I have the worlds worst network connection, here's how it behaves

so its pretty simple. Between me and the outside world is a router and a couple of TP link powerline adapters. and with this the worlds finicky tempermental and unreasonable setup on the planet.

1. It's not happy unless it's being worked hard.

I beyond can't comprehend this, for the longest time my connection would frequently drop as I watched youtrube videos, browsed the forum and talked over steam. sometimes persistently, once every 5 minutes I'd have to reseat the ethernet cable at the back of my PC. Unplug, waity for windows to beep boop, plug it back in. This was enough to drive me away to do something else. come back to it, I get maybe an hour before it started playing up again. but then I noticed if I was playing a game online.. perfectly fine. Then one day I left utorrent on in the background, again... behaves itself. In fact, whenever the connection drops I just start utorrent up to get the connection back.

2. It loves steam

Occasionally my connection will just DIE. as in, end of story. No browser, no nuffin. start up utorrent... nope. okay, plug the ethernet cable back into my PC again... and like clockwork for about 10 seconds I have internet access again, and it dies again. Only there's no error icon on my task tray for my network. in fact, it thinks it's running fine. Steam thinks its running fine, but only a small part of it. I can only get to steam friends and the IM. But, I can't ping google, can't bring it up on a browser. can't bring up my steam anything. just friends and IM. utorrent won't even fix it.

Does anyone have any idea what could account for this completely insane behaviour? it's deciding to be particularly fussy today and I'm curious. because i'm not sure "run some P2P software" is in anyone's tech manual for making a connection stable.

 

Powerline. There be why. For them to work well you basically need the most robust home electrical system ever, and even then they work like crap.

Had same problems with them.

 

still... quicker than wireless then. I just don't understand why, if I knew why maybe I could take steps to help it along

 

Most problems come from other huge power hogs in your electric circuit. Like fridge, A/C, water- or roomheater, vacuum cleaner and basically everything with more than 500 watts of power usage. Maybe you could have a direct LAN cable attached to the wall. Plain simple