posted on Sunday, September 24, 2006 1:51 PM
by
Jonathan Hodgson
Broadband Connectivity troubleshooting
My Dad came across this issue the other day - connecting to the Internet via a cable modem worked fine but connecting via a wireless router certain websites didn't work including www.microsoft.com.
The usual software problems on the PC could be ruled out, eg. spyware, invalid HOSTS file, firewall, etc. because switching back to the cable modem and all the sites worked fine.
Turns out it is was an issue with the Belkin router settings, the ISP and the Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) - changing this on the router solved the problem. I've heard of MTU before where people
'tweak' network registry settings to try and achieve better throughput similar to hardware overclockers.
I'm guessing the issue must be quite common because Microsoft Support have a
How to Troubleshooting Black Hold Router Issues article that goes into detail how and why it happens and also steps to fix the problem.