Router problem?

[wendyl]

A week or so ago I had a problem opening some web pages and getting a BT message - this was resolved after I contacted my ISP by re-entering DNS numers to router. At the time they said it might be that or a fault with my equipment. After putting in the given numbers all was well until today. I have repeated what I did last week and it seems to be OK again (switching off router for few moments did not cure on this occasion) I now wonder if the router is indeed faulty but would welcome advice from more of an expert than me
thanks

[huntr2]

Is the router in question wired or wireless?

The DNS numbers you were given are for a DNS server, which is responsable for looking up the name of the website you visit and translating the readable name such as "www.google.com" into a number such as "192.168.254.1" which is how computers on the Internet are addressed.

When you visit a website you ask the DNS server "what is the address of this website" the DNS server responds with "this is the address of the website". However, DNS uses a protocol called "UDP" which does not check if the response sent gets through to the client (your computer). If your network is suffering from packet loss (more likely on a wireless network) then there is a chance that the reply from the DNS server will be lost causing you to see an error page.

The first thing to check is that you have a good connection to your router wather it be wired or wireless, faulty cabling can cause packet loss and so can obstructions in the path of a wireless signal.

The reason that the UDP protocol is used rather than TCP which checks to see if the cleint received the message okay is because of speed. There are billions of DNS requests every day and the UDP protocol requires about a third of the transactions that a TCP request would.

[wendyl]

huntr2
The router is an eTEC wireless router currently ethernet connected to my PC (upstairs) but connected wirelessly to my husbands (downstairs) and to laptops (our family like to use our broadband!) When last we had the problem over a week ago it was just affecting my husbands PC
A problem I posted described further a problem not mentioned above When the connection was lost we had messages saying no wns in range or the only one in range was a different one. I had suspicions that there was some sort of conflict on wireless network causing problems. Interestingly my neighbour who I have discovered is the nearest with broadband wireless network has gone away for a week and during that time we have had no problems at all. I am waiting to see if this changes when he returns
and he has said he has a 'wizard' who will know and maybe diagnose our problem. Thankyou for taking the trouble to reply and if you have any further advice I would be pleased to hear it