how can you tell if a router has gone bad, not wireless, but cable only, since pages don't load,is very slow

Answer 1

Doesn't sound like the router. Easiest thing to do is disconnect the router from the modem and connect the computer directly. If there is a noticeable increase in speed then you found the problem. If it is the same (which I think it will be) then you may have a bad connection, an overloaded line (call cable) or more probably a lot of junk running in the background on your computer.

Answer 2

You can check the router CPU & memory usage, and no. of dropped packets. But it's more likely the router will die completely rather than slow down.

A quick-and-dirty method is to simply do a "tracert www.yahoo.com" from the command prompt. If there are a lot of Timesouts, then it's probably due to network congestion. If responses are less than 5ms between your computer & router, and between 200ms and 400ms beyond, then the bottleneck could be your PC. I'm assuming you are not sharing the router with too many other users.

Finally, it could be spyware or other malware. But regardless, you ought to have anti-spyware/anti-virus software running on your computer.

Answer 3

I don't think your router is the problem since you can still connect to other networks (Internet). However, I do know that there are situations where bandwidth is being limited due to firmware bugs. You can try to download the latest firmware just to be sure.

If you are experiencing some slowdown, specifically on web browsing, perhaps you don't have enough bandwidth given by your Internet provider. I suggest you contact them to check your upload and download streams.

You might also want to check if your PC is infected with spywares. This can also caused slowdown in browsing.