Temperamental Service with router
 

Hi.

I hope that maybe someone on the forum can shed a bit of light on my problem.

We've been with NTL for at least 5 years now. I installed a wireless network in the house about 3 years ago and up until about 6 months ago the service was fine but then it was dropping out several times a day, sometimes so badly that the Internet was down for the whole day.

NTL's support were hopeless. They kept blaming the router despite 2 years of flawless operation. Still, I was going to upgrade to a 802.11g router anyway, so replaced by trusty Linksys with a Netgear WGR614. The service is as bad as ever and NTL are still blaming the router as the problem, adamant that their service is perfectly fine.

We did have a technician out to us about 9 months ago who said the signal to our house was very weak and boosted it. This solved the TV problems but not the broadband issues.

Does anyone why this should be happening? We have had the same NTL modem since we installed the service 5 years ago. Its the small grey box with the green lights. They are so unwilling to replace that with the more updated version I've seen in friends' houses (blue transparent model) and they all have no problems with wireless networks.

Any help or information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Crisko.

Re: Temperamental Service with router
 

Best thing you can do is direct connect a PC to the modem for troubleshooting, prove one way or another if it's an NTL issue or network issue. Then you can either go back to NTL and make them look into it or you can focus your efforts in the right place.

Re: Temperamental Service with router
 

Unfortunately, I've done that 3 times now. We've disconnected the router and had the PC and modem linked together for 3 days in a row. The service still drops but you have to hear the tech support on the phone to actually believe it. They must be trained in denial. They simply pass the blame off the router and on to the PC. They reckon that our PC has a virus on it, disrupting the connection. It's woeful customer service!

Hopefully we can change to ADSL very soon. I'm sick to death of NTL.

Re: Temperamental Service with router
 

Must be ntl, if the direct connection, minus router, still has problems.


What speed are you on? Perhaps your modem is too old to handle it?

Re: Temperamental Service with router
 

When you call ntl, do not mention the word router. That just immediately sends them into "it's not us it's you" mode. Make sure of course that the modem is connected only to one PC when you call, and ideally for a few hours before hand.

Can you identify the exact model of your modem. Is there a label on it anywhere? That might help troubleshoot.

I suspect it isn't anything to do with your network, but presumably you have done the obvious in checking for virus, spyware and suchlike that could create rogue traffic. Are you trying to do any heavy uploading or downloading - P2P and stuff?

Re: Temperamental Service with router
 

sounds like a NTL 100 to me..do the following when you connected the modem straight to the pc.

go to start --> Run --> type in "cmd" (without the " "'s) then in the dos prompt type in "ping 192.168.100.1 -t -w 10" this will ping the modem continually until you stop it with CTRL + C, let this test run for say 1 hour.

This should see if I'm correct quite a few packets lost (time out) for roughly 30 hits, then come up, then 30 hits time out again.

If that is the case call NTL and say that your modem is faulty.

it should look like this picture

Re: Temperamental Service with router
 

Hi.

Sorry for the late reply. I do make sure I never mention the router. Unfortunately the account is in my dad's name so he would tend to mention it despite me warning him not to or they'll just pass the buck again.

Thanks for the idea DocDutch. I'm going to try that now. Hopefully that should convince my dad and NTL that the problem is with the modem and not the 2 routers we have.

Re: Temperamental Service with router
 

Well, I tried the test. Either my model (which is a 100 model, by the way) is completely screwed, or I did something wrong.

Initially when I unplugged my router and directly I was getting error messages saying an IP address hadn't been assigned, but I unplugged the modem for the sacred 30 seconds, restarted the machine and it connected perfectly fine. Was able to browse the net (albeit in the usual slow way; loads of refreshing)

I got nothing but "request timed out" over and over again until I quit with Ctrl + C and it said it had lost all packets. The image is attached.

Is my modem completely screwed or did I do it wrong?