newb_router_nighmare

[wayne108]

I am responsible for a small business network of around 60 nodes. We have a netgear wgr614 router acting as the web router. Two of the LAN ports on the router run to PC's. One runs to the domain name servers, file server, mail server, ERP server. The last port runs to the rest of the network (about 55 nodes). The WAN port runs to a Speedstream DSL modem. The network itself consists of a win2k8 r2 domain running static IP's .
About once a week, a user will be dropped from the network. Sometimes the user is denied internet access, sometimes the user is unable to view the LAN at all. In all cases the user is unable to ping the default gateway ( the router). Once, two thirds of the network was unable to connect to the LAN. Usually, a hard reboot (unplugging) the router will take care of the problem. The day most of our network went down, nothing seemed to work until I unplugged a small switch logically located 4 switches away from the router.
I am unable to log into the router as the password has been lost (before I started). I am unwilling to reset the router as I am unable to view all the current settings to replicate them onto the reset router. I know the network should work with a switch in place of the router, when I tried this no one was able to connect to the LAN
I have been assuming the router is the problem, is this assumption within reason?

 

[Tegguy92]

The network probably will not work with a switch in place of the router. The modem generally serves 1 IP unless setup with your ISP.

How if your network setup? I know you have 55 nodes running off one port but do those run to multiple switches 1 switch? What is the need for static IP's?

 

[Tegguy92]

What happened to the previous network person? What is your networking background?

 

[wayne108]

Thanks for responding. There was no deicated network person here. In fact, as the only IT worker here now, with all the other resposibilities (Desktop, ERP, Website Development etc.) networking is just another hat.I dont know why they used static IPs, but some of these nodes (e.g. embedded obsolete OS's) probably wouldnt work with dynamic IP's. There are over a dozen switchs sitting behind that one port.

 

[Tegguy92]

Have you tried the default admin password for the router? In my experience static IP's should only be used when absolutely needed most of the time you can use a DHCP reservation. I've experienced problems with static IP's before.

 

[wayne108]

Yes I have tried the defualt password. The password was changed before I got here and no one knows the new one. I could hit the reset button, but I dont know what settings (eg open ports)are there. If I reset it, I could lose functionality. But back to my original question. This is a home router, could it be the source of the problems I listed?

 

[Tegguy92]

I was going to post up about this earlier but hesitated. The router could be part of the problem because it wasn't designed to handle this amount of traffic. You could look into a small business router and try that but you'd be back to the whole problem of you don't know the current settings.

 

[wayne108]

I agree, but it's at a point where it's affecting business. I hate to replace something that's working, and when I do it could get ugly. But it's going to get ugly if I leave everything alone also.

 

[Tegguy92]

Is all the networking located in one closet? What switches are used (managed or unmanaged)? One thing you could try if able is to make the Lan ports run to the switch and then branch EVERYTHING off from there so nothing is directly connected to the router. This would essentially take some load off the single port that all PC's are running on and give it to the switches to manage instead. Other than that I would say look into a small business router and go from there. It's possible you could get a linux box and "sniff" the router from the outside and see what ports are open and try to decide from there if there is anything special thats been opened up.

 

[wayne108]

Thanks