Modem resetting issues

[skyblueoz]

We live in coventry and are with VM, formerly ntl. And we have a silver ntl:home modem.

The majority of the time, this connection is used by myself for gaming with a xbox 360, but then if we want to use the pc we reboot the modem and connect that instead. Previously that all worked fine, but now problems have been arising.

When I reboot the modem, instead of the SYNC and RDY lights being on, I get the RDY light flashing fast and the D/S light flashing slower and it takes several attempts to get the modem to reboot properly. Even more recently though I have found that when starting my Xbox in the morning, I have no connection and when I check the modem, I get the same sequence of lights. This is without anyone touching the modem in anyway. Last week I actuall lost my connection at 01:30 while I was still playing and everyone else was in bed. (The modem is in a seperate room and could not have been knocked in any way.)

I also believe that are internet connection is a lot slower than before. Whilst using my xbox, navigating the menu blades can be slow or freeze. (this does not happen when not connected to the servers.) and also our internet browsing seems to have slowed right down. Sometimes pictures and whole pages will freeze or take forever to load.

I think the speed is the lowest available, 1mb?, as my parents who pay the bill do not use the net very much and don't want to pay a fortune!

Being a total noob with all this technical stuff, I would appreciate any help/advice on what is happening and what can be done about it.

Thanks in advance,

Sky.

[what?]

from what uv said i would suspect an outage.

if the lights are changing it is going to be a failt from vm's end.
you are best to phone the status line firstly (the number will be on your bills and if nothing there wait til the connection drops again and call them up

it's a lot easier to see where the fault is when its actually down.

slowest speed is 2mb unless ur using your tv's set top box for connection.

[skyblueoz]

I used speedtest.net to check my connection and it said 516k download and 367k upload. I have no idea how accurate these sites are, but that is nowhere near 2meg.

I did also think about outages causing the issue. But as they occur in the early hours, I won't be sat by the phone waiting to ring VM and I have no idea how long the last for either. If it was an outage though, wouldn't the modem just reboot itself to the normal standby status? Or would that be what would happen with a power outage?

As I said I'm not the most technical person, so if any of my points are rubbish, just say!

Any other suggestions or even just to confirm what the above poster said, would be great.

Thanks.

[andyfras]

I had a similar problem with my modem.

See my post halfway down the page:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/41884-ntl-cable-modem-problems.html#post34160943

The thing I noticed was a very poor signal/noise ratio before replacing the capacitors.

If your modem is a few years old, it could be the same thing. Perhaps you could request a replacement.

[what?]

no speed test site is reliable, use gamefiles.virginmedia.com

download 2 files simultaneously and add the speeds
gives you a better indication of the actual speeds your getting

if the lights are changing on the modem from what tehy should be, then it is a problem on the vm end. if you're there, even if it is 1am, and the conn goes, call the tech support line. open 24/7