amplified (?) the line too much. I think I had mine split like 3 times coming from the wall just to my modem. Maybe that is the case with you? You have DSL so maybe not but I wanted to throw it out there.

Are these old switches/routers? What do mean by the network crashes? You lose your modem connection or you just can't view web pages? Can you still access other computers on the LAN?

Are you printing from the notebook and the whole network (every computer) gets booted from the network? Or does it just lose its wireless signal? Again, it this a LPT printer or does have a NIC and is on the network?

[avx]

Yes the printer is networked, we actually have 2 one is hardwired into the main computer in the front office, the PARTS printer is hardwired into the PARTS room computer, and the other 2 computers use the network to print into the PARTS printer, and the PARTS printer is LPT1. Router is brand new from Bellsouth.

What I mean by crashes is that we cant view web pages, and the computers dont seem to be communicating. It might have been that the DNS wasnt working, because when we were running some diagnostics on the router it failed the DNS test. We have since repaired it, and right now things seem to be working fine. We updated firmware for the router and the user told us that it has never performed this fast before. Hopefully dumbluck kicked in and we fixed it without even really doing anything.

But for future reference, lets say it crashes still, what might cause it to do so and what can we do to help prevent it?

Thanks for you help Dragon