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Solve : Internet drops w\ TimeWarner cable modem -they claim it's the wireless router? |
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Answer» Hi, everyone. I usually have 8 or 9 devices connected to the wireless router and I never lose the wireless connection. First, ruining n8 devices on wireless is pushing the envelope. Just one faulty device in the wireless system can cause a dropout for all other wireless clients. Next , you need to ask your ISP what they consider prof of bad service. Myself, I have dropout at least once a day, but the modem recovers in less that 60 seconds. So I do not even report it. Understandable your ISP is doing to blame your other devices. Statistically they are right. You need to run a test for at least 8 hours using only the modem. Rather that do pings, I would recommend you try downloading large files. Or watch Netflix or Hulu for hours at a time. If a dropout happens during a video stream, you will notice it. And it will show in the error log. EDIT: When you have a Tcpip event, it looks like this in event viewer. But first you must clear the event viewer, otherwise you find too much stuff. Above you see two events tat came when I cut power to my ATT modem. I'll try running something overnight, or while I'm at work and the kids are at school. I ran the ping test last night (7:23 pm to 10:13 am) and we lost internet for about 11 minutes and it recovered. There were 203 failures through the night. Only about 40 of them over 30 seconds. Only the 11 minute failure was over 1 minute. Unfortunately, I didn't run it connected directly to the cable modem as I didn't get your suggestion until today. I'll try direct connection tonight. How could 1 bad device connected via wireless connection to the router affect the connection from the router/modem combination to the internet? btw: our wireless devices consist of: 3 iPods 1 net-book 1 tablet 5 CELL phones + more w/ guests 3 PCs + more w/ guests 1 TV 1 blue-ray device 1 WiFi router 1 WiFi extender I don't consider that too much bandwidth for my provider. They are seldom all in use. Also, I can filter the event log and there was only 1 event that had source in {Tcpip, TCPIP, Tcpip6, Tcpip-SQM-Provider}. It was a IP address conflict during a time when internet access was fully functional. If you want your provider to listen, stop using ping testing. They are more impressed with TCP/IP errors in the log. Just one IP conflict indicates something is not working. You should never have a conflict. This kind of error is not a bandwidth ISSUES,. it is about things working right. DHCP is a low-level thing. If it fails, some hardware is acting bad.Is there something else I should use instead of ping testing? I don't have any TCPIP errors to impress anyone with. I just know that I lose DNS, and the router doesn't have internet access. The IP address conflict was weeks ago. I'm losing internet several times daily. Quote I am using a brand new Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router (Model: WNDR3400v2).You have the manual, -Right? I think that router has a way of logging failures with the internet connection. If so, take a look and see if the errors on with the internet or will local traffic. And find the error code number. You can not use ping to verify the kind of error your have. You have to find a log from neither your Windows system or the internal log of the router. The log should have a code that enumerates the error type. ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/WNDR3300_SM_12Nov07.pdf Quote SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/Q... I honestly cannot figure out how this could be a problem on their end. This is the modem quite literally saying it cannot connect to the ISP network. (I guess is could be the cable wiring) The problem is you have to get to a level of support where the people actually know things, rather than just following a script. Otherwise, no matter what you say they are just going to be following the script before they give up.Ok, thanks guys. I'll look into reviewing the manual thing to find some kind of router logging. Although the NETGEAR tech support team told me to just use ping. The guy didn't sound like a NETGEAR expert so much as a 3rd party PC support salesman. Mastermind - I totally agree. We've called them 4 times. They sent out a guy who came out once and replaced the modem, some of the cable connections, and some of the cable he said was old. It was actually worse after he did that. Each time we call them we end up with a connect the modem directly to a PC and watch it for 4 hours. This may take a couple of days. I ran the first overnight with a direct connection from the PC to the Modem. There were 3 significant disconnects of 6.8, 3.8, and 1.8 minutes during which times the internet was unavailable. (The disconnects started at 11:54:56 PM, 2:45:25 AM, and 3:16:09 AM respectively.) There were no TCPIP type events in my event log. I did identify several event logs with source "DNS Client Event", but they didn't seem to correspond to the timeouts. The manual was a bust. There was no information about event logs for the router. I will contact NETGEAR again too, and see what they have to say. I'm still looking for help. What do the modem signals look like?
What was the model of the Modem? It is a Scientific Atlantic, -- Right? But what model number. Here's some of the info from the modems web page. I got the information on how to log into it from here: http://forums.cable-modem.net/index.php?action=vthread&forum=2&topic=1001 System Tab Name - SA DPC2203 Hardware Version - 1.1 Receive Power Level - 0.6 dBmV Transmit Power Level - 47.5 dBmV Cable Modem Status - Operational Vendor - Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. Boot Revision - 2.1.6lR7 Signal Tab Downstream Status - Operational Channel ID - 2 Downstream Frequency - 111000000 Hz Modulation - 256QAM Bit Rate - 42884296 bits/sec Power Level - 1.1 dBmV Signal to Noise Ratio - 38.1 dBmV Upstream Status - Operational Channel ID - 6 Upstream Frequency - 32000000 Hz Modulation - 64QAM Symbol Rate - 2560 Ksym/sec Power Level - 47.2 dBmV Let me know if you think the power signals are ok. Here is also a look at part of the configuration file for the modem, according to... Config Tab CM Configuration File NetworkAccessControl = 1 UpstreamServiceFlow = ServiceFlowReference = 1 QualityofServiceParameterSetType = 7 ServiceClassName = 'us_hsd_res' ServiceFlow SchedulingType = 2 UpstreamMaximumSustainedTrafficRate = 1024000 MaximumTrafficBurst = 6144 MaximumconcatenatedBurst = 6144 IPTypeofServiceOverwrite = 0x0000 DownstreamServiceFlow = ServiceFlowReference = 5 QualityofServiceParameterSetType = 7 ServiceClassName = 'ds_hsd_res' UpstreamMaximumSustainedTrafficRate = 15360000 MaximumTrafficBurst = 10000000 PrivacyEnable = 1 I don't know how to change the SETTINGS, but if it can help anyone determine anything.... Thanks in advance So - I don't know why no one has any other ideas. What is a good way to monitor an internet connection?Well, I called the Cable Company again and told them that I had bypassed my router and connected directly to the modem. They are sending a "Supervisor" out to see what is wrong with my connection. Thanks everyone. btw: I think it depends a lot on who answers the call. I'm still curious what else to use besides a ping test. I used the windows scripting host with the following network_ping.vbs file contents: Code: [Select]hostIp = wscript.arguments(0) logfilename = wscript.arguments(1) Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set Shell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell") ' OpenTextFile Method requires a Const value ' (Over)Write = 2 Append = 8 Set logfile = fso.OpenTextFile(logfilename, 8, True) shellstring = "%comspec% /c ping -t " & hostIP Set oExec = Shell.Exec(shellstring) wscript.echo "Ping Error log With Timestamp - Ctrl + C to halt" Do While oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream <> True pingline = Date & " " & Time & " " & oExec.StdOut.ReadLine logfile.WriteLine(pingline) If InStr(pingline, "TTL=") = 0 Then logfile.WriteLine("-----------------") End If Loop I run it at the command line like this: wscript network_ping.vbs google.com fileout.txt Then I review the txt file for disconnects. I can drop it into Excel and generate a graph of when I have disconnects. The left hand (vertical) scale is number of ping failures. It's about 5 seconds between ping failures. [recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin]You could do more research on this, but here is the nutshell. Ping is used simply to confirm the network in usable at the present moment. Constant pings annoy some server administrators, so they will stop responding to t a stream of pings. In short, pings are a form of intrusive testing. Administrators don't like it. So you don't want to do 24 hours of one ping per second o yahoo or somebody else. There are a number of software p[products to monitor actual network performance. Normally there are a few errors from time to time. These are corrected 'on the fly' and the user may not be aware of it. The monitor software collects the error reports and builds a report with a statistical study of failure rates and severity. Errors easily recovered are 'soft errors' and are a lessor component of the report. The reports must be based on real data transfers, and not just ping tests. Of course this is not new information. But many of us just don't work full-time in network management and are not aware of what tools are used. Here is a free program you might like to try: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Network-Monitoring/Server-Monitor.shtml Yeah, the name is Roadkil's Server Monitor, but it is a serious program. |
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