Charter is driving me batty (best, phone, location)

[grannynancy]

The IT crowd Season 3, Episode 4. Maybe I dropped the box and broke the Internet..........

[quicklook1800]

"Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?"

[saucystargazer]

^^^ hahahaha! I love IT crowd.

Just a thought but maybe it's still the new modem or router. We have had ones straight out of the box have problems (DH is a techie and knows what he's doing sooo). Worth a try at least.

[beckycat]

Originally Posted by Bmachina

Yes this happened to me also when I moved here. They came out 4 times and I must of called 6 times at least and they could not find the issue. Service was going out non stop and I was ready to cancel at my next call.

I turned out to be my router. Once I switched over to a new Netgear router, the service went to A+. I am using a Cisco modem that I -think- Charter provided. Something about the old Linkskys router was totally incompatible and caused constant outages 20 time per day.

I see you are already using a Netgear router though, so you might look into combining it with the Cisco modem - it worked for me.

I had the same issue when we first got service. I had to change the Cisco router to Netgear per the tech's advice. I too have a Cisco modem.

[grannynancy]

It could be.......they did some kind of diagnostic and said modem ok......I have had good signal and connection ALL DAY today though. So I will tuck these things away if it does pop back up.

[Labonte18]

Originally Posted by grannynancy

Say Labonte, how do you keep these logs and override the DNS? I often get a DNS "lookup" error. As is I have pinged google at 8.8.8.8 using the command prompt and took pictures of the computer screen when it looses connection. It seems to me if it was my modem or router that when it drops it would not reconnect without me rebooting or doing something? When I look at my wireless connecting to my router I have a strong signal throughout the house. And the speed of the connection is consistent and at the specs of the computer (e.g., I have some old computers with a wireless-G card). WHen I am connected it is EXCELLENT. There is no issue with signal quality and speed though I have noticed a wind down just before I loose it (things get slow, I run to speedest and check and download speed drops from about 40MBPS to 5MPBS.) Sometimes, though it just catches me unaware. EDIT, I do not believe it to be the computers. Everything goes out when it goes out. New / Old /Wired /Wireless.

If you are losing connection pinging 8.8.8.8, then it has nothing to do with DNS. When you type in something like (Ugh.. www dot jayski dot com) Jayski's® NASCAR Sprint Cup Silly Season Site, DNS is what converts that from Jayski's® NASCAR Sprint Cup Silly Season Site to 68.71.212.193

Now.. Some sites.. CNN is one, if I recall, do not respond to ping requests.. So, you need to, BEFORE you have problems, know an IP address that responds to pings. Jayski is a good one that does.. If you get replies pinging the IP, but not the FQDN.. Then DNS is likely the issue. Nto responding to ping requests is common.. Normally called multicast or ICMP packets.

If you're pinging either the FQDN or the IP and you get, say, 5 replies, a timeout, then 2 replies, then 6 timeouts.. DNS is not the issue.

BTW.. you can set a ping request to run until you do a Ctrl-C using the flag -t. So..

ping -t Jayski's® NASCAR Sprint Cup Silly Season Site

Will run forever, or until you hit a ctrl-C

tracert can help you track down where things fail, too.. But.. That is difficult for the layman to translate.. It's difficult for anyone to translate sometimes the way charter's network is setup.

Remember that your modem has a public IP as well.. So, one of the best tests.. Go to someplace that tells you your public IP.. whatsmyip.com or something like that (Google it.. I don't use it enough) and ping jayski's IP and your public IP.. If you get fine communication to your public IP, but intermittent, or none to jayski.. Problem is on charter's side. If you find you're losing packets pinging your public IP.. Then you need to start looking internally.. Either your modem or router.

An interesting thing that i've found when having comm problems with charter.. I've had situations where I could ping something, and it'd work perfectly.. BUT. If I sent a larger packet.. Using a command like

ping -t -l 1024 Jayski's® NASCAR Sprint Cup Silly Season Site

That would have a 30-40% failure rate, while the standard ping would work 99-100% of the time. All that the above command does is send 1k of data for a ping request vs the standard 32 bytes. And Charter's tech support has no clue what you're talking about if you tell them that. Personally, I don't know exactly what it means, other than there's a problem on their side in a router, most likely. I got all the way up to a Tier 3 support person one time, and when I pointed that out to him.. He had it fixed in about 2 hours.. But the peons who answer the phone, and even T2 will have no idea about it.

Originally Posted by JakeC

Labonte18, you mean 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4? Agreed using Google's DNS (or OpenDNS) is far better than your local Internet provider's crappy "solution".

Yep. Typing too fast. As for the OpenDNS.. We just had a major issue with them where they didn't update for 6 days or so.. I prefer google to opendns now. They fixed it when we submitted a support ticket, and.. You can't really complain about the cost.



As far as overriding DNS.. Go into your network connections, set it to get a Dynamic IP, but.. Set specific DNS servers. See this link for a video how-to. http://screencast.com/t/jzFDzWgQGS

[grannynancy]

Thanks for response. Typed long reply then could not load the web page nor reload.

Running ping simultaneously (I pulled up two cmd prompts, typed in the addresses and then hit enter one right after the other)
Letting it run all day then doing ctrl break for stats

The Netgear genie will make changing DNS server easy.

[grannynancy]

I have been running now for around two hours and of about 9000 packets sent I have dropped 9 to google, 3 to my IP. Avg time 17ms google, 2ms my IP.

Just letting it run all day but if my equipment were at issue I would think I would be seeing something by now......?

[tylerSC]

Originally Posted by grannynancy

They did go to the panel and replace multiple splitters with one 8 way. Of course Charter wired it that way in the first place But that did not resolve it last night. Been holding its own today though.

Before he did the test though, he HAD a good signal going into the modem and the internet was fine on the computers; his work just made the signal better. Then after he left it went out for an hour. Then the rest of the evening it was in and out so much I gave up trying to be on the internet at all.

If you have a 4- way or 8-way splitter at the junction box, it often helps to use an amplified splitter or distribution amp instead. To avoid signal loss and drop outs from multiple splits. You can purchase your own from PCT/Channel Master, Motorola, or Electroline. But make sure you purchase the correct version that allows internet and On Demand features to pass.

[cormmac]

I am in Simpsonville and have Charter, I wish we had more options... When we first moved, they came out every week because the Internet and phone never worked. I finally figured it out, someone did a hack job and tried splicing two wires that were all rusted and falling apart! Morons!