Connection Drop

Gadgetman496

I have a scenario with a UPC\NTL connection & I'm at a loss as to what else I can try to identify what needs to be done to fix this most annoying issue.

The connection uses the Motorola Black modem and the white Netgear wireless router.

The house has three machines,

1. Desktop (Windows 7 wired connection)

2. Desktop (Windows XP Pro wireless connection)

3. Laptop (Windows 7 wireless connection)


The symptoms:

Fails to open Websites on a consistent basis regardless of Website chosen.

Using IE Explorer, 8 times out of ten it will return the "Oops couldn't connect" error.

Pretty much the same using FF except it returns the "Timed out" error.

It's the most annoying problem in so far as you just never know when it's going to play up, you could get a good day and have few failures but on other days it is almost unusable.

It's not specific to any particular type of site so when it takes its fancy it just fails to open Websites Approx 8 out of 10 attempts.

UPC\NTL were initially very helpful but are now saying there's nothing wrong with the line or equipment.

They then insisted it was a problem with the machines but that can't really be the case because one of the Desktops has been replaced & the other reinstalled from scratch. The Laptop has since been replaced also.

UPC\NTL eventually replaced both the modem and router but it has not made any difference. I factory reset the netgear router and thought it improved the situation as it seemed to work fine for 2 days but it's gone belly up yet again.

UPC\NTL at this stage are refusing to look at the situation any further even though their Techie knows there is an issue and has seen it first hand on a few occasions.

I'm at a loss now too, what else could it be? Could it be the line itself?

This is not mine, it's in a friends house, so I'm wondering if the fact he has the phone from UPC\NTL plus some piece of gear UPC\NTL installed to allow his eircom home phone watch system to be monitored might be causing some sort of conflict?

What is a customer supposed to do in a situation like this?

There is most definitely an issue and it's been ongoing for Approx six months now, I'm all out of ideas and UPC\NTL don't seem to want to know now either.

Has anyone got any realistic trouble shooting recommendations I could carry out to try and nail this issue?

Antar Bolaeisk

First thing I'd try would be to change your DNS to OpenDNS:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

This can be done on the adapter properties by modifying the IP settings and on the router itself.

Next, I'd cut the router out of the equation and test the modem using just one machine wired into the modem.

If you think the Eircom phonewatch might be causing a conflict is there any way you could disable it for a bit?

Also, what's the model number of the Netopia?

Dardania

agree that there may be a DNS issue, and it's no harm trying to rectify that

Another hypothesis is there's a cabling issue - could you or your friend have a look at http://192.168.100.1/ and see what the receive powr level & transmit power levels are? Also, what software revision on the modem.

Another no-harm-in-doing it thing to check is is there a firmware update for the netgear - go to http://192.168.0.1/ and update through there. While there you could configure the DNS

Gadgetman496

I should have mentioned Dardania & Antar Bolaeisk that I had removed the Netgear wireless router from the equation & connected one machine (Wired) directly to the UPC modem & it worked flawlessly for the five day duration of the test. It went belly up again a few hours after I reintroduced the factory reset wireless Netgear router.

Thanks for your suggestions and I will follow them up as soon as get over to his house.

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Gadgetman496

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

First thing I'd try would be to change your DNS to OpenDNS:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220



Also, what's the model number of the Netopia?

Would it be safer to use Level3's anycast DNS 4.2.2.1 & 4.2.2.2 Instead of Open DNS? as per THIS post

The service is with UPC not eircom so the router is a Netgear WGR614v6 Firmware Version V1.0.11_1.0.7

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Dardania

It appears that there's a newer firmware available from http://kb.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/2588 - maybe get that to eliminate firmware problems...

Regarding alternate DNS problems - I tend to use: http://www.dyndns.com/services/dynguide/ the free version, as it has been effective in stopping me or the other half from inadvertently navigating to dodgy websites... Personally I wouldn't imagine there's any problem with the DNS service provided by UPC

Gadgetman496

Dardania wrote: »

agree that there may be a DNS issue, and it's no harm trying to rectify that

Another hypothesis is there's a cabling issue - could you or your friend have a look at http://192.168.100.1/ and see what the receive powr level & transmit power levels are? Also, what software revision on the modem.

Another no-harm-in-doing it thing to check is is there a firmware update for the netgear - go to http://192.168.0.1/ and update through there. While there you could configure the DNS

I've just set the DNS on the Netgear router to open DNS so we'll see if that makes any difference.

I also checked 192.168.100.1 and these are the figures

Receive power = 3.7 dBmV

Transmit power = 44.2 dBmV

Are the above figures good or bad?

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bonzodog2

Did you try pinging a site with both its DNS name and numeric IP ? This would identify a DNS issue.

ping www.google.com
ping 173.194.37.104