[DamnMachine]

Great forum.
I would be really grateful for any opinions on intermittent outages.

I've been an NTL broadband user for about five years, and in general it works just fine, no problems. However on three occasions, the last of which is now, the damn thing has been up and down every five minutes, all day. On the first occasion, an NTL engineer called and fitted an attenuator, which made the problem go away for a while. The second time it got bad, an NTL engineer called and took away the attenuator, which made the problem go away for a while.

But since it's come back again, I guess what I'm asking is whether this is just normal for NTL broadband users, or whether its likely I have some underlying problems with my installation which I need to get to the bottom of.

My configuration:
- NTL 1 Mbit broadband, ntl:home 100 cable modem
- GU16 area
- I normally operate with a Trendnet Wireless router, but I've seen the problem both with and without the router.

What do I mean by an outage?
- you can't ping anywhere outbound of the router from the PC for a period of 1-2 minutes
- in many occasions, the cable modem lights repeat the sequence you normally see after a power-on, suggesting to me that it is rebooting. (NTL support said that my cable modem has rebooted itself 200 times in the last 24 hours)
- after 1-2 minutes, I can ping outbound again and everything operates fine ... until the next time.

Would be very interested in any opinions on this, and what might be causing it:
(a) can signal strength on my cable spur vary over the course of a few months, causing my cable modem to need reconfiguring or something?
(b) can there be something wrong with the cable modem itself? If yes, would switching it for another cure the problem?
(c) can this be caused by running a VPN over the connection?
(d) is it possible the wireless signal from the router could be interfering with the cable modem or with the cable signal in any way?

Many thanks in advance.

\DamnMachine