Question regarding modem reaction to overloaded source

Aug 09, 2004 7 Replies

I've been a cable subscriber with Earthlink (Time Warner provided services), for over 3 years. Service has been fair to good for that period, however last Saturday I experienced loss of connection and the modem just sat and tried to negotiate for hours. I called support and they agreed to come out in 3 days time. They also advised me that their diagnostics on their end indicated a loss of signal strength external to my house.



On monday, 3 days after the event, I again plugged in the modem in anticipation of the servicemans impending visit and viola, the modem negotiated and I went right on line like nothing ever happened. The serviceman showed up as scheduled, changed the modem with a new one and replaced the cable from the outside pole to the house.



Everything was fine until Yesterday, Sunday, and the same thing repeated itself. The modem sat there and attempted to negotiate a connection with it's top wo lights flashing. Later in the evening I turned it on and it negotiated and went right on line.



My suspicians are that the system has become overloaded and the weekend usage goes up and someone is getting kicked off. I don't know how to proove this and I wouldn't expect Time Warner to own up to it if it was true.



Earthlink refers me to Time Warner and offers sympathy, however doesn't seem to want to get their teeth into the matter.



Any of you cable modem gurus have any thoughts or advice?



Here is a very incomplete bit of advice: don't unplug or turn off the modem when it goes offline. Leave it alone and let it sync back up at its earliest opportunity. Also, when it's turned off the cable company cannot 'see' it for diagnostic purposes, should they choose to do so.

What model of cable modem? If it's one where you can get to the internal diagnostics page, then it's easy enough to tell if the modem is having signal strength issues.

From that page : http Server (CM status)

It does have one

Hmmm. Ran across some Google posts that said the diagnostics page is at the usual spot ( http://192.168.100.1 ). Give it a shot.

I've had multiple failures today and only 3 entries in the diagnostics log.

DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received (first) 18:31:35 -/10/2004 (last) 18:31:35 - 08/10/2004

DHCP FAILED - Request sent, No response (first) 18:31:35 - 08/10/2004 (last) 18:31:35 - 08/10/2004

EVENT_COLD_START [ST23.1B.41 ] - The Cable Modem was powered off and back on (first) 18:31:35 - 08/10/2004 (last) 18:31:35 - 08/10/2004

Where these times originated from I don't know as these activities are all from this morning.

Earthlink's news servers aren't accepting posts so.

It's an RCA DCM305. Not very impressive as one serviceman opened and installed 4 new ones before he got one to work on a previous visit. I can't find any info that it has internal diagnostics.

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Probably UTC - adjust for your timezone.

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