It's been years since I've seen problems with autonegotiate not working correctly so I think it's a bogus explanation. 

 

It sounds like you are connected via hard wired Ethernet to an external wireless box of some sort.  If that's the case then Start, Run, cmd, OK to bring up a black cmd screen.  Type the bold stuff (with an enter after each line)

 

ipconfig

 

(It will show you the IP address of your PC and of the Default Gateway which should be the address of your external wireless box.  Let's call the IP of the Default Gateway A.B.C.D)

 

ping A.B.C.D

 

(you should get 4 replies.  If that works then try)

 

ping -n 1000 -l 1300 A.B.C.D

 

(That's -L 1300.  This will generate 1000 large pings so it will take a while to run.  Does it have any losses? If not you can be fairly certain that your connection to the wireless box is good and the dropped packets are in the wireless network which probably isn't perfect.  If there are no losses you can test the wireless link the same way.)

 

tracert -d f1.com

 

(That's F ONE.com.  I just use it because I know it responds to traceroutes.  Look at the results.  Step 1 should be the default gateway A.B.C.D.  Step 2 should be the first router on the other side of the wireless link.  Uses its IP address in place of the A.B.C.D in the two ping commands.  Any losses?  If so then either the wirelesslink is dropping the packets or the router's queues is overloaded because they have oversold the link.  Try it again early in the morning when most people are sleeping and see if it looks better.  If so it's oversold.  If not it's a problem with the wireless part.  However, TCP/IP expects packet losses so it really shouldn't stop things from working unless you are losing a lot of packets.  Some routers have been set not to respond to pings so if that's the case see if the next one up the line will take a ping.)

 

Ron

 

 

Thanks Ron, I 'll run the tests you suggest and see what happens!

Ron,

 

I  ran the tests you suggested. After 1000 pings (took forever!) from my pc to the wifi modem there were no dropped packets. I tried to run tracert to f1.com but after the first hop to the wifi modem it kept timing out.

 

I used the tracert function from the dnsstuff website to earthlink's server (5 or 6 hops) and found that the first 3 won't respond to pings. I then ran a large quantity of  1300 byte pings to earthlink's server and it did drop a few packets.

 

I guess I can assume the connection between my pc and the wifi box is ok, and the trouble (if it really is trouble) lies out in the "ether" somewhere. Since my throughput, on average, meets the advertised 1 Mb/sec I shouldn't really complain.

 

Thanks again for your help!