A friend is having problems with his net
 

Hey guys,

I've got a friend who lives a few miles from here who's in a bit of a predicament.

Basically, he's got VM Cable (he told me he was supposed to be being upgraded to 10mb sometime soon) and for the last two days he's had no Internet connection in the slightest.

His modem Sync light comes on and goes off regularly, and his ready light flickers like it's a strobe light.

The thing is, he's had a habit of being a bit late with his payments in the past, though he's got a direct debit sorted apparently, and his next bill isn't due until around the 8th of June, so that's what's making me think this isn't simply a case of him being cut off.

I've copied his modem's logs and settings, and his power levels and frequencies seem to be fluctuating rapidly. I talked to a nice young man called "Damian" in India who was about as helpful as a packet of crisps, who insisted that he was running tests and that the modem was working fine. When I mentioned that my friend had a network set up (basically 1 computer connected to the modem directly and then a second computer connected to the first via ethernet using Internet Connection Sharing in Windows - a solution they've been using for over a year with zero issues), he pretty much locked down and immediately blamed the network, despite there being no changes to the way it's set up.

The network also wouldn't explain why the modem is incapable of connecting to the network, however I did notice when I looked at his modem page at 192.168.100.1 that his "Network Access" is being defined as "Denied".

The thing is, he's in a bit of a financial crunch right now, and with him having no landline and only a pay as you go mobile, he can't afford to call VM tech support, and should an engineer be needed he's very unlikely to be able to afford an engineer call-out either.

I called VM's tech support on my mobile, was on for 10 minutes and got nowhere because of VM tech support in India's amazing ability to deny everything and blame everyone but themselves without giving a definite answer. Is there any chance maybe one of you fine VM employees over here could help my friend out please? I can provide a contact number, his account number and whatever other details you'd like via PM, but as I said, he's unable to call himself due to his situation.

I'll try and post what various logs and such that I managed to copy last night in code boxes here, hopefully it'll give you guys more of an insight as to what's going on.

Cable Modem Status


Connectivity State fluctuates between "Not Synchronized", "Ranging Complete" and "Upstream Parameters Acquired"

Acquire a Downstream Channel fluctuates from 40600000 Hz to 122750000 Hz

Boot State fluctuates between "Unknown", "Waiting for DHCP Offer" and something else which I missed apparently.


His Cable Modem Downstream page was fluctuating so rapidly that I actually copied it four times to show you just how much it was bouncing around:

His Upstream was the same, so I copied that 3 times too:

Code:

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Cable Modem Upstream

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I did copy the upstream burst but it appears to have not copied properly to the text file I made, hope that's not a problem.

Code:

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Cable Modem Operation Configuration

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These code boxes hate me, sorry guys, I cant seem to align anything properly.

Code:

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First TimeLast TimePriorityDescription

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Anyway, that's pretty much the extent of it. If anyone could help diagnose what the issue may be I'd be very grateful please, as would my friend. I'm happy to give you any information you need.


Cheers,


KsE

Re: A friend is having problems with his net
 

0o0 me reaps a mac address..

You might wanna edit that out dude.

Re: A friend is having problems with his net
 

What?

MOD REMOVED MAC

that?

why?

Re: A friend is having problems with his net
 

Because it can be used for nefarious purposes.

Re: A friend is having problems with his net
 

Ah, very sorry about that. I thought I'd removed it, but then again I think I'd clicked back after the preview to sort something and perhaps undid it.

Anyway, sorry again about that, though I doubt it'd matter much to him right now as his net doesn't work at all anyway.

Anyone got any ideas?

Re: A friend is having problems with his net
 

If it it getting to ranging complete and the ready light is blinking fast it would appear to be getting upstream and downstream lock - you would need to confirm the upstream by refreshing the upstream page and hecking it gets to locked. If this is the case it would point to an account issue (non payment among them but not the only reason) or possibly upstream SNR problems/FEC errors. If it's not locking on the upstream he needs a tech. For the first issue it would be a call to tech support or customer services dependant on whet the problemm is, the second a call to tech support to raise it to the outage team.

I wouldn't worry about the level changing if it isn't locked - that is normal - if it is still varying wildly while locked that will be the problem.