Cable internet question

[pagerbear]

Every now and then I find that my cable internet connection won't work. My cable TV is just fine. If, after waiting what seems like hours on hold for tech support, I get someone who knows what s/he is doing, and said representative does a diagnostic test, it looks like my modem is offline. In these cases I have not touched my modem or anything else. In fact, I never touch my modem or anything else. Just as mysteriously, my connection will be back up within a few hours.

This has been happening for about a month, and it's making me crazy. I don't think it's anything inside--modem or connection--because most of the time it's OK, and my experience as an electronics consumer suggests once an electronic component is broken it's not going to get un-broken without human intervention.

Needless to say, no one will admit that anything is happening with the lines. I refuse to have a service call--I am not going to waste a personal day waiting for someone to come and tell me there's nothing wrong with my equipment or connection. (The last time something like this happened--in another apartment with different cable company--I had a service guy come. He replaced a good black calbe with a white cable and told me the problem was with the cable company and charged me for the call.) If they want to give me a new modem to try out, I can take the old one to the office at my convenience.

Suggestions? Comments?

[OKNancy]

1. This happened to me

Here is what I did.
My first problem was with the co-axial cable ( the black one with the pin) It, over time would come loose. Check it on the modem and also at the wall.

Have you ever run ipconfig? That will fix it sometimes.

[pagerbear]

5. A loose cable caused an on-again off-again connection?

[RC]

7. Well, yeah.

You are dealing with high radio frequencies here. A loose cable can act as a filter and weaken or eliminate some frequencies.

[pagerbear]

9. If it's not moving and not being touched

...why would the connection be inconsistent?

[PDittie]

2. I finally cancelled Roadrunner because of this

It was off and on (mostly off) for two weeks before the tech came out and told me it was the unit's switch (I live in a condo).

Unit management, of course, pointed the finger at Time Warner.

Went to SBC Global and never looked back.

[kcwayne]

3. There are a number of steps you can try

1) Go to a command prompt and run ipconfig. This will show whether you have a valid IP address. If it shows you have one, run

ipconfig /renew

This will release the address and try to get another one. If it is successful, your cable modem is working. If your modem is working, and you still cannot connect to the Internet, the problem is with your service provider.

2) Look at the led lights on the cable modem. On my RCA modem, there are a series of lights that flash in a sequence when the modem is going through its connection process. I can tell from this whether there is a problem with connecting to the service provider or with the computer. Consult the documentation on the modem (you can usually download this from the manufacturer's web site.

3) The modem will typically have an internal diagnostic you can review by type an address into your browser. It will typically be an address like: http://192.168.1.1. Again, consult your modem documentation.

[Bunny]

4. This is very elementary, but it often works for me when

nothing else makes sense: turn computer off, unplug modem, wait about 20-30 seconds, plug the modem back in, turn computer on.

If that doesn't work, feel free to whack everything once with a hammer! ;)

[Radius]

8. That works well

Those modems clear their stored settings and get and "image" from a tftp server. 30 seconds is a good time.

Do you have a router connected? If not I strongly suggest getting a router with a built in firewall. Linksys makes them. Makes your PC less of a target.

There is tons of info out there on tricking them and loading your own tftp image and opening your up and down to huge numbers. Bad idea but if you like hacking stuff cable modems are great fun.

[TexasProgresive]

6. How's about some more info

Most of these devices (cable and ADSL modems) have indicator lights for POWER, CABLE (link to the cable company) PC LINK (link to your computer), DATA and some have TEST. Are these all normal when you are experiencing trouble? If so when you attempt to access the NET do you see the DATA LED flashing? Do you have access to another PC to eliminate the possiblity that something in your PC is the trouble?

Check all connections first, recycle power on the modem, restart the PC (this will also refresh the dynamic address in the PC the same as doing IPCONFIG.

BTW: the modem is software driven and so it can be experiencing problems due to glitches that cause it to loose sanity. If power reset clears the problem temporarily then replace the modem.

[pagerbear]

10. Answers to questions

1. When the problem occurs, the power light is on, the PC light is on, the cable light is either blinking (it's blunk fast and slow) or off.

2. I've tried turning everything off, unplugging the modem, waiting, reconnecting, rebooting. Doesn't work.

3. It's not connected to a router. I have one and was going to set up a wireless home network, but haven't done anything with it since this has been going on.

[TexasProgresive]

14. If the cable light is blinking

the trouble is a loss of sync between the modem at the other end. The cable company is doing a reset on both modems which is clearing the trouble temporarily.

3 possible causes: 1) Far end modem. 2) Cable connection to your modem. 3) Your modem. My guess is that it is the far end modem.

BTW- This same trouble occurs with ADSL. I work on these type troubles weekly for Verizon. ecause of your question I did a little research on cable modem technology and it is basically the same as ADSL but at different frequencies. Both use line sharing-broadband with cable TV or broadband with POTS (plain old telephone service).

I'm not going to tell you to change to ADSL. My advice is for you to bite the bullet and dive back into voice mail hell at the cable company and insist that they find the problem. Just make sure you have done your part in checking out what is in your control.

[KG]

11. go DSL

cable sucks. :)

[Radius]

12. DSL

is dedicated switched bandwidth (good)
But subject to voice interference.(bad)

They are a wash for me.

Cable is available where I am with 6mb down and 2 up. Even though it is a shared line I have had 0 problems with it.

An 0C-12 running in to a cisco 7600 router connected to my pc with shotgunned 10 gbs FCAs would be best..Like a black hole on the internet.

[Cybergata]

13. I use to have this problem...

all the time until I bought my own modem. I've had it happen for the first time on my new modem. The problem is easy to solve. Just unplug the modem then plug it in again to reset. It might help to unplug, reboot, then plug the modem in again.

[RollergirlVT]

15. two things

first, sometimes it just appears to be offline, try changing pages until one comes up. Second, just unplug your modem for a minute or two. That usually fixes the problem. If you have a router (for multiple computers) you can unplug that for a moment it will almost always work fine afterward. Most often the problem can be fixed faster by these methods than waiting for tech help.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. The old "unplug" trick works almost all the time

:-)

[Mizmoon]

17. Too many people on your line

We were the first cable modem subscribers in our neighborhood. When we were alone, the thing BLAZED. Now I get those intermittent outages that make me want to scream (it's always when I'm FTPing a file or trying to telnet somewhere). I called and got the same "it's all fine on our end" BS. FInally, a buddy who works at the provider told us the secret truth ... as subscribers are added, the service is split among more households. When enough people complain, they make a change at the pole (don't quite know what the change is - that's out of my area of knowledge) and it might be fixed. Or it might not.

If it keeps happening I'm going to cancel the damn thing because I can't work like this, man.