Tobold's Blog
Friday, October 02, 2020
 
Weird internet connection problem

This morning a weird problem with my internet connection manifested itself: I lost access to about half of the internet. That is to say, there were a lot of sites that I could still connect to normally (Google, Netflix, ...), and a bunch of other sites (Amazon, Reddit, Steam, ...) where I would always get a ER_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT connection error. But that happened only on my PC, while my other devices that link by Wifi to exactly the same router had no problems at all.

I concluded that the problem must be somewhere with the PC. After trying various software resets and similar stuff for my network card, which is integrated in my Gigabyte Z390 Gaming SLI motherboard, I finally decided I needed a hardware solution. So I bought a PCI-e network card for 20 bucks in a local store, and that completely solved the problem.

I assume that some connection on my old network card broke. I just don't understand how that can result in the problem I had, that part of the internet was still working fine, and another wasn't working at all. I would have thought a broken network card to just not work at all anymore.

As it took me some hours to figure out the problem and solve it, and my PC couldn't connect to the Genshin Impact servers anymore, I ended up playing a bit of Genshin Impact on my iPad. And I was thoroughly impressed: Apart from the different controls, you couldn't tell the difference between the PC version and the iOS version. I still prefer the PC version, because controlling your character and the camera at the same time is easier with mouse and keyboard than with on-screen controls. But while Genshin Impact is of decent graphical / gameplay quality for a PC game, it just blows any other mobile game away in comparison. You'd think you are playing on a console and not a tablet.


Comments:
Network card issues are so frustrating to diagnose. How long have you had your motherboard? Seems odd that only your network connectivity has affected if it's actually your motherboard going bad.
 
Not *that* old, nearly 2 years now. Haven't experienced any other motherboard troubles.
 
What a weird problem indeed. Have you tried removing the network card in the hardware manager? And deleting the drivers while doing so? So strange.
 
Yeah, I did disable it in the device manager, and also tried a netcfg -d plus reboot to reset everything. But none of those software solutions worked, which is why I decided I needed a new network card.
 
Tobold this might be a longshot but Windows 10 for some reason once decided my network card should be automatically turned off to reduce power consumption.

Thought I had a broken card until I found out how to switch this off. Dont remember exactly where I went but I think the option is somewhere in Device Manager and then going into the properties for the network card.
 
Tobold

I had similar issues when my ISP quietly "upgraded" me from IPV4 to IPV6 a few years back. Unfortunately I cannot remember what the fix was but I know they got it sorted.

It is probably a good idea to run a deep scan with Malware byte however just in case something nasty is messing with your internet connection.
 
My initial gut feel for that would be DNS issues - stuff that's cached, or has a relatively long timeout period works, stuff that has to be looked up (either because it's new, or has a short timeout) doesn't... Eventually, everything would stop working.

This can be caused by a lot of issues, and putting a new card in would likely have fixed it because it would force a new network identification and DNS refresh, just like switching from WiFi to Ethernet.

But that's just a gut-feel guess... You've fixed it and it's working, but you might have been able to get away without changing anything, possibly.
 
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