Internet Randomly Freezes, So Annoying!

teapole

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Nov 23, 2011
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For months now, I've been using a Linksys router and a default modem that I received from the cable company. I've actually had these two pieces for 5-7 years. They've always worked great, fast internet, fast gaming, etc... Recently, I've been getting disconnected from the internet randomly. My games will loose connection, I will get logged off for half a second and have to log back in. Generally the connection is great, sometimes it's painfully slow, and I'm forced to reset it, or it gets "limited connection"

For informational sake, I had the cable company come, and they ended up rewiring the whole house, the cable signal is awesome now, connection to internet is still unreliable.

I tried to break this up and figure out what the problem was. I acquired an older d-link router, and wired and wireless. I set those up in place of the Linksys. Now, they internet seems a bit faster when it's fast, but I still get randomly disconnected. I've tried new ethernet cords, they didn't solve the problem either. I'm using my motherboards ethernet connection, which is as Asrock Extreme 3, so that can't be the problem either.

Could it be the modem causing these problems? Please help!

Thanks
 

wacabletech

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Dec 15, 2012
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192.168.100.1

POST signal and log entries if available.

The modem could be having an issue, but you could also have goofed up and plugged the wrong power supply into it, its quite often I find customers decided to move things and swapped the router PSU with the modem one, unfortunately one device is going to be falling short on its power load when this happens usually. Lots of possibilities. Post the data requested and I will point out any glaring issues it provides, it may provide nothing though.
 

teapole

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Nov 23, 2011
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Don't know if this is right, but here are some logs from the modem link - its arris I guess. Thanks for helping me out!



DOCSIS(CM) Events
Date Time Event ID Event Level Description
10/9/2012 1:07 8000500 3 TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
10/9/2012 1:08 20000400 3 Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, but no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 timeout
10/9/2012 1:08 17000100 3 SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/QPSK symbol timing
11/6/2012 17:55 20000200 3 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
11/6/2012 19:23 21000200 3 REG RSP not received
11/13/2012 12:49 20000200 3 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
11/13/2012 12:49 18000200 3 UCD invalid or channel unusable
11/13/2012 12:49 17000400 3 SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to receive MAC SYNC frame within time-out period
11/15/2012 17:10 20000200 3 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
11/15/2012 17:10 18000200 3 UCD invalid or channel unusable
11/15/2012 17:10 17000400 3 SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to receive MAC SYNC frame within time-out period
12/10/2012 8:53 20000200 3 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
12/10/2012 14:38 20000400 3 Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, but no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 timeout
12/10/2012 14:38 17000100 3 SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/QPSK symbol timing
12/10/2012 21:50 20000200 3 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
12/10/2012 21:50 18000200 3 UCD invalid or channel unusable
12/10/2012 21:50 17000400 3 SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to receive MAC SYNC frame within time-out period
12/24/2012 3:15 20000200 3 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
***** 13000300 5 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response
12/27/2012 17:31 1040100 6 TLV-11 - unrecognized OID
 

wacabletech

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So the one T4 is not of real interest, the T3's might be related, not as often as I expected, but then there is forward error correction going on with data so its possible it is the issue. Can you post the signal levels too? same address should be tabs somewhere if its not right there on the same page, looking for signal levels in Db/mV and SNR or MER in dB.

Downstream should be between -8 and +10 with an SNR/MER of 34+ and the upstream should be between 35 and 54, with anything after 51 being a possibly iffy depending on the exact plant design of your provider. You willnot have an upstream SNR/MET, you have to have access to the cmts to get that data, and that generally requires you work for the company.

The most likely cause is a loose fitting, but not the only possible cause. try to tighten all cable fittings in the house [not just the modems] as tight as you can with your hands, if you use a pair of pliers or wrench just lightly tighten them as the ports break rather easily with any real leverage.

Something seems to be going on with upstream noise, possible even a little downstream issue, it again could be a million things, and you may want to just put in a service call to the cable company. In techie terms you have an impedance mismatch somewhere, in real world terms loose fitting or bad cable, or bad fitting though it may be out on the plant, it is most commonly inside the house.

That said if you want to test your internal network, you can open a command prompt and run
ping 192.168.100.1 -t
and leave it in the background when the problem starts in the game alt-tab over and check it, if you are missing packets from time outs, then its on your half [ethernet wires/wireless/modem port for ethernet], if not then its after the modem which means coax/modem is the issue.