Occasional network "freeze" in Nottingham

[Creep]

Hi.

I'm having a problem where my network seems to "freeze". I'm assuming its the downstream, but I don't have the knowledge to confirm this.

For example, during playing a game of HalfLife (Natural Selection), occasionally it will freeze and report a connection problem in big red letters. The 3 green lights on my modem will stay on, but the two orange activity lights go from nearly solid orange to a few blips. This will usually last for anything up to 30 seconds. And then the modem will spring back into life, and the game will resume. This can happen on any server, located anywhere in the UK or in Europe.

This has been happening for probably around 8 weeks now. I will usually get these freezes at least twice in an evening.

Specs are:

Athlon 2500
512M
Original 3COM modem connected via onboard network card. I've been on NTL broadband for years.
Win2k last sp
Sygate firewall
No hardware router
No virus/adware scanner

I'm not at my PC at the moment, so I can't post any tracerts or other details. However, I can easily get them when I'm there this evening.

I haven't phoned tech support yet. I thought I'd come here first and get some pointers to try and at least diagnose what the problem may be before contacting NTL.

I'm assuming that my PC is OK given that the activity lights on the modem report a lot less activity during these freeze periods. Beyond that though I don't have the knowledge to diagnose.

Can anyone help on this please ?

It would be useful if you could do a tracert to ntlworld.com at the point of freezing.

[Creep]

Thanks for the response.

I'll do that when I get my first freeze.

[nffc]

Sometimes notice a slowdown when browsing etc, here too. Not a gamer though.

[Creep]

Please bear with me. I'm having a devil of a time trying to get a ping commad working through the Sygate firewall.

[Creep]

Boy, do I feel red. I set a rule in Sygate blocking all ICMP traffic. Found it, and unset it. Will be back with more.

[GazzaB]

Had a few freeze problems myself recently maybe this is a local issue? I'm on Mapperley UBR. Anyone else?

[Richy99]

i have been getting connection stall ever since my ip changed from 62.252.x.x to something like 87.3 (not at home to get first part of the IP) before then my conenction was rock solid and only went off occasionally. Now i am finding that i can get stalls so no traffic at all is being produced, nntp, web, msn all stops and most of the time give it 30 seconds it comes back - sometimes i do have to wait longer

this is in cardiff and strangely enough the old 3com cmx modem

[Creep]

What modem have you got GazzaB ? I wonder if the old modems are choking on the increased traffic ?

[nffc]

Ours was down from about 2pm to about 8 tonight.

[Roy MM]

Why don't you people give locations? either in the post or via your profile, it helps members plus NTL associates.

[nffc]

Originally Posted by Roy MM

Why don't you people give locations? either in the post or via your profile, it helps members plus NTL associates.

nffc vbmenu_register("postmenu_552980", true);
Kick Derby out of England

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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Notts / City Ground
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[Creep]

Just got another connection stall last night during a HL session. On the modem, the orange "PC activity" LED was flashing continuously (presumably because HL was still sending up messages), but the orange "network activity" LED was out. All three green connection LEDs remained on. I got it back about 20 seconds later without any reboots or the PC complaining about losing the network. This does seem to indicate that I'm losing downstream/upstream.

I tried ping during this stall, but it wasn't responding during the DNS (I think this *may* be Sygate configuration problem as I deleted all my rules last night). However, the next time it happens, I'll be in better position to give proper diagnostics and hopefully rule Sygate in or out. I don't think posting a rolling ping/tracert will help here because that only makes sense during a one of these intermittent stalls.

I've yet to buy a NULL modem cable to get diagnostics from the modem.

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by Roy MM

Why don't you people give locations? either in the post or via your profile, it helps members plus NTL associates.

Like Treasure Island
__________________

Originally Posted by GazzaB

Had a few freeze problems myself recently maybe this is a local issue? I'm on Mapperley UBR. Anyone else?

Creep is on a different UBR to you
__________________

Originally Posted by Creep

What modem have you got GazzaB ? I wonder if the old modems are choking on the increased traffic ?

IMO the 3com CMXs are the best modem's that ntl have ever used (hence why they cost about £200 each, unlike the Ambit modems which are about £10 each).
__________________

Originally Posted by Creep

I've yet to buy a NULL modem cable to get diagnostics from the modem.

AFAIK the modem only outputs information for diagnostics during boot up anyway, so this might not be too useful...

Have you contact ntl about this issue yet?

[Creep]

Thanks for the information Chris W.

In fact, the modem cost me £150. Still pretty hefty though.

I was under the impression that the CMX provided diagnostics when something goes wrong ? However, I fear you maybe right in this situation in that temporarily losing downstream/upstream would probably not be classed as an error by the modem.

I haven't contacted NTL yet. I want to be satisfied where the problem lies. This is so I can rule out the bits my side like the firewall, PC hardware, cables etc...