Alright guys, so here's the deal:
We have a Belkin Wireless G router hooked up to an Alient ISP box. During the first few years (a span of, say, 3 years), we didn't have a problem with it. Wireless worked fine and everything was fluid and flowing. About 2 years ago, things hit a wall - we (my brother and I) were unable to connect wirelessly. We would be able to get internet if we hardwired ourselves into the router, but have limited access to sites, such as our hotmail inboxes being inaccessible. Now, even hardwired in, are unable to even OPEN our web browsers at all. As soon as we yank the ethernet cable from our computers, the browsers open up with no connectivity.
We tried pre-opening the browsers and plugging the cable in, but got nothing.
The computer I'm posting from downstairs, my elder brothers desktop (hardwired), his laptop (wireless) all get full connectivity. My mothers laptop only gets some sites (the scenario mentioned above).
I've been told from numerous people that bandwidth hogging is to blame, but I'm unsure of what the underlying problem could be. Any thoughts?

Aliant eh.

Maybe your router gotten reset or someone played with your PPPOE settings in the router?

I think they PPPOE settings need to be correct to even connect period.. Not sure ebcause I never owned eastlink. So it's just a realllly far fetched guess.


Sorry

Sounds like it may be the MTU settings.

Make sure that you are logged in as an administrator and go to a command prompt and type "netsh int ip show int"

Post the results back here.

Alright, so I'll have to get back to the PPPoE settings, but I did check the MTU settings.

Idx Met MTU State Name
--- --- ----- ----------- -------------------
1 50 4294967295 connected Loopback Pseudo-Inte
8 20 1500 connected Local Area Connection
9 30 1500 disconnected Local Area Connection 2

http://help.expedient.com/broadband/mtu.shtml#winxp

I'm assuming you're semi-intelligent and not running Vista

Go to the command prompt again (as admin) and enter "netsh int ip set interface 8 mtu=1400 store=persistent"

Reboot your machine and you should be good to go.

Let us know if it worked.

Family computer, so OF COURSE it's running vista.

And as for the MTU setting, nothing. No change.

Did you get any errors when you entered the netsh command?

Did you reboot after you executed it?

Did the setting change. Execute the command "netsh int ip show int" again to check if the MTU size actually changed.

Absolutely no change whatsoever. The MTU size remained the same, no errors occurred, nothing before or after restarting.
This is what it is after:

Idx Met MTU State Name
--- --- ----- ----------- -------------------
1 50 4294967295 connected Loopback Pseudo-Inte
8 20 1400 connected Local Area Connection
9 30 1500 disconnected Local Area Connection 2

For LAN, it reduced to 1400, but that's not the main concern.

The LAN is the interface that you are concerned with. The 2nd LAN is disconnected.

Try going into your network properties and disable the local area connection. Then enable the local area connection 2. You can do this by right clicking on the interface in the networking section.

Sounds like a nuke and clean install of OS will fix your problems.

Do a factory reset of your router first if you havent done so already

Install any new firmware that has been released for your router

Oh, and are you by any chance using the speedstream modem with the built in wireless router?

Like Top said (or tried to say), Aliant DSL uses PPPoE and you will need to verify it's settings are correct.

Also, routers age and die. I can say this with alot of experience (our companies high end router started acting strange recently, it was just on it's last legs and needed to be replaced) It happens. Luckily, routers are widely and cheaply available and you should probably try to secure yourself one to try before you purchase a replacement.

All things to consider at least..

Like Phonix said modems and routers can goto shit which can bring up bad connectivity issues as well. Did'nt even think of that and I had that issue twice, lol.