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Wrao
Yarp
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
 
2007-09-22, 14:09

Lately, my internet has been cutting out sporadically. It is tough to say if it is the ISPs fault, my fault, or faulty hardware. The annoying thing is that, it doesn't usually stop working entirely, typically what happens is that it will suddenly go from decently fast residential cable connection to slower than 14.4kbps dial up connection. Usually, it stays connected the whole time, but something happens to where it will slow down immensely, to the point where most websites will simply time out while loading, and even if a website does load, any links on the site will be just as prone to timing out. When that happens, the 'solution', is just to reboot the modem and our main router(not the wireless router, which doesn't seem to care either way). Whereupon the internet will go back to functioning as it should.

Rarely, it will cut out entirely, not just slow down, and sometimes resetting equipment doesn't do anything.

What do those symptoms sound like to you? Reason I am not calling the ISP right now, is because I'd like to have a better idea of what is wrong before calling them, ISPs are notoriously hassle-filled calls, hassle-filled appointments and hassle-filled wastes of time.


Oh yeah, the vitals:
This is a residential cable connection running through a netgear switch, the modem is made by teradyne, and as far as I know they are all updated with the latest firmware. Sometimes there are as many as 4 computers using the network at once, with at least 2 being wireless. Right now, my computer is the only computer using the network, and also, it doesn't seem to be related to how many computers are active, since we have had upto 8 computers working simultaneously without it breaking. I am running a macbook with the latest OS X and airport updates. But this isn't an airport issue.
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torifile
Less than Stellar Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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2007-09-22, 14:15

Do you know "where" it's getting stuck? Is it in the downloading or the resolving domain names? Try switching to opendns.com for your DNS server and see if that fixes the problem.
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Wrao
Yarp
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
 
2007-09-22, 14:19

Quote:
Originally Posted by torifile View Post
Do you know "where" it's getting stuck? Is it in the downloading or the resolving domain names? Try switching to opendns.com for your DNS server and see if that fixes the problem.
Unfortunately, I really know very little about this. It seems to happen completely randomly. Sometimes it will happen in the morning, sometimes at night, sometimes while I'm playing an online game(rue!!) and sometimes when no one is home at all(i.e. we come back and the internet is not working).

Would there be a way I might be able to determine when the signal is getting fuxxored?
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Ebby
Subdued and Medicated
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Over Yander
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2007-09-23, 12:31

Open Network Utility in the Utilities folder. Click on "Ping" and ping google or some site when the internet is slow. You will see response times that should be 200ms or faster. If it is greater or lost packets your ISP is in trouble. My cable modem dropped 60% of my packets once because my cable was bad. Slowed the internet to a crawl.

^^ One more quality post from the desk of Ebby. ^^
SSBA | SmockBogger | SporkNET
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Bryson
Rocket Surgeon
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
 
2007-09-23, 12:34

Try: (In terminal)

Code:
traceroute www.applenova.com
And let us know what it gives you back.
  quote
Windowsrookie
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Minnesota
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2007-09-23, 12:49

I tried Brysons tip, and this is what I got.

Quote:
traceroute to applenova.com (67.15.74.93), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 * * *
2 mpls-dsl-gw14-206.mpls.qwest.net (207.225.140.206) 41.819 ms 41.688 ms 42.057 ms
3 mpls-agw1.inet.qwest.net (65.103.30.105) 41.833 ms 40.894 ms 42.812 ms
4 * * min-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.128.129) 40.982 ms
5 cer-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.8.14) 51.378 ms 51.717 ms 51.961 ms
6 chp-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.139.146) 51.906 ms 52.046 ms 52.943 ms
7 so-4-1-0.mpr2.ord7.us.above.net (64.125.12.149) 50.700 ms 51.944 ms 89.649 ms
8 so-1-0-0.cr1.ord2.us.above.net (64.125.30.146) 58.099 ms 56.963 ms 50.743 ms
9 so-2-0-0.cr1.dfw2.us.above.net (64.125.30.245) 73.373 ms 73.639 ms 71.638 ms
10 so-0-2-2.mpr3.iah1.us.above.net (64.125.29.21) 77.064 ms 77.673 ms 77.169 ms
11 t289.216-200-251-162.iah1.us.above.net (216.200.251.162) 76.747 ms 77.900 ms 77.790 ms
12 gphou-66-98-241-27.ev1servers.net (66.98.241.27) 78.306 ms 77.458 ms 78.069 ms
13 gphou-66-98-240-107.ev1servers.net (66.98.240.107) 77.085 ms 76.627 ms *
14 www.applenova.com (67.15.74.93) 78.651 ms 77.850 ms 77.554 ms
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Bryson
Rocket Surgeon
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
 
2007-09-23, 12:52

...but you aren't the person who has a problem*, right?



*=...with your internet connection, for the pedants....
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Windowsrookie
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Minnesota
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2007-09-23, 12:54

It's for comparison.

My internet sucks.
  quote
Bryson
Rocket Surgeon
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
 
2007-09-23, 12:56

Not as bad as mine:
Quote:
1 10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1) 1.655 ms 0.978 ms 0.950 ms
2 10.86.0.1 (10.86.0.1) 10.162 ms 10.309 ms 8.582 ms
3 62.30.112.197 (62.30.112.197) 10.827 ms 11.245 ms 12.473 ms
4 pc-62-30-242-70-bn.blueyonder.co.uk (62.30.242.70) 11.236 ms 10.639 ms 9.884 ms
5 194.117.136.146 (194.117.136.146) 10.482 ms 11.320 ms 10.372 ms
6 ge3-0.pr1.lhr1.uk.above.net (195.66.224.76) 80.034 ms 73.954 ms 93.112 ms
7 so-4-0-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.27.57) 143.257 ms 143.528 ms 147.743 ms
8 so-1-0-0.mpr2.atl6.us.above.net (64.125.28.230) 160.309 ms 159.824 ms 159.834 ms
9 so-0-0-0.mpr1.atl6.us.above.net (64.125.27.49) 156.736 ms 155.285 ms *
10 so-1-2-1.mpr4.iah1.us.above.net (64.125.29.62) 171.721 ms * *
11 so-0-0-0.mpr3.iah1.us.above.net (64.125.26.13) 171.120 ms 175.721 ms *
12 t289.216-200-251-162.iah1.us.above.net (216.200.251.162) 118.686 ms 119.611 ms 117.025 ms
13 gphou-66-98-241-29.ev1servers.net (66.98.241.29) 118.940 ms 119.469 ms 120.760 ms
14 gphou-66-98-240-107.ev1servers.net (66.98.240.107) 119.639 ms 119.342 ms 121.758 ms
15 greg.skitzo.org (67.15.74.93) 122.006 ms 129.805 ms 119.466 ms
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Wrao
Yarp
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
 
2007-09-23, 13:49

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ebby View Post
Open Network Utility in the Utilities folder. Click on "Ping" and ping google or some site when the internet is slow. You will see response times that should be 200ms or faster. If it is greater or lost packets your ISP is in trouble. My cable modem dropped 60% of my packets once because my cable was bad. Slowed the internet to a crawl.
I am thinking it very might likely be the cable, or the cable modem. A friend of mine recently got a residential cable line at his new place, and for the first month of having it, he would experience severe packet-loss and drop outs that would amount to numerous disconnects while playing online games. He called the company, the came by and disconnected all the lines that weren't the cable line, this doubled the throughput, and seemingly solved the problem, but then a week later it was back. He called them up again, they came back, this time they spent about 2 hours testing things only to determine that it was, quite simply, a faulty cable modem. They gave him a new one, and since then his internet has not only been reliable, but it has been significantly fast for a residential cable line(due to disconnected the unused cables).

We have had the same cable modem for maybe 4 years now. Do these things ever just break? We have also had a lot of power outages recently, perhaps some circuitry got messed with?
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ghoti
owner for sale by house
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
 
2007-09-23, 14:39

What also helps is to threaten them. Several months ago, we had our cable connection go dead for hours at a time several times per week. My girlfriend works from home and it really became unacceptable for her. So after two weeks of calling and being told that there were "outages in our area", I sent them an email saying that if they didn't fix this soon, we would switch to DSL.

Within two hours I had a response from a friendly service agent who had also scheduled a technician to look into this and exchange our modem just in case. That appointment was later canceled because they had done some work and said that they would be happy to send somebody out again if there were any more problems. We haven't had a single outage since.

My girlfriend suggested that they scan their emails for certain terms like "cancel" or names of competitors to address the more serious ones first. So be sure to throw in a few words to set off their emergency response mode.

But not every solution has to be a technical one, especially from the point of view of the customer.
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