very strange problems with router/cable modem.

[Steve knight]

This problem has been going on for several years but it is getting worse. In this comcast has replaced the router and the splitters.
We have gone through several routers in this time. We would get about 6 months from one then there would be connection issues. Wireless would be a problem then the direct connection.
Right now we have three different computers all three are plugged in to the router and have the wireless on sometimes.
I have had linksys brand and netgear high and low end.
The last several months the same thing happens. The wireless gets bad or seems to only work sometimes. This last time if I was connected at all it would be at 10k or less. The computers are less then 10 feet away in a couple of cases. But for the most part all the laptops are plugged in.
what happens is first a page may not load or take awhile to get started then it loads fast. You may need to click two or three times to get it to load. Email sending when things are good takes a second or two. Now it can take several turning the modem/rotuer off and on may fix it for a bit but after awhile it is back to the same thing.
After awhile it just gets worse where you even loose the wired connection. Rebooting the computer or disabling the connection and turning it back on works for a bit.
After awhile it just gets worse.
This has happened to several linksys routers and a few other brands. I just got a used basic linksys router without wireless and we got 4 days out of it before it started up.
Comcast says the modem is fine when they check it when you call.
But I bet in the last year I have bought atleast 4 routers. The more expensive linksys lasted the longest but ants built a nest in it (G)
I don't think it is the cables since all of the computers are effected but could it be?

[Clint Jones]

Are you using DSL?

[Steve knight]

cable comcast cable.

[glenn bradley]

Like this is a help . . . but, I've been running the same cheap-o $40 D-link for years. I strongly doubt that your equipment is just dying on you unless it is in a terrible environment. When there is a failure, plug directly into the comcast cable modem. If the behavior remains, its their stuff and they should fix it.

I have Time Warner as cable or satelite is the only option for me. TW is down way more than they should be. If my network at work was this bad, I'd be out of a job. I have beaten them into submission and get the $49 internet package for $19.99. I also get a days credit (big deal) whenever I coll in becasue they are down.

So, the service stinks, but at least it's cheap. Since I have no other option, I'll have to be OK with it ;-)

[David Sallee]

We were having just about the exact same problem you are having....

When we moved in where we are living now, we decided to try cable for our internet because "everyone" said it was faster than DSL. Before we moved we were on DSL through the phone company, it was OK ...

Because everyone said cable was faster, we figured we would give it a go...

Well, the first month or so went GREAT... then it gradually got slower and slower until it just would go at all... after numerous calls to the cable company, they kept saying that everything "looked" ok??? They even sent a tech out to check everything (during the DAY)....

Well, we would ALWAYS get knocked off the net at pretty much the same time every night on week nights 7pm to 11pm but at 2am through 5pm it would be fine??? and pretty much all the time on weekends we couldn't hardly browse at all ... :mad:

I checked my connection speed during these (slow) times and I was at a BLAZING speed of 7 to 15kbs!!! (SLOWER THAN DIALUP!!!)

After some research we found out that with cable internet, we "share" connection with pretty much 1/2 of our town so when people got off work and kids out of school... it would bog down the connection because "CABLE IS SHARED!" the more they browse, the slower it would go...

Hey, at 3am it was really blazing at over 950Mbps at times !! (FASTER than DSL!!!)

EVERYTHING is still the same EXCEPT we switched back to DSL, (computers and router have not changed) and we haven't had a bit of a slow down sense we switched back 9 months ago!

Some may have good results with cable... but this was our experience!

Hope this may help in some way...
Dave

[Steve knight]

it's not speed so much when it works it's fast. though that gets worse too. but it's more the connection thats bad. I plugged directly to the modem and it is fine. but I have not used it for days on end that way everyone would scream at me :)
its like the modem screws up the router or something.

[Greg Peterson]

Steve,

Are you able to log into your router? If so, look to see if it is connected to the Comcast network. I have had routers that would frequently lose their connection to the the internet. I would have to reconnect or reboot the router. It was a nuisance to say the least.

Try that and get back to us.

[Kevin Arceneaux]

David, they need to add nodes.

I have Cox Cable, contrary to what Bellsouth says, DSL is not available. We have the top package, my wife needs it for work.

We were having the same problem. After one call, I got a second IP, at their recommendation, and things picked up a bit. But it was no where near what we should have been getting. SO another call, Cox is real good about keeping their times - they are under pressure from the City's fiber optics to the house, and the fellow shows up and checks everything and cannot find a bad connect, etc. He goes, I have one more test I want to run and he does. The impedance on the line was wayyy out of spec. He put a splitter on it and whoooosh, off to the races we go.

[Roger Jensen]

If it is a hardware problem, the first thing you need to do is isolate the problem between the cable modem and (wireless) router.

When the system gets slow or non functioning, pull the power plug on the router, but leave the modem powered up. After about a minute the pcs will re-acquire an IP address and you should be good to go.

If it doesn't solve the problem, try rebooting your modem instead. However, you may have to reboot the router after the modem comes up, it depends how it does the handshake between the router and modem.

My problem was in the router. Every 1-2 days (it appeared to be load related) the system got very slow. My solution was to convert the firmware to an open source system, DD-WRT. I'm just guessing, but I suspect this may be too far into geekdom for you. If so, I suggest you go to the Linksys site and download the latest firrmware from them. Depending on when you bought your router you may be a few versions behind. Do you know how to administer your router via a web browser?

A low tech solution may be to simply restart your router every morning/evening before you start work on the pc.

Let me know if there is anything else I can provide.

Roger

[Steve knight]

Steve,

Are you able to log into your router? If so, look to see if it is connected to the Comcast network. I have had routers that would frequently lose their connection to the the internet. I would have to reconnect or reboot the router. It was a nuisance to say the least.

Try that and get back to us.
I can log into it just fine. but thats what it's like you have to click the link several times to get it to work and such. but it seems to be getting worse the routers don't last as long. this used one went 4 days before it started doing the same thing as the last one that is only two months or so old.
the router really does not say what it is connected too. there are not settings needed to get on comcast here. the ip address is a auto one.

[Mike Henderson]

If it works when you plug directly into the modem, your cable connection is okay. I would suspect environmental problems if you continue to have failures of the router. Check to see that the router is not getting too hot (you've probably already done that).

The only other thing I can think of is that one of your Ethernet connections is out of spec and putting incorrect voltages on the Ethernet cable (low probability).

You can buy non-wireless routers pretty cheap now. Get one and connect it between one of your computers and the "good" router. If it fails, it's the computer that's feeding it that's bad. If it doesn't fail, it's either the other computer, or some other environmental problem.

Good luck. Let us know what you find.

Mike

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,
Correct me if I'm interpreting this wrong.

You have the cable coming into a cable modem, then going into a router. Your PC's - both wired and wireless connect to the router.
Your cable modem snags a DHCP address from Comcast on the WAN side.
It hands out DHCP address on the LAN side.
The router snags a DHCP address from the cable modem - it's WAN side.
The router hands out DHCP addresses to the wired and wireless PC's on it's LAN side.

Does this sound right?
FWIW - this is a typical setup for probably 99% of home networks - if that helps any.

Right off the bat, I'm going to suggest something based on the assumption you setup is typical.

With everything plugged in normally, go to start-> run -> and type cmd.
That opens a DOS window.
Type in ipconfig and hit enter.
Write down what it says.

eg. here's mine:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : neo.rr.com
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.153
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1

Next - plug a PC directly into the cable modem. Power down everything. Power on the cable modem first. Count to 25 and then power on the PC connected to it.
Repeat the above (start ->run->cmd-> ipconfig and write down the values.

Now - compare the first three octets of the IP Address. They should differ at the third octet - the 2 in my case
- 192. The first octet can be the same. 168. the second octet can be the same. The third 2. umust be different. The fourth octet 153. can be any value from 1 to 254, provided it's different than the Default Gateway listed.

Next, compare the other two numbers - the Subnet Mask and Default Gateway. The subnet mask should be 255.255.255.0 on both.

The Default Gateway may or may not be the same.

I strongly suspect the Default Gateway is going to be:
192.168.1.254 when everything is plugged in as normal.
192.168.1.1 when you plug directly into the cable modem.

By Default, most consumer grade appliances (Netgear, Linksys, D-link, etc.) come semi configured with a 192.168.1.X DHCP address/server for convenient end user setup. Cable providers, even in a business class setup, also use consumer appliances.(Slipstream, Toshiba, etc.).
As a result, unless you manually go in and reconfigure your router with a different subnet, you end up doing "local routing" with a different cost assigned to the two different Default Gateways.

If the above is the case, then the fix is simple. All that's needed is to reconfigure the router to use a different subnet.

[Stephen Beckham]

Steve,

Do you have any buddies close by that use a similar setup? If so - try to eliminate that it's just the router by taking a bad one over and letting them set it up to test it. Or take it to a best buy or rat-shack to see if they'll run it on their local network to try it out. If they get the same results, you're right it's the router. If not - then it's some kind of interferance.

Not sure if you checked the location of the router - I had mine too close to the breaker box and it seemed to cause issues. I've also hear that having them close to microwaves may cause issues (I believe that's a wive's tale because the freqs are way different). Also cordless phones base stations or stereo's that have lots of amperage - another one is dirty screens that put out a lot of garbage.

The only other thing that I could imagine - would be firewall settings. Are you using Norton's? I had a situation where every week or so I had to turn off my Nortons Firewall and re-enable it. I would start to have very similar issues as you and spend many phone calls on with the cable company. Boy did I feel silly. Found out that Norton's starts building a log of what is good vs bad. The longer the log ran, the longer it took to review it as I tried to surf. It was also conflicting with Windows XP firewall. Try disabling them to see if you can work it - don't leave them off, if it fixes the problem, find out what causing that versus just leaving them off.

Good luck...

[Doug Shepard]

I had some somewhat similar problems with Comcast cable connections and after getting splitters replaced a couple of times by them it turned out to be primarily the leg of the hookup that was being used for the cable modem. Every time it runs through a splitter it loses something like 3dB of signal. The TV works fine with the signal drop but things start getting real flaky with the cable modem. The box on the outside of your house probably has 3 or 4 connections on it, but inside it's essentially 1 splitter, one side of which goes to a 2nd splitter, and one leg of that goes to yet another splitter, etc., etc. Make sure where the cable comes into the house that whatever path is feeding the cable modem is coming off the hottest signal on the 1st connection.

[Neal Clayton]

We were having just about the exact same problem you are having....

When we moved in where we are living now, we decided to try cable for our internet because "everyone" said it was faster than DSL. Before we moved we were on DSL through the phone company, it was OK ...

Because everyone said cable was faster, we figured we would give it a go...

Well, the first month or so went GREAT... then it gradually got slower and slower until it just would go at all... after numerous calls to the cable company, they kept saying that everything "looked" ok??? They even sent a tech out to check everything (during the DAY)....

Well, we would ALWAYS get knocked off the net at pretty much the same time every night on week nights 7pm to 11pm but at 2am through 5pm it would be fine??? and pretty much all the time on weekends we couldn't hardly browse at all ... :mad:

I checked my connection speed during these (slow) times and I was at a BLAZING speed of 7 to 15kbs!!! (SLOWER THAN DIALUP!!!)

After some research we found out that with cable internet, we "share" connection with pretty much 1/2 of our town so when people got off work and kids out of school... it would bog down the connection because "CABLE IS SHARED!" the more they browse, the slower it would go...

Hey, at 3am it was really blazing at over 950Mbps at times !! (FASTER than DSL!!!)

EVERYTHING is still the same EXCEPT we switched back to DSL, (computers and router have not changed) and we haven't had a bit of a slow down sense we switched back 9 months ago!

Some may have good results with cable... but this was our experience!

Hope this may help in some way...
Dave

i had DSL when it first started coming out in arkansas around 2000-20001, moved in 2004 and had to switch to cable due to not having DSL where i lived, and last year bought an old house and moved again to little rock and got DSL again.

my comparison with the two is easily summed up...

when there's a network problem and you lose internet connectivity, you call the ISP and they do one of two things...

a) the cable company takes your info and gives you alot of excuses that basically amount to "no one who can fix that is still here so it'll take awhile, probably tomorow morning"

b) the phone company will send a guy in a truck come rain snow or shine.

the story i always tell people is when i had DSL in 2001 or so the guy who lived next to the switch station in the town i was in was putting slab down for a shed in his back yard and dug through a fiber line with his bobcat. killed DSL for about half the town, albeit a small town. when i drove by there on the way to the grocery store at 9 pm that night, there's a ATT (SBC at that time) truck out there with a spotlight on the hole patching up the line in the dark.

would the cable company do that for residential customers before the next morning? not likely..

now i won't disagree with the folks who claim that ATT is the stereotypical huge evil monopoly that has its own interests at heart, but the bottom line is all of this internet stuff works so well because of ATT and Sprint, they're providing the vast majority of the bandwidth that your ISPs use. so i'll stick with the phone company for my internet access.

[Mike Henderson]

i had DSL when it first started coming out in arkansas around 2000-20001, moved in 2004 and had to switch to cable due to not having DSL where i lived, and last year bought an old house and moved again to little rock and got DSL again.

my comparison with the two is easily summed up...

when there's a network problem and you lose internet connectivity, you call the ISP and they do one of two things...

a) the cable company takes your info and gives you alot of excuses that basically amount to "no one who can fix that is still here so it'll take awhile, probably tomorow morning"

b) the phone company will send a guy in a truck come rain snow or shine.

the story i always tell people is when i had DSL in 2001 or so the guy who lived next to the switch station in the town i was in was putting slab down for a shed in his back yard and dug through a fiber line with his bobcat. killed DSL for about half the town, albeit a small town. when i drove by there on the way to the grocery store at 9 pm that night, there's a ATT (SBC at that time) truck out there with a spotlight on the hole patching up the line in the dark.

would the cable company do that for residential customers before the next morning? not likely..

now i won't disagree with the folks who claim that ATT is the stereotypical huge evil monopoly that has its own interests at heart, but the bottom line is all of this internet stuff works so well because of ATT and Sprint, they're providing the vast majority of the bandwidth that your ISPs use. so i'll stick with the phone company for my internet access.
I've had Cox cable for many years and during that time, I've had a few problems. Cox always responded quickly and agressively to find the problem and fix it.

The biggest difference I've seen is that cable has more points of failure that affect a large number of people. For example, if they have a problem on the head end of a cable line, it affects eveyone on that cable leg. The phone company seems to not have as many situations like that.

But for at least one cable company - Cox Cable in southern California - service is reliable, fast, and if you do have problems, they get on it quickly.

Mike

[James Jaragosky]

I had the same problem as you mention.
and it didn't start until Comcast bought out our local provider (Insight). about that same time I got a new vista machine.
when I first hooked up it worked fine put after a reboot of the vista machine I couldn't get any of my computers back on line without a modem/router reboot then I couldn't get my vista machine to work with the router but my 2 xp machines had no problem.
after many hours on hold and many minutes with often rude and under trained Comcast help, I decided to just purchase a new wireless N router ( I did this because my vista machine could hook up to my neighbours unsecure connection no problem, just not mine)
This cured all my vista / router Ills. doing Google searches I found Comcast has numerous people with this problem and as far as I can tell most are with vista based machines. also vista has issues with some Linksys routers
let us know what you find out.

[Neal Clayton]

I've had Cox cable for many years and during that time, I've had a few problems. Cox always responded quickly and agressively to find the problem and fix it.

The biggest difference I've seen is that cable has more points of failure that affect a large number of people. For example, if they have a problem on the head end of a cable line, it affects eveyone on that cable leg. The phone company seems to not have as many situations like that.

But for at least one cable company - Cox Cable in southern California - service is reliable, fast, and if you do have problems, they get on it quickly.

Mike


my problems here were with cox. they're not nearly as reliable here as they are for you apparently. anything after 5pm was ignored til the next day.

[Bryan Rocker]

I had cox for years in Oklahoma and they were reliable and almost always fixed the problem. I know have RR and except for every once in a while it is rock solid to. One quick note for all wireless users. If you have a 2.4 giga hertz cordless phone that could be part of your problem. As I understand it 2.4 is the same frequency the wireless devices communicate on. After we went to the 5.2 giga hertz phones the wireless worked better. I am still using the D-Link router with wireless for over 5 years with no issues.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

When ever Comcast is working on the lines in my daughter's area her Comcast router goes on the Fritz and needs to be re booted.