Viewing pages keeps failing: Router or ISP?

[d000hg]

The router is the modem, though I guess I could find a spare to test with. It affects all PCs in our house, whether connected to the router by ethernet or wireless. As I say we have had issues with the router but I don't want to jump to conclusions.

ISP is TalkTalk who I know don't have a great rep, but I've not had this problem particularly before. 50% failure rate on reaching pages is pretty serious!

[churkus]

On my home broadband, some sites fail to accept requests as often as 1 in 2 or 3 times. e.g I'll try and go to Contractor UK - for UK IT Contractors, IT Contracting and Computer Freelancers and it will just sit there saying "resolving..." and then after 20-30s come up with an error. If I hit F5 it will work practically instantly - the broadband is fast but erratic. In fact I can normally tell within a couple of seconds if a page load is going to work or not, and get into the habit of trying to reload if nothing happens after 5s.
Some sites are worse than others, so I don't think the issue is the connection is being lost.

Does anyone know how I might diagnose this? Our router keeps having to restarted to get wi-fi working, but I'm using ethernet and I don't know if it's a coincidence or this sounds like a router issue... or if my ISP is just rubbish, or something else.

Whenever I
have had loading issues as you mention, 9 out of 10 times it has been the router playing up. Remove the router from your setup, connect broadband direct from modem to pc (via ethernet if possible), if the problem persists directly connected, its either the NIC in your pc/the modem/ problem with the incoming line, whos yor isp btw.

[Sysman]

"resolving..." sounds like a DNS problem.

It's been a long time since I had problems with DNS, but at one point I found things worked best if I put the addresses of the DNS servers provided by my ISP into both the router and the laptop's internet settings.

You could also try a third party DNS provider, at least during diagnostics.

[d000hg]

On my home broadband, some sites fail to accept requests as often as 1 in 2 or 3 times. e.g I'll try and go to Contractor UK - for UK IT Contractors, IT Contracting and Computer Freelancers and it will just sit there saying "resolving..." and then after 20-30s come up with an error. If I hit F5 it will work practically instantly - the broadband is fast but erratic. In fact I can normally tell within a couple of seconds if a page load is going to work or not, and get into the habit of trying to reload if nothing happens after 5s.
Some sites are worse than others, so I don't think the issue is the connection is being lost.

Does anyone know how I might diagnose this? Our router keeps having to restarted to get wi-fi working, but I'm using ethernet and I don't know if it's a coincidence or this sounds like a router issue... or if my ISP is just rubbish, or something else.