Network Tools and problems

[ASUmusicMAN]

Hey there everyone.

I'm experiencing a very unique problem with my connection/network right now, and you all have always helpped out in the past, so I was wondering if you could help.

Short bit: I need a program to monitor my connection (i'm sick of having command prompt ping cox.net over and over again to monitor how often, and what kind of intervals my connection goes down), so I was wondering if someone wouldn't mind giving me hand finding a good program.

Long bit (my actual problem): Just started earlier today. I have a laptop and desktop both hooked into a linksys wireless router (with the four ports). All of a sudden, out of the blue my desktop, which is plugged in, had its internet go out. Now the laptop running on the wireless is fine. So, I ping the router with both computers, and it will only return a ping on the laptop. My desktop will time out ping requests on the router, but won't even resolve the server for anything outside my immediate router. My laptop can ping everything to its heart's content.

Now then, I disable my wireless and plug in the plug from my desktop into my laptop...viola works fine. So okay, I plug it back into the desktop and it doesn't work. So then I think hmm...maybe a virus/spyware/windows issue. I dual boot my desktop, so I boot onto my second hard drive which contains linux fedora core 3. Now this is weird, it won't work on linux either.

So at this point i'm pretty stumped. I begin to think, well shit maybe I fried my NIC inside my desktop, but no. I can still file share and print share between the two computers, just no internet on the desktop. Anyone who has any ideas of things to test or try, please i'm begging you throw out any suggestions. The only thing I have left to try tomorrow is maybe try and load a new firmware on the router, but that's about all I got.

[ASUmusicMAN]

Not sure if it was clear, but I monitor my ping because cox is starting to get sketchy on my connection as a whole (which they haven't fixed, after a year). Unrelated to my computer issue I believe...

[ASUmusicMAN]

alright. Figured out the long problem. The DHCP on my desktop gave automatically set up an IP that was in conflict with another computer on the network. yipeeeee internet!

[ASUmusicMAN]

I found a good app after some mad searching

http://www.pingplotter.com/

I'm running it now...perfect for those wondering about their network/connection.