Cable Internet issues. Need Help!

[jhouse0386]

So the past few weeks I have been having issues with my cable internet service. I get connection drops basically for about 5-10 seconds. Sometimes very frequently and sometimes I can go for hours without one. Some times and I stress SOME times the lights on the modem go out like its resetting itself. But most of the times all the lights stay on and it just lags out for 5-10 seconds. I monitor my ping while this goes on and the ping shoots up to 3000+ during this brief interruption in service. I can live with it when I play games on the computer because it just lags me out for 10 seconds but when I am playing like an EA sports game online on xbox it just disconnects me from the EA server because I am out of sync. It happened very frequently tonight so I called my ISP.


They ran tests reset the modem looked at graphs. Said my signal is excellent and there doesnt seem to be any issue with noise on the line. First guy says if the lights are staying on on the modem he thinks it might be the router. (I have a Belkin F5D7234-4 v5) I call again when it happens again about 20 minutes later and the second guy I talked to ran additional tests and said everything looks fine up and down the board. He pinged the modem itself directly and his first time he got an average of 900ms with a spike as high as 2500. He did this a couple more times and got averages more around 30ms. Seemed to me about spot on for what has been going on. Brief periods of this high ping spike interruption of service. He said because he pinged the modem directly and this was going on he suspects it could be my modem that is the problem. ( I have a SB5120) I got second hand from my friend. Has done me fine for about 1 to 1.5 years. Both the first and second guy I called checked my bandwidth and it was barely being used so it wasnt a bandwidth congestion issue either. So he said he put the modem on a 5 day probation watch period where they would monitor everything closely and call me back with the results.

So before I went to bed I download this ping montior software called EMCO Ping Monitor. I set it to ping yahoo.com while I was sleeping. It had 15 outages/ failed pings in a 5 hour period rangeing from 5-40 seconds. had an average of about 60ms with a high of like 1900.


My Signal to noise Ratio is 36 Db which he said is great.
My Downstream Power Level is -3 DBmv
My Upstream Power Level is 46 DBmv


Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[indyitguy]

Your ISP isn't going to see any issues because when they are looking at your service it is up and running just fine. I think really the only thing you can do is keep calling and complaining, they'll eventually replace the hardware. If it continues after the hardware swap then something is wrong with the line between your house and them. Could be a million things if it's the line.

 

[wacabletech]

So the past few weeks I have been having issues with my cable internet service. I get connection drops basically for about 5-10 seconds. Sometimes very frequently and sometimes I can go for hours without one. Some times and I stress SOME times the lights on the modem go out like its resetting itself. But most of the times all the lights stay on and it just lags out for 5-10 seconds. I monitor my ping while this goes on and the ping shoots up to 3000+ during this brief interruption in service. I can live with it when I play games on the computer because it just lags me out for 10 seconds but when I am playing like an EA sports game online on xbox it just disconnects me from the EA server because I am out of sync. It happened very frequently tonight so I called my ISP.


They ran tests reset the modem looked at graphs. Said my signal is excellent and there doesnt seem to be any issue with noise on the line. First guy says if the lights are staying on on the modem he thinks it might be the router. (I have a Belkin F5D7234-4 v5) I call again when it happens again about 20 minutes later and the second guy I talked to ran additional tests and said everything looks fine up and down the board. He pinged the modem itself directly and his first time he got an average of 900ms with a spike as high as 2500. He did this a couple more times and got averages more around 30ms. Seemed to me about spot on for what has been going on. Brief periods of this high ping spike interruption of service. He said because he pinged the modem directly and this was going on he suspects it could be my modem that is the problem. ( I have a SB5120) I got second hand from my friend. Has done me fine for about 1 to 1.5 years. Both the first and second guy I called checked my bandwidth and it was barely being used so it wasnt a bandwidth congestion issue either. So he said he put the modem on a 5 day probation watch period where they would monitor everything closely and call me back with the results.

So before I went to bed I download this ping montior software called EMCO Ping Monitor. I set it to ping yahoo.com while I was sleeping. It had 15 outages/ failed pings in a 5 hour period rangeing from 5-40 seconds. had an average of about 60ms with a high of like 1900.


My Signal to noise Ratio is 36 Db which he said is great.
My Downstream Power Level is -3 DBmv
My Upstream Power Level is 46 DBmv


Any insight would be appreciated.

So there are a few missing piece of data some can be retrieved from your modem which you apparently know how to get to already. There MAY be some error logs, what we are looking for its T3 or T4 errors, but not a few, a lot of them. I work in cable, I go this every day all day long. Its hard to tell you exactly what is going on without being at your house with a meter but some preliminary work can be determined from the data provided.

Who is your provider?

And if you care to call them ask for your Upstream SNR.

In the mean while, are you running wired or wireless? If you are running wireless you need to try and ping your modem overnight like so

go to a command prompt and type ping 192.168.100.1 -t and go to bed, when you get up hit ctrl+c and just read the status, do not bother scrolling up indefinitely. It will give yo a packet loss % as well as count of how many packets were lost, if its 0, your side is not the issue as far as the network goes, it may still be the coax wires and parts in your house though.

 

[jhouse0386]

So there are a few missing piece of data some can be retrieved from your modem which you apparently know how to get to already. There MAY be some error logs, what we are looking for its T3 or T4 errors, but not a few, a lot of them. I work in cable, I go this every day all day long. Its hard to tell you exactly what is going on without being at your house with a meter but some preliminary work can be determined from the data provided.

Who is your provider?

And if you care to call them ask for your Upstream SNR.

In the mean while, are you running wired or wireless? If you are running wireless you need to try and ping your modem overnight like so

go to a command prompt and type ping 192.168.100.1 -t and go to bed, when you get up hit ctrl+c and just read the status, do not bother scrolling up indefinitely. It will give yo a packet loss % as well as count of how many packets were lost, if its 0, your side is not the issue as far as the network goes, it may still be the coax wires and parts in your house though.

Lately the modem has been working fine.

They never did give me a call back after that probation period on the modem.

The T3/T4 errors they told me were like little to none. My computer is always wired in Cat 5.


Here is what I have noticed now though. Lately the modem is running fine internet is fine. But I have an xbox on wireless. and it drops connection or has poor connectivity over and over. When I plug it in via Cat 5 it works flawless. Heres the thing though When I have the PC on wireless same deal? Cant stay connected to the web browsing for more then a few minutes at a time. BUT I never lose connection to AIM. so I cant use any web pages but I can IM on AIM. wtf right? So my wireless on my router doesnt work now. I have reset to factory defaults and such the wireless on this thing just blows. cant use anything wireless now.

 

[indyitguy]

Did they give you a new wireless modem? Sorry, been away from the convo for a bit

 

[wacabletech]

Do you have wireless phones?
You know you can try changing the channel on the wireless router and see if that clears this up.

inSSIDer, google it, from metageeks, free, see what your wireless router spectrum looks like for other routers, it will not show you other wireless devices like phones without a $900 piece of hardware however.