Cannot consistently connect

[Mark Minassian]

My home computer has Win XP Pro, Verizon DSL with a Westell 2200 Modem.  My
office PC has Win XP Pro, Verizon DSL, a Netgear router and Trend Micro
Internet Security 2005 firewall.

 

I cannot consistently connect to my work PC from home.  I know my firewall
settings must be OK because I can connect at times with no problems.  But
then if I disconnect and try to reconnect even 15 minutes later, I will
often get the message "unable to connect to host: Connection timed out
(10060)".  When I get that message I will try to pathping or tracert to my
work PC and it will be unsuccessful.  I have also noticed that if someone in
my office reboots my work PC, I will usually be able to connect.
Unfortunately, if no one is at my office, this cannot be done.

 

At first I thought that it my be a problem on the network between my home
and office, but could the network be that unstable that it would time out
every 15 minutes?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.