[ripken204]

this has been really annoying lately. i have cable internet, im plugged in through a router connected to the modem thru and ethernet cord. and prolly for 2 sec every minute or so my signal will just completely drop and web pages wont load and downloads will pause, then 2sec later it will be fine again...

[kasandoro]

Call your cable provider's internet technical support. I had the exact same problem a while back, and I ended up calling them. It turns out that my cable modem was bad. They brought me another one, and the problem went away.

Your problem might be different, though...I've also heard of this happening with a loose/frayed/bad cable run or connection somewhere in the line (might not be in your house).

[ripken204]

well my cable modem is prolly 2 months old right now. and i know that the cable line going from my splitter to my modem is fine, the cable guy put that in. so if its the line then it would have to be from outside going to my splitter. i guess ill just call my isp asap. thx

[RogueSpear]

If the cable signal were actually dropping then your cable modem should lose sync. And then it takes like a half minute to resync (at least for me it does). Are the status lights on your cable modem all going out? From what I've read so far this could just as easily be an issue with either your router or your NIC.

[tain]

I've seen this type of thing disappear after a reboot of the modem, router and PC.

[b4uknowit]

bad cable????

[CoffeeFiend]

Like RogueSpear said, I don't think it's the cablemodem. Mine takes almost a minute to sync. I just can't see it take 2 seconds to fix itself (you could tell right away just looking at the LEDs too). Your ISP should be able to tell you they haven't noticed anything weird with your cable modem (unusual # of disconnections or anything like that). I've never seen a cable modem do this even once (including broken ones)

I'd be tempted to blame the router though. Especially if you're putting any kind of load on it. They overheat and do exactly that. Drop for short periods of time every now and then. The switch chips in most routers nowadays are plain ghetto (when that happens you get a "cable disconnected" trayicon and can't see your other PCs), and the router part also tends to overheat and cause problems. I had so much problems like that with every router I've tried, until the day I decided I had enough of it, and wasn't going to waste anymore time and money on routers (using software NAT/firewall instead now). Problems solved since then. But it could also be a bad NIC, driver or ethernet cable.

[ringfinger]

I too would lean towards the router, I also have cable and also have a similar problem with my connection dropping. Although mine drops completely until l reboot the router. Is the router firmware up to date?

This post has been edited by ringfinger: 16 December 2006 - 10:45 AM

[jcarle]

I'm surprised no one has asked this yet. What make and model is your router?

[CoffeeFiend]

jcarle, on Dec 16 2006, 02:18 PM, said:

I'm surprised no one has asked this yet. What make and model is your router?

I haven't bothered to ask, because I've had such issues with like a dozen different routers, DLink, Linksys 9yes, including the "good" WRT54G), Neatgear and others. Routers suck, period (except for ppl with "simple" needs). I've even put HSFs on some of them, and they still couldn't handle it. Yet, any software solution I've tried since then has worked perfectly, be it RRAS, Sieve, Winroute, m0n0wall, etc. No matter what router it is, I'd still think it's the culprit. Could be interesting to know though...

[jcarle]

crahak, on Dec 16 2006, 01:56 PM, said:

I haven't bothered to ask, because I've had such issues with like a dozen different routers, DLink, Linksys 9yes, including the "good" WRT54G), Neatgear and others. Routers suck, period (except for ppl with "simple" needs). I've even put HSFs on some of them, and they still couldn't handle it. Yet, any software solution I've tried since then has worked perfectly, be it RRAS, Sieve, Winroute, m0n0wall, etc. No matter what router it is, I'd still think it's the culprit. Could be interesting to know though...

I think you've just been unlucky. The most stable router I have seen to date (in the consumer ones) is indeed the WRT54G using the Thibor modified firmware. I personally have a WRT54GS which is even more stable. Version 5 of the WRT54G was a complete disaster. From what I hear, the WRT54GL, a re-launch of the pre-V5 WRT54G is actually quite good as well since they went back to a linux based OS (hence the L).

[CoffeeFiend]

jcarle, on Dec 16 2006, 03:49 PM, said:

I think you've just been unlucky.

Unlucky so many times with that many different routers? A dozen+ lemons in a row? Impossible.

I think you're just not putting enough stress on your connection. Lend me your WRT54G and it won't last 2 weeks Hey, I'm not paying extra for a "uncapped" connection (that's no faster) for nothing We're talking about 10GB/day here. Find me a cheap consumer router than can handle this year-round, and I'll show you a flying pig.

[jcarle]

crahak, on Dec 16 2006, 05:27 PM, said:

Unlucky so many times with that many different routers? A dozen+ lemons in a row? Impossible.

I think you're just not putting enough stress on your connection. Lend me your WRT54G and it won't last 2 weeks Hey, I'm not paying extra for a "uncapped" connection (that's no faster) for nothing We're talking about 10GB/day here. Find me a cheap consumer router than can handle this year-round, and I'll show you a flying pig.

I put my router and modem under heavy use daily, I seed multi-GB torrents and I'm constantly downloading multi-GB torrents. I easily hit double digit GB download bandwidth usage, usually downloading up to 25 torrents simultaneously with uTorrent set to a 100 connections per torrent and 1000 total connection limit. Not to mention that I have the half-open connections patch applied to my windows set to unlimited. So I'm fairly certain that my router is under heavy use... oh and lest I forget, my wife also runs through the router under heavy use through the wireless since she likes to leave her laptop on for days on end to download a multitude of things through Shareaza.

Perhaps it's the other way around, maybe I got lucky.

[DL.]

@ALL: Actually this discussion about routers and their performance is off-topic and won't help the topic starter in any way.

But I just had to add my opinion on the matter in response to this:

crahak, on Dec 16 2006, 11:27 PM, said:

I think you're just not putting enough stress on your connection. Lend me your WRT54G and it won't last 2 weeks :P Hey, I'm not paying extra for a "uncapped" connection (that's no faster) for nothing :lol: We're talking about 10GB/day here. Find me a cheap consumer router than can handle this year-round, and I'll show you a flying pig.

What kind of connection are you using?

I had a 100/100 Mbit fibre-lan connection (we really do have such fast connections in Sweden for regular consumers) both down- and uploading a lot more than that a day with my D-Link GamerLounge DGL-4100. I cannot remember having any problems with it, using it more or less full time for a year. My old Netgear RP614v2 needed reboots a few times a day under the same load.
The D-Link is almost three times as expensive as other consumer routers, but then again it really does work very well.

[CoffeeFiend]

jcarle, on Dec 16 2006, 07:15 PM, said:

So I'm fairly certain that my router is under heavy use...

Torrents alone is not too bad (no matter what the bandwidth is). Now keep doing that, but add ed2k+kad on top of that (without limiting connections to something too low; I've got an old 200GB'er just for ed2k temp files) and your router will fry pretty quickly! Most routers are nowhere near able to handle the simultaneous NAT sessions required either.

Add ngs, ftp/http downloads (and uploads) on top of that, several ports forwarded for various stuff, mirroring the odd website (winhttrack), VPNs, VOiP, IRC, the average web surfing and all... It'll work fine for a week, then you'll quickly start having to reset it almost everyday (cheap processor heats too much and crashes), until it becomes eventually useless (bugs too much, DHCP from your ISP stops working for no apparent reason, etc - even if you update firmware, reset defaults and all).

Honestly, I wish I had never even bothered. Anything software-based I've tried to replace 'em so far has worked great and usually has more features.

[jcarle]

DL., on Dec 16 2006, 06:32 PM, said:

@ALL: Actually this discussion about routers and their performance is off-topic and won't help the topic starter in any way.

Well, consider it more like "stretching" the topic since the problems he has could be related to his router.

[DL.]

@crahak: My router has been under quite heavy load with general web surfing or multiplayer gaming, many P2P progs, torrents and other down-/uploads all at the same time. No VoIP/IRC/VPN though, but still quite a lot...

@jcarle: Yeah, it's stretching the topic a bit. Sure his problem might be router related, but that can be easily tested by unplugging it and connecting directly to the cable modem.



Edit: Removed "quite" in the above response to jcarle. You're right TAiN I was using the wrong word, it's slightly (and not "quite a bit") OT.

This post has been edited by DL.: 17 December 2006 - 05:15 PM

[tain]

@DL: Slightly OT, but valuable discourse nonetheless. Not like we ran away with the thread and started telling dirty jokes.

I've had similar luck as jcarle: wrt*+thibor is good stuff. But I've had other, less awesome consumer routers go to their knees quickly as crahak noted. But I don't run the same traffic as either of them.

So....you know any dirty jokes? j/k

[cluberti]

Has anyone considered that this could be a simple autonegotiation problem between the PC and router/switch port? Forcing the NIC to 100Mb/Full duplex (or whatever the router is supposed to use) resolves a lot of issues like these. When the NIC autonegotiates (approximately once every few seconds to few minutes, btw, depending on the driver), all traffic will cease on the connection until finished. If you know your network's rated speed/duplex (and your NIC and router support said speed/duplex), there's no reason to leave autonegotiation enabled at all - force it.

[tain]

Good point. Could also be a loose connector or a short/break in his cabling somewhere. Those are a real pain to troubleshoot, but don't tend to be as intermittent as this.