Internet Blues

Other Chit-Chat
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Ok so here is the situation…

I have Bright House and they are really great, they provide internet and cable. well cable for the internet. my ISP is Earthlink. I have a Motorola Modem… no clue what the model is but its the only one you can find on the Circuit City website.

So after a while my house network grew and its set up like this. (yes i know it isnt smart but it worked great!)

So the modem runs straight into a linksys router. From the router… my Dad’s desktop is run straight to it right next to the router.

Now my set up is different. I found these neat wireless LAN Cable things from Logitech. These just turn it into a wireless connection, then back into LAN for my setup. These work great and i have no problems with it.

This connection goes maybe 12ft through a glass door to my room. Here i have a Network switch from Linksys. from here i split it to my file server desktop, my laptop, my other desktop, and my wireless router. I know its relly far from the source but it gives off 54mb/s and its fast so i have no problem with it.

So then i have another wireless LAN box thing. (these dont inerrupt eachother luckily) and i have it running from the main router to my mom’s desktop. straight to her desktop.

2 months ago this all worked. perfect!

But starting last month… it all went downhill. My mom’s internet wont work. her email can’t find the server but it’s still connected (so the network thing in vista says)

A few weeks later my room internet starts to slow up to the point where everything times out. At this point my mom’s computer now says Limited or No Connectivity. Mine is still connected.

Through all this my dad’s computer is normal. nothing wrong and he cant understand our problem.

But this past week. His internet died. So i disconnected everything from the modem and plugged it straight into his pc. Taking the time to unplug it and let it reset as i should. And he needs this for work purposes. But it died. So we called bright house and they came out yesturday.

They tested out connection yesturday and everything worked. We all thought it was a bad modem but now it worked for my dad! so today i again plugged everything back in. and well what do you know… nothing worked. But it still works on his desktop!!!

Please if you can tell me what the problem is i will be glad to try it. Anything would help!!!

And if this is in the wrong area tell me where i should put this thread and ill make one there too.

Thank you!

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Make sure when you plug everything back in you start with the modem and wait until the “ready” (or what ever its called on your) comes on. Then plug in the router, wait for it to be ready. Once both are connected make sure your getting internet from the router. If not its something between the router and the modem or the modem and the internet is broken. If it works but does not work over wireless try checking to see if everything in configured right on the wireless end of things.

Sounds like a router problem to me but you never know.

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Yeah everything right now looks like it should be running without a problem. I plugged my modem straight into both my vista desktop and laptop. and limited or no connectivity. Only the XP (my dad’s) shows that the modem provides internet. bad modem? maybe bright house lied?

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Wow, that is a real mess you have going there! How about this.

  1. Make sure that the very first router (the one by your dad’s computer) is the only one assigning ip address’s. I don’t know how the logitech things work, but I’m guessing that they are just a bridge.
  2. Plug the end for your mom’s computer into the router by your dad’s computer.
  3. Bypass the switch in your room and just plug into the wireless router. I assume that the router has wired connections on it.

See if that doesn’t help the system out a little. This way if something goes wrong, such as in your room, it doesn’t take down your mom’s computer.

OR if you don’t mind spending some money:

  1. Starting with the modem, plug a wireless router into it. Use this as the DHCP Server.
  2. Plug your dad’s computer into this.
  3. Plug one logitech thing into this OR plug in a really long ethernet cable
  4. Get a wireless receiver for your mom’s computer and plug that into it.
  5. Plug the Linksys switch in your room and plug in only the two desktops (use wireless for the laptop)
  6. Make sure that the switch in your room has it’s DHCP server turned off

OR again if you want to spend the money

  1. Move the modem into your room
  2. Plug in wireless router
  3. Plug in desktops in your room
  4. Get wireless receiver for both mom and dad’s computer

I’m guessing that, even though they didn’t before, your problem is in the logitech wireless things. I think they may be interfering with each other right now, so all of my solutions are aimed at getting you down to 1 or none.

EDIT: Maybe the modem, try logging into it (192.168.0.1 maybe) and see if it has a self check feature. I know mine does, but it is DSL, so you never know. Once you get it working with what ever you plug in, then try what I suggested above. Also, make sure that you plug a router in via the internet port and make the router assign all IP addresses, this way if there is a problem in the network, you can trace it back to one point. I know that sometimes routers will make the modem assign them, and most modems are only able to assign 1.

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i would recommend spending some money and time and getting cables run to the desktops just so they cant get wireless interference and use a wireless router right off the modem to run the laptop.

Or you could get wireless cards, the pci style which hook into the back of the computers and go wireless on everything but your dads computer since its right next to the router.

-Mike

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Ok well these are all great. but my wireless and wired routers are not one in the same. i really wish tho…

But the funny thing about my wireless router is its belkin. and My parents use Earthlink Mailbox for their email. I dont because of this problem… But when you use a wired connection it will connect to the email server. If its wireless… it will not. Now if i plug it into the wireless router… you would think it would work. but no. it still will not connect. but i have internet through it normally.

So im not sure… i still highly believe that this problem is caused by the modem… i’m going to do more tests later

Thanks!

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This sounds like an issue with port forwarding on the wireless router.

-Mike AA

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It may not be inside…

Internet Mystery Solved

Those missing Web Pages

The root cause of the problem is a flaw in the Internet service itself which hackers have managed to exploit to cause sporadic world wide disruptions during the last couple of weeks. This flaw which has been publicized in numerous news articles (www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C4006938800025748F007863C4.html) is known as the DNS Exploit.

The Internet is a worldwide collection of computer networks, cooperating with each other to exchange data using a common software standard. At the core of any network is the DNS (Domain Name System). When a user goes to a website the URL that we can easily remember such as ‘google.com’ is translated into an IP address (216.239.39.99) by a DNS server so it can easily traverse the internet. Hackers have found a security hole in the root DNS servers that they can exploit so when a request comes in to go to ‘google.com’ instead of it being translated into the correct IP it is translated into the hackers IP of choice and then the end user is directed to that server. The server can house malicious content, be a spoofed website to appear as the intended website, etc.

This is part of a message sent to my work users last week. I have noticed my Earthlink at home acting very badly. Timeouts are regular over the last two to three weeks. Data transfers are normal for several seconds then just stop for as long as 30 seconds or more. Speed tests done at the request of Earthlink support show the same problem. Normal transfer rates for seconds interupted by longer periods of no speed.

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Wow that explains why my wifi connection been timing out like crazy on me and sometimes would go to sites I wasn’t trying to get to.

I thought it was just the price to pay for using a open wifi hosted by a community center across the street from me.

And yeah the thing seems to have been fixed and the speeds have doubled.
Thanks for forwarding the info! :smiley:

10

So that would probably be why YouTube was acting funny.

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Do you have a modem supplied by Earthlink? If so, I think I know what the problem probably is.

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Yeah it might be but i’m not sure. but what is the problem anyways?

13

Eric,
Yes it is supplied by Earthlink. It is Zyxel Prestige 600. This modem is after the problem ones from several years ago. This one has been working fairly well for a few years. Have only had this latest problem for a few weeks.

14

Oh, OK. We got one of the problem ones… It lasted 2 years or so. After some time of “It’s not our modem’s problem, reset (or check all connections in the house, power cycle, etc.)” from Earthlink, we just got a new modem. Then again, the old modem didn’t seem to like our router either… so we got one that was built into a router.

15

The problem ones had a power supply issue. It was designed for 1 amp at 5 volts but the modem drew 1.2 amps. Eventually, they started to set themselves on fire. I was home when mine went bad. It only took me about 30 minutes to get to a real live tech who understood that I fix things for a living and had diagnosed the problem correctly. I had a new modem and power supply in two days. I use mine with a Linksys wireless DSL router. BTW, customer support will always ask you if the modem is near an amateur radio station or wireless phone. Even though I have both I tell them NO! (Everything is working fine most of the time!) They get a little perturbed when I tell them that I can scope the line and give them measured send receive data if they would like. That usually gets a more technical person on the line.

16

Ok, well My internet is finally fixed. It seems that my modem was limiting the amount of bandwith. So it was perfect before… but slowly started to die. But it still barely had a connection, therefore why Bright House could not find out what was wrong. I did have it replaced for free though so i am now set. Thanks for all your help!!!

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