[Homeless]

When it comes to PC's, I do alright...but I'm not expert. Anyway, my internet connection was working fine 2 days ago, yesterday it wasn't working at all. I called my ISP, and they said everything was fine on their side. One thing I thought was weird was that I couldn't connect from my PC to my router. The guy told me that it may be my network card, but that he wouldn't help me with that since he wasn't a hardware tech and didn't want to be responsible for ruining my PC. My network card is part of the motherboard...so I took apart an old PII I have here and pulled the network card out of it and put it into this machine. Long story short...question is, will my internet connection be hindered at all by this card? Would a newer network card be of any benifit? the card that is in there now is a Compaq NC3121 Fast Ethernet NIC.

Thanks guys...

 

[XxATOLxX]

Yeah its fine. It shouldn't slow you down.

 

[Gabe Logan]

Your internet connection should be just as it was before.If you still got trouble you might want to do a total reset of your modem and router.I sometimes have days when it works and then the next thing you know it does not and will not untill i reset it.One possible factor is because it sometimes gets too hot.

 

[3DCadman]

Could you connect to your router after installing the old Compaq card? Did that do the trick?

It shouldn't be a problem at all as long as it's a 10/100 type. Running at 100 isn't needed for internet access, but if you connect to other computers on your network, you want 100.

If you're concerned at all, to get a new network card is pretty cheap, around $25. Not too bad.

 

[skudmunky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3DCadman Could you connect to your router after installing the old Compaq card? Did that do the trick? It shouldn't be a problem at all as long as it's a 10/100 type. Running at 100 isn't needed for internet access, but if you connect to other computers on your network, you want 100. If you're concerned at all, to get a new network card is pretty cheap, around $25. Not too bad.

You can get network cards cheaper than that from places like Newegg, or sale/clearance from retail stores.

 

[Homeless]

I can connect to the router now yeah. Would there be any advantage to getting a new network card?

 

[Firam]

The newer cards have more little features but they are no way needed for most people.

If you do get a new card it might worth it to get a Gigabit NIC to plan for the future.

 

[catachresis]

I'm guessing that you have a broadband connection, but whether it's digital or analogue, there are terrific free resources and advice for tweaking your connection at Speedguide.net.

[Broadband Tweak Home]
http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=157

Their enhancements will help to improve overall TCP/IP network performance as well. Most of those broadband optimiser programmes merely tweak the options that speedguide optimises for free.