~~~Please help me diagnose my connection problem! Have been suffering for years!~~~?

Question

Hello,

I come here in dire need of help. I have a basic wired, lan connection throughout my house. For the past few years I have been experiencing a problem with my connection that has been extremely aggravating and I juist can't take it anymore. I will describe the problem and give the details, and I hope someone can at least help diagnose my problem.

The problem itself is the following: Occasionally, the internet throughout the whole house (the actual connection) will drop. The duration is from 10 seconds to 5 minutes: it is completely random.

- This happens at generally random points throughout the day. However, it usually comes in spirts: say at 1:00, it drops for 2 minutes, then 5 minutes later, it might drop for 3 minutes, then it may not drop again for a few hours.

-It seems to happen more often during the morning hours (11:00AM-3:00PM) than other hours of the day, and also seems to occur more often during the summer than other seasons.

If anyone has ANY idea what could be causing this (The cable guy recently came, could find nothing) or any possible solutions you would really make my day. Thank you for your time!

Answer 1

Need more information to diagnose the problem but I provided a process of elimination/troubleshooting flow below - choose 1 or 2 being your scenario:

1) If there are more than one computer in your network, does it happen to all of the computers? More than likely a router problem - proceed to ROUTER DIAGNOSIS

2) Does it only happen to one computer or only have one computer in your network? More than likely a computer problem - proceed to COMPUTER DIAGNOSIS

ROUTER DIAGNOSIS

-Reboot or power cycle the router

-If problem still exist, document all router settings and reset the router to original factory setting then re-enter the settings again

-If problem still exist, replace the router

COMPUTER DIAGNOSIS

-Replace the cat5/ethernet cable

-If problem still exist, disable the Local Area Connection and re-enable it again (control panel/network connections/local area connection)

-If problem still exist, replace the computer's NIC (network interface card)

-If problem still exist, go to ROUTER DIAGNOSIS

Answer 2

There could be several possible causes to this, but I will try and explain the most common one.

The most common that I've seen with this is the router itself.  If you reset the router on its own, without resetting the cable modem, this may bring it back up, now why this is happening gets more advanced.

The simplest and most common problem is the router (most common in Linksys routers) ends up with their logs filled, and it causes the router to become non-communicative.  This has an easy fix for it, just upgrade the firmware in your router.  Now-a-days this is simply done with little to no effort, and most vendors (Linksys, Belkin, Netgear) provide detailed instructions on how to do this.  Most of the time this will fix your issue and allow you to stay connected a lot longer.

Without knowing what type of router you have, however its difficulty to give instruction on fixing this.

Another thing to look into is if your cable modem itself is flapping briefly, these can happen a lot on cable networks.  A flap generally means it loses just enough power in it's upstream (I think been awhile since my Cisco work) and causes it to shut off momentarily, rebooting it.  This can be caused by a number of things from signal to noise ratio and many other factors, to diagnose that you'd have to request that your ISP/Cable Company monitor your modem, or you call in each time it goes offline and have them check it, to see if they can see the router behind it, and see if the modem is still reachable.

I hope this has helped, and given you some idea of the directions to head off into.

Answer 3

Are you hardwired of wireless?

What type of router do you have?

When it goes down what type of diagnostics do you do?

tcw