Well, that's (hopefully) sorted

[dvandom]

Lately, I've been having problems with my cablemodem at home losing connection once or twice a night. It'd generally reconnect quickly enough that I didn't drop any sessions or anything, but it was annoying. This week, it started to happen more and more often, to the point I'd go half an hour without being able to stay connected long enough to do anything. After making sure the network itself was okay, I decided that my four year old modem was probably just dying. I shot off an email to the ISP yesterday to see what they thought.

Turns out that they upgraded the system recently, and it's simply too fast for my old cablemodem to keep up. So it'll trip and fall every so often. Armed with a list of currently supported modems, I will go shopping for a new one this afternoon (last night was so bad I really can't stand to go another day without fixing the problem).

Comments

[lord-xiphos.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem recently, except none of the cable technicians in my area knew what the problem was. For over a year now they've been trying to figure out what is wrong with the new cable installation. For months I was trying to tell them it was the cable modems, but the tech would not believe me.
Eventually, I was informed by an unusually knowledgable tech that I could simply exchange my existing modem for a newer model at my local cable provider store. Since doing so, my connectivity problems have stopped* and they cable guys continue to examine the new cable installation to try and find out why everyone else is still having connectivity issues.

Consider, I live in Silicon Valley.

* - There was one incident where connectivity started dropping off slowly. When I checked the incoming packets, I found my ISP's DNS was increasingly flooding the network with recursive ARPs. When I called them up, the technicians I spoke with informed me they were aware there was a problem with connectivity in our area, and that they had several technicians out checking the cables to determine where the problem was. I asked to speak with a technician, and was suprisingly enough put through to one. I informed him that their new DNS was misconfigured and the root cause. He thanked me, and within 15 minutes connectivity was restored for all. Now, it's possible my timing was simply such that they were already aware of the problem and were fixing it. But given my past dealings with these people, and the level of ineptitude I've dealt with, I rather think it never once crossed any of their minds to check the actual data going through the pipe. Given the time frame between my phone call and the DNS becoming sane would also suggest this.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

How's it doing with the new one?

Or is the lack of a followup post an ominous omen?

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Well, it turned out that the guy at Staples misread the computer, their shipment was still in the warehouse elsewhere, so it wouldn't be in until Monday. Fortunately, Radio Shack had some in stock, and I'm hooked up and doing fine so far (after a half hour on hold before I could get a tech to set up my new MAC number).

On the bad side, my old external CDROM finally died, so I had to go ahead and order a new Firewire DVDROM I've had my eye on since the motor in my internal DVD drive died. Yeah, computer decrepitude. Fortunately, the only stuff on the cablemodem install CD was for using USB to connect, and I still have ethernet.