Is my modem/router dying?
By
Armsman,
Posted on: 2009-05-28 17:26 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
If it's a Linksys BEFW11S4 throw it against the wall immediately and put it out of its misery.
Oh.
And ping 192.168.1.1 first (your router) and after that ping your DNS address (provider)
[ QUOTE ]
If it's a Linksys BEFW11S4 throw it against the wall immediately and put it out of its misery.
Oh.
And ping 192.168.1.1 first (your router) and after that ping your DNS address (provider)
[/ QUOTE ]
Belkin, which is just as bad 
Also, we have a winner. Request timed out about half the time over several attempts to ping DNS IP. Tracert shows packets dropping at hop 1 at the earliest, though my router pings are all coming up clean. Wired connection, if that counts for anything. 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If it's a Linksys BEFW11S4 throw it against the wall immediately and put it out of its misery.
Oh.
And ping 192.168.1.1 first (your router) and after that ping your DNS address (provider)
[/ QUOTE ]
Belkin, which is just as bad
Also, we have a winner. Request timed out about half the time over several attempts to ping DNS IP. Tracert shows packets dropping at hop 1 at the earliest, though my router pings are all coming up clean. Wired connection, if that counts for anything.
[/ QUOTE ]
It could be your provider's DNS are overloaded at times. there are a couple of sites that provide free DNS services, and I've had friends who had success wth both of these. Remember that in the modern inyternet, getting ON the net is easy; but if you don't have a reliable DNS to reolve domain TCP/IP addresses, your 'connection may as well be dead. Still you can use these as a test to see if it is your provider or your local router.
http://www.opendns.com/
or
http://www.freedns.com/
It's kind of hard to tell, since we've been having connection problems since Friday. On the one hand, my most recent (and extremely troubling) tracert shows packet loss from hop 1 onward, but on the other hand, the problems we were having over the weekend were caused by trouble along the phone lines themselves.
Here's the trace to google along with a comparison baseline (I use google.com as a baseline for my tracerts because it tends to be very stable and low on the pings when everything is working right)
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tracing route to google.com [209.85.171.100]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 341 ms 347 ms 274 ms 75.121.18.2
2 361 ms 335 ms 279 ms 208.54.209.1
3 345 ms * 351 ms 66.211.51.85
4 134 ms 163 ms 183 ms 206.51.69.113
5 349 ms 361 ms 359 ms 206.51.69.29
6 164 ms 165 ms 207 ms 206.51.69.61
7 306 ms 286 ms 271 ms 206.51.69.33
8 354 ms 343 ms 308 ms 74.125.51.237
9 285 ms 239 ms 269 ms 66.249.94.94
10 355 ms 342 ms 368 ms 216.239.47.121
11 377 ms 292 ms 273 ms 209.85.242.21
12 401 ms 307 ms 268 ms 216.239.48.50
13 432 ms 425 ms 237 ms 209.85.241.211
14 314 ms 321 ms 327 ms 216.239.46.208
15 * 355 ms 420 ms 64.233.174.127
16 328 ms 233 ms 253 ms 209.85.251.149
17 272 ms 287 ms 297 ms 74.125.31.130
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 91 ms 90 ms 91 ms 209.85.171.100
Trace complete.
</pre><hr />
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tracing route to google.com [209.85.171.100]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 13 ms 15 ms 15 ms 75.121.18.2
2 26 ms 16 ms 14 ms 208.54.209.1
3 17 ms 15 ms 17 ms 66.211.51.85
4 18 ms 17 ms 17 ms 206.51.69.113
5 24 ms 25 ms 59 ms 206.51.69.29
6 22 ms 23 ms 35 ms 206.51.69.61
7 32 ms 29 ms 29 ms 206.51.69.33
8 28 ms 29 ms 29 ms 74.125.51.237
9 28 ms 30 ms 29 ms 66.249.94.94
10 40 ms 38 ms 39 ms 216.239.47.121
11 38 ms 41 ms 61 ms 209.85.242.21
12 54 ms 55 ms 55 ms 216.239.48.50
13 82 ms 85 ms 85 ms 209.85.241.211
14 93 ms 89 ms 89 ms 216.239.46.200
15 88 ms 89 ms 89 ms 64.233.174.101
16 91 ms 97 ms 97 ms 209.85.251.145
17 94 ms 93 ms 103 ms 74.125.30.2
18 90 ms 91 ms 93 ms 209.85.171.100
Trace complete.
</pre><hr />
As you can see by the time it hit the last hop everything was working relatively normally again, which is how it basically goes. About every 15 to 45 minutes it starts going wonky, ruins my MSN conversations, boots me out of whatever online game I'm playing, then just as quickly it goes back to normal.
The other reason I suspect the modem is because my last modem started acting up like this a few months before it had a heart attack (Lightning got to that one, apparently. Not even a direct strike, but a minor power surge from a passing storm caused it to muck up).
Anyway, any thoughts on the matter would be great. I have a new modem/router combo on order because the router is a good 3-4 years old and due for a replacement anyway, but if this continues after I get the new modem/router in place I'll pester our DSL tech to come out and test the line.