Loss of internet access anyone

[davey57]

Well ill tell you the story first...

I was subscribed to the 4mb cable with telewest, now virgin media :/ anyways. I have a webstar EPC2100 and sometimes I have it threw a router, sometimes I don’t. Well I Also have an ADSL line by sky, the 8meg deal for my wife. Well I decided that I wanted to downgrade the 4mb to the 2mb.
Well, ever since that day I downgraded. Randomly threw out the day I lose access to the net, yet my msn, irc still remains connected & fully usable.
I lose the ability to surf using IE 7.0 and firefox. I cant access my router, or the modem itself. The only solution is a restart which usually gives me 30-40 mins internet then it happens again. I phones VM, another 40 min wait and the guy I spoke with said it was my computer. When I explained very calmly it was not as I connected it to the adsl line & it works a dream. He asked if I have a modem. I said yeah I do, and its it tip top condition & works perfectly as it’s a cable/adsl router & I fully tested it with adsl line to & it passed all checks I made.
So, he went on about checking my cables & to restart the pc until I explained to him, I build pc systems for my job & I know for a fact, its nothing to do with my system, wires or network. 2 seconds later he hung up.

So, I asked a work mate to bring round a laptop he uses on his cable net without any problems. 1 hour it took for his laptop to develop the same problem. What the problem is down to is, ports are been blocked by the isp which is VM that’s preventing me from browsing the internet using any explorer. So I contacted them again, another 45 minute wait & I told them if they were blocking any ports of any kind, such as port 80 which is needed for your browser. They said no, I asked to speak to someone who could do a more in-depth test, he put me on hold, 2 seconds later, ling went dead.

Now, the logs on the modem are as follows:



THU MAR 15 01:02:53 2007 Critical (3) SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/Q...
THU MAR 15 01:02:52 2007 Critical (3) Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un...
THU MAR 15 01:02:24 2007 Critical (3) SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to receive MAC S...
WED MAR 14 17:48:03 2007 Critical (3) SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
WED MAR 14 12:58:16 2007 Critical (3) Init RANGING Critical Ranging Request Retries exhausted
WED MAR 14 09:32:14 2007 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Request sent, No response
Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received
Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out

Now, before the downgrade, I got no such error’s. Ever since, its all I get.

It’s a strange problem as I need to reboot to fix it, and sometimes that don’t even work. If I wait it out, 20-30 mins all of a sudden life appears again. But recently my cable light has been going off a lot to.

Anyone got any idea’s what could be the problem? Even though ive decided to call it a day with them as that’s just 1 of many problems I’m having with them at the moment so I gave my 30day notice the other day. It’s a shame to, I been with telewest for a long time now, every day was fault free with excellent customer support. But ever since this merger with NTL which branson owns most of, now became VM, quality has dropped & I think a excellent service provider has been lost to what I can only call a mess of a merger.

However I would like to know if anyone has an opinion on this or a fix, as I’ve got a good 27 days left of service id like to use it to.

[cybernetic_tiger]

If the cable light on the modem is going out or flashing there isn't much you can do apart from checking the coax cable is firmly seated into the back of the modem.

The fact that you say you loose access to your router aswell as the www concerns me a little. You should always be able to access the status page on your router even if you are not connected to the www.

When you loose connectivity can you check the status of the cable light and also ping a few places from your command prompt:

1) Your default gateway (your routers IP address)
2) The cable modem (192.168.100.1)
3) The www (212.58.224.36)

That said if the cable light goes out / flashes its really broke!

[charlesworth82]

Hi myself and a few people round the area are also losing internet access (LS14).

I rang virgin and they have an engineer coming out - even though i told them its happening to a few people. Hopefully they can get this sorted. My on demand for my V+ also stops working at the same time as my internet (I have a guy coming out for that also)

[davey57]

i pinged them when i lost access again & thats fine, no loss of data. I thought it might be my IE7 or something as its a new build system. But when i try it on another, already working system connected on cable & same thing happens.. makes me wonder what the hells going on.

Also when the cable light goes out.. nothing i can do to get it back.. all wire's, cables snug n tight..

[Stuart]

It looks like your Cable Modem needs replacing. NTL changed their encoding recently, and I am not sure if the Webstars are compatible with the new encoding.

[tweetiepooh]

Well you can always try a live Linux boot disk to elimnate any nasties on the PC but as already mentioned, loosing the net should not stop access to your router. My router shows WAN connection status, WAN IP etc.
My old ADSL router even had built in diag tools.

[davey57]

Ah well, they know what type of modem I have as they have it on file from previous problems. So to change coding as you say & not even let me know I will have problems or send a replacement modem is seriously wrong.

When telewest first started cable broadband, I signed up & been with them ever since. I rated them better than anyone else. My last serious problem was when I was away on army service. My wife was left at home & started having problems with the net & computer not booting up sometimes. The guys at telewest came out, found the network card to be incompatible/faulty which was our own card & replaced it free of charge.

Now I don’t even recognise the service I once had. 45 minute call waiting times for tech support. 2 minute call wait for new sign ups (yeah I did ring to see).
The longest wait was when I wanted to cancel my services.. wall, wasn’t an actually complete wait. I had to call back 4 times as every time someone answered, they redirected me to someone else. 2 seconds later I was disconnected.

But anyways.. I called it a day, no point avin a new modem now when I only 25-26 days left..