[CS-FSLUG] weird network problems

[Tim Young]

(grin) You certainly do take the wind out of my sails all the time.  :)  If you
lose your connection every 5 min it probably is not directly a DHCP issue but
it might be an indirect result of it.  You may need a new cable-modem.  But do
not pursue that yet...

1) If you do have 2 static IP addresses, then I would certainly try to
hard-code those numbers in your router instead of having a DHCP address.  If
your cablemodem is going on the fritz having your IP address hardcoded may help
a little.

If your log file is not reporting anything wrong with the WAN connection then
your cable router might be messed up.  Usually the log file will report things
like DOS attacks, changes in IP addressess, and your link going down.  If none
of these are getting reported, then you probably have a dud cablemodem.

2) If you have your IP address hardcoded, try turning off and on the cablemodem
when your connection dies.  If this fixes the problem, it does not mean the
problem is NOT the router, as turning off and on the cablemodem will drop the
connection to the router.  If powering on and off the cablemodem has an effect,
next time try unplugging the network cable between the two.  This will also
drop the link to the router.  If that has no effect but the first one did, then
it is probably the cablemodem.

3) If you have a friend on your cable-segment (a neighbor, someone on your
block, or same apartment) who can ping your IP address when you lose
connectivity that may be helpful.  If you have the ping enabled (It seems you
have one option, "block WAN requests" that does this.  You really want this to
be set to "enabled", but for this test you could disable it.) then someone
should be able to ping your router.  If they can do it from the same network
segment then it does not have to go through the cable company first, which
removes one level of potential problem.

If you can be pinged, when your connection is down then you have a problem with
your router.

	- Tim Young

"David M." wrote:
> 
> Well If I understand correctly, I have 2 static IP's that are mine So I wonder
> if this would work.
> 
> But then again, on the other hand I don't think DHCP would renew itself every
> 20 minutes or so. I lose connection very frequently. sometimes 10 minutes, 5
> minutes etc etc. I can't get a pattern here at all.