• Shit cable internet giving us problemos
    14 replies, posted
So for the past... Almost year and a half now, our internet will just drop dead. No warning, no slowdown, nothing. Just cuts. When it cuts, every computer connected to the network including my mom's desktop computer which is hard wired, NOT connected wirelessly, loses it as well. The only way to fix it is to unplug both the modem, AND router, wait 15 seconds or so, and plug them back in and it works fine. If just the router is unplugged and nothing else, it won't fix. Same if the modem is unplugged but the router isn't. This all happens at random intervals, too. It could not happen for a week, then do it, and the next time only a few hours before it cuts out again. I thought this was a problem with our modem, so we called up our ISP and got a free replacement. Before we got it, it had been a few months before it was happening. When it was replaced, the problem started happening much more frequently. Note this didn't really start till we found out we had internet leeches (intense slowdown and activity lights going nuts without anyone downloading or really doing anything) and passworded the router. We REALLY don't want to restore the router to factory defaults, because this house has alot of computers and internet connected devices, it would be a major pain to put in a new password on all of them. I don't really know what model or anything our router and modem are... But all I know is this: Router - Some large, clunky, nearly 10 year old B-Type Linksys Modem - Some shit given to us by our ISP by the brand name of Scientific Atlanta.... Tiny little thing. Our ISP is Time Warner Cable. More northeastern based. Oh yeah that reminds me, we also get our digital cable from them. When the internet goes out, the digital cable is not affected whatsoever. What do? Edit: We also had some siding work done on the house by a lazy bunch of contractors that drilled a hole through our fucking phone line a few years ago and we've been living with a kludge'd line running through our back door since then, and I thought maybe they damaged the cable as well and it's just now showing up. Could that be a possibility?
When I read the title I thought garry made a thread explaining the shit connection FP
Oh so I'm not the only one. May be something to do with the "upgrade" they're gonna do soon. I can't [i]wait.[/i] *Obviousfreakinsarcasm*
I had this happen as well, but it was a problem with the junction box on the power lines (it was horribly corroded).
Well jeez, that'd be something we'd have to contact our power company about (or cable company)... DPNL has horrible customer service sometimes, and Time Warner isn't too great around here either. Oh joy...
What encryption is your router running? WEP or WPA? You should use WPA, since WEP is horribly vulnerable to password cracking. Also your password should not be a single word or a combination of words, it should at least be a word with a couple of numbers/random letters, optimally just a meaningless string of characters. What I'm getting at, is maybe someone cracked your router password and now are using it. It could also be the physical line, but usually its DSL you get those kinds of problems with since corroded lines don't usually create an easily tracable effect on phone/internet connections (with phones voices just sound lower-quality/slightly crackly, internet connections get slow, which could be numerous different problems), whereas with cable your picture gets terrible ghosting/color noise/cutting, since video data is a lot more sensitive to corruption and is harder to interpolate than audio data. Therefore people often call their cable company the moment they see such effects, whereas with telephones/routers people usually call their ISP who go through a long series of pointless troubleshooting tests, or tell them they'll get right on it.
WEP, a randomly generated one that's REALLY. FREAKING. LONG. Also we can't use WPA since we have a number of internet devices that can't support WPA. I had enough trouble getting my DSi to connect with the long-ass WEP password we have. The internet hasn't gotten slow ever again since we passworded it. Just the random cuts. Nor has our cable been effected at all. Other then weird lines on our TV when it's turned on, but that's more so from the cheap as hell HDMI cable it's using since it's not just on the channels, but the cable box guide, too. We don't get our phone from Time Warner so that shouldn't really count.
Get a new router. You think it'd be common sense if you replaced the modem and it still shits it's pants then you need to replace the thing it's connected to. If your tv works and your internet shits then yes replacing the modem was a good idea but you need to go to the next step and buy a new router. B is a piece of shit anyway everything you own will work with G. Everything that doesn't work with WPA you should upgrade or throw away imo. Welcome to the 21 century where you have to replace all your electronic devices every 5 years because it will stop working.
I've told my mother and she's heavily considering getting a new router, we REALLY need one. "Everything that doesn't work with WPA you should upgrade or throw away imo." Okay, I'll just throw away my DSi and Wii.... >_> Edit: My mother is one of those people who are REALLY FRIGGEN' stubborn about everything. She won't replace something till it's damn near completely unusable. *Cough* Like my first laptop... Jesus.
[QUOTE=Blarg190;25369698]Get a new router. You think it'd be common sense if you replaced the modem and it still shits it's pants then you need to replace the thing it's connected to. If your tv works and your internet shits then yes replacing the modem was a good idea but you need to go to the next step and buy a new router. B is a piece of shit anyway everything you own will work with G. Everything that doesn't work with WPA you should upgrade or throw away imo. Welcome to the 21 century where you have to replace all your electronic devices every 5 years because it will stop working.[/QUOTE] I totally agree. I didn't realize you said you had a modem hooked up to a router, I thought it was integrated. Wireless G should always be used, very very few devices do not have support for it, the original DS and most phones even have support for it. Another thing to do is try changing the "channel" your wireless is broadcasted on, (between 1 and 11), you can find the relevant setting in the routers settings page.
[QUOTE=Blarg190;25369698] Everything that doesn't work with WPA you should upgrade or throw away imo.[/QUOTE] So basically you're telling the OP to throw away his DSi and his Wii because they don't support WPA. Potential for leechers outweighs the $400+ that you spent on the DSi/Wii. This makes perfect sense.
Well... Okay, I guess it is just the router, then. But it doesn't make much sense to me since my mom's desktop is not connected to the router at all, really, just the modem, and it still loses internet like everything else. Might I note that when it cuts, it will still send packets/data/whatever but never receive anything back. But then again those just might be bits of info going over the network... Edit: I'll leave the thread open for further suggestions, and if this falls off the page or whatever, I'll bump it up with new info if we do, end up getting a new router. Which I hope happens, it might increase the freaking 300KB/s download speed I have... Supposed to have a LOT more then that...
[QUOTE=SuperDuperScoot;25373189]I've told my mother and she's heavily considering getting a new router, we REALLY need one. "Everything that doesn't work with WPA you should upgrade or throw away imo." Okay, I'll just throw away my DSi and Wii.... >_> Edit: My mother is one of those people who are REALLY FRIGGEN' stubborn about everything. She won't replace something till it's damn near completely unusable. *Cough* Like my first laptop... Jesus.[/QUOTE] The wii and dsi both support WPA security I dunno where you got that info from. [url]http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wii/en_na/onlineWirelessRouterWEPWPA.jsp[/url] Wii [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DSi#Internet_connectivity[/url] Dsi
Doesn't work for me or one of my friends. It just refuses to accept it. Besides no one in this neighborhood is smart enough to know how to crack a WEP password. Our signal doesn't go very far at all, won't even reach the house across the street so we figured the new neighbor was using it, and.. Well, I don't think old ladies know how to hack like that... Because we didn't have any leech problems since.
[QUOTE=SuperDuperScoot;25391648]Doesn't work for me or one of my friends. It just refuses to accept it. Besides no one in this neighborhood is smart enough to know how to crack a WEP password. Our signal doesn't go very far at all, won't even reach the house across the street so we figured the new neighbor was using it, and.. Well, I don't think old ladies know how to hack like that... Because we didn't have any leech problems since.[/QUOTE] Switching to WPA isn't a huge deal if you aren't living right in the middle of the downtown part of some huge city, if WEP is the only thing that works it should be fine. It's just preferable to use WPA when possible just to be sure.
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