Question : Problem: Drop Internet-Connections

I hope anybody out there can assist me with the following weird problem.

Often I download big files overnight. With my 'old' pc (I have a new one since two weeks), this was never a problem.
I was connected to Internet for days.
Having 2 pc's I installed a router. It was fairly straightforward job, the router is very userfriendly and all the things
I needed to change, fill in, I got from my ISP
Everything works fine.

However, I've come to notice that the connection drops at regular intervals. This is after an hour or more and
sofar happens when I am not around...
Sometimes, switching the router off and on, solved the problem. Not this morning ...

I tried out everything, but in the end, I took out the router and connected directly to my ADSL-modem (as before).

Things went fine and I went out.
After I got back after an hour or two  I  noticed that the connection dropped again. It said something about not finding DNS or so.

When looking at the properties of LAN, it says 'connected', so my guess is it isn't the router that is causing the problem.

Am using:
Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller.

Controller-hardware settings:
802.1p Support: Off
FlowControl: On
Hardware Checksumming: On
Interrupt Moderation: On
Log Status Messages: Status Messages
Max IRQ per Sec: 5000
Maximum Frame Size: 1514
MediaType: Auto-Sense (Options: 10Mbps Half Duplex/10Mbps Full Duplex/100Mbps
Half Duplex/100Mbps Full Duplex)
Network Address: blanc (tagged: not available)
Number of Receive Buffers: 256 default (max=512)
Number of Transmit Buffers: 256 default (max=512)
TCP Segmentation: disabled
Wake From Shutdown: Off
Wake Up Capabilities: Magic Pattern and Pattern Match


Windows XP-SP2

One way or the other it looks as if it has something to do with inactivity of the pc.
(this is just a wild guess though).

Somewhere on the Internet I read about setting 10Mbps half duplex (?) but I donot know in what
context and whether this serves any purpose in my case...

This I think is a difficult problem.

brgds
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Answer : Problem: Drop Internet-Connections

>Somewhere on the Internet I read about setting 10Mbps half duplex (?) but I donot know in what
context and whether this serves any purpose in my case...

I don't think that in your situation it is a viable issue. You are set to auto-negotiate as it should be.
>MediaType: Auto-Sense

What kind of router do you have?
Since your broadband connection is DSL, you might need to adjust the MTU size on the router. Default is 1500, but DSL might need you to put down to 1492 or even all the way to 1400 to allow for extra overhead of PPPoE.
Else, you can adjust the MTU on the PC and see if that makes a difference.. use DrTCP utility to change it..
http://www.dslreports.com/front/drtcp.html