Connection dropping, but modem lights remain healthy.

Gar · 22-05-2011, 19:59

For the past few days, my internet connection has been randomly dropping. It can occur once every ten minutes for a short while, and then it can be okay for hours. Sometimes it will drop once, then be okay for several hours, then drop again, then be okay for another several hours. There doesn't seem to be a pattern (at least not that i can tell).

However, during these drops, my modem lights remain normal. There is no flickering of lights, no reset, etc. It's as if the modem is still holding a connection.

When the connection drops, it comes back on it's own after a minute or two. Or, if I reset my modem/router at the plug it comes back.

Also, my power levels appear to be absolutely fine -

Downstream Receive Power Level: 7.5 dBmV
Upstream transmit Power Level: 48.5 dBmV

I was hoping to get a little insight into whether it is likely to be my modem/connection or my router causing the issue. The fact that the modem's lights remain healthy leads me to believe that it might be my Linksys router.

I have been using this particular connection and modem/router set-up for years and this has never happened before.

Many thanks.

General Maximus · 22-05-2011, 20:23

really funny you should say that dude because I have the same problem (used to but dont now). You arent actually being "disconnected" which is why your lights stay on. I have only ever noticed it on sustained high speed data transfers, namely newsgroups and torrents. Everything will run at full speed, then hit 0k for a min or two and then blast off again. I always attributed it to some sort of safety thing VM put on the network. If it was a browser download it would have timed out and thus saved VM the bandwidth, but with it being a torrent or nntp, it will auto resume.

The long and short of it is that it is a teeny tiny inconvenience so I wouldn't worry about it.

Gar · 22-05-2011, 20:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by General Maximus

really funny you should say that dude because I have the same problem (used to but dont now). You arent actually being "disconnected" which is why your lights stay on. I have only ever noticed it on sustained high speed data transfers, namely newsgroups and torrents. Everything will run at full speed, then hit 0k for a min or two and then blast off again. I always attributed it to some sort of safety thing VM put on the network. If it was a browser download it would have timed out and thus saved VM the bandwidth, but with it being a torrent or nntp, it will auto resume.

The long and short of it is that it is a teeny tiny inconvenience so I wouldn't worry about it.

Thanks for the quick response.

You mentioned having the same problem but not any more. Did the issue clear up on it's own? How long was it before your problem went away?

I enjoy watching online video streams. Live television for example, so the cut-outs are a little more than a tiny inconvenience for me. They are proving themselves quite disruptive to my online habits. It's not really something I can ignore.

KenK · 22-05-2011, 20:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gar

For the past few days, my internet connection has been randomly dropping. <snip> I was hoping to get a little insight into whether it is likely to be my modem/connection or my router causing the issue. The fact that the modem's lights remain healthy leads me to believe that it might be my Linksys router.

I've had a similar problem for years. It doesn't disconnect, it just shuts up; browsing web pages doesn't work for a minute or so; streaming content stops, but recovers ok if I reconnect to it. It's most annoying when a VPN connection to my employer stops in the middle of me trying to fix something. I have a no-name generic router, not Linksys.

I've always put it down to the quality of VMs broadband offering, and simply put up with it.

General Maximus · 22-05-2011, 21:36

Tbh I havent noticed it for ages. I havent downloaded anything from newsgroups for quite a while now but I still get a tonne of stuff from torrents. I can't put my finger on a particular date or time but it defo hasnt happened since they increased upload speed to 10:1 or since they implemented p2p traffic shaping (and no, this is not a good reason for doing it before anyone says anything

)

Daz/Teeside · 23-05-2011, 10:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gar

For the past few days, my internet connection has been randomly dropping. It can occur once every ten minutes for a short while, and then it can be okay for hours. Sometimes it will drop once, then be okay for several hours, then drop again, then be okay for another several hours. There doesn't seem to be a pattern (at least not that i can tell).

However, during these drops, my modem lights remain normal. There is no flickering of lights, no reset, etc. It's as if the modem is still holding a connection.

When the connection drops, it comes back on it's own after a minute or two. Or, if I reset my modem/router at the plug it comes back.

Also, my power levels appear to be absolutely fine -

Downstream Receive Power Level: 7.5 dBmV
Upstream transmit Power Level: 48.5 dBmV

I was hoping to get a little insight into whether it is likely to be my modem/connection or my router causing the issue. The fact that the modem's lights remain healthy leads me to believe that it might be my Linksys router.

I have been using this particular connection and modem/router set-up for years and this has never happened before.

Many thanks.

I am having the same problem and have been for a while, it seems to be getting worse lately!

Neo-Tech · 23-05-2011, 17:31

Anything in the modem event logs? And setting up a TBB monitor could show something if anything...

Gar · 23-05-2011, 18:11

I did a Windows troubleshoot when the problem occured again, and it said the following:

"Windows can't communicate with the device or resource (primary DNS server)"

Any one know what that means? Is it referring to my router?

As for modem logs, this is the only one:

"Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ..."

Gar · 23-05-2011, 23:56

Connection went down for about 5-10 minutes this evening. I checked the logs and it was a wall of this:

Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out

Gar · 28-05-2011, 13:03

I was hoping it might have fixed itself by now, but I'm still getting drop outs.

Whenever the connection drops, this shows up in the modem logs:

"Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out"

Again, my signal levels are absolutely fine and well within the goldilocks zone.

---------- Post added at 14:03 ---------- Previous post was at 14:01 ----------

I should add, I'm using a 255 VM modem, but I have an older 250 NTL modem handy. Would you advise perhaps trying the older modem? Or would the 250 not be able to handle a 10meg connection?

pip08456 · 28-05-2011, 15:40

The 250 will handle 10Mb with no problem. I doubt if it is still enabled on the network though so you will not even be able to connect. You need to ring support.

Sephiroth · 28-05-2011, 23:14

The T3s will be nothing to do with the router. This is a case where we ought to see the full modem stats (power levels are only part of the story) and event log (your MAC address removed if it appears) as well as the results of a traceroute to www.bbc.co.uk. We might be able to piece togethewr what's going on especially when we see what CMTS you are on.

pip08456 · 28-05-2011, 23:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

The T3s will be nothing to do with the router. This is a case where we ought to see the full modem stats (power levels are only part of the story) and event log (your MAC address removed if it appears) as well as the results of a traceroute to www.bbc.co.uk. We might be able to piece togethewr what's going on especially when we see what CMTS you are on.

Pedant!!!

Kursk · 29-05-2011, 01:01

Something is definitely up. For the past couple of weeks my connection's performance is the worst it's ever been. It's like the good ol' dialup days but slower. Single images are downloading in chunks and everything is buffering.

Let's hope it's sorted out soon.

Kursk · 30-05-2011, 17:12

Well, things are definitely getting better: my connection is now 4 times the speed it was last time I posted.

It's up to just over 2Mbps. I can pee a faster stream

.