Does this look ok?

[h.cowell]

Please bear with me - I'm not too technically minded when it comes to these things and could use some advice, please :). We normally connect to the internetvia a netgear router but the connection has been flaky the past few days and last night went off completely.

I have spent all afternoon changing router channels, connecting and reconnecting, changing cables and have finally got a stable connection (for now!) by hardwiring directly to the modem (btw I already tried this a few times this afternoon and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. One time I got a connection and then lost it again.)

So I'm confused as to what's causing the problem and want to rule out a problem with the modem/VM. Here is the current modem info - does it look ok? It's an oldish modem, labelled NTL 250.

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 0
Downstream Frequency : 586750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM64
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : -1.7 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 39.4 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 5
Upstream Frequency : 34000000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 46.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2


Thanks!!!

---------- Post added at 18:34 ---------- Previous post was at 17:25 ----------

Sorry, after posting I read the sticky (duh!) asking people not to just ask for advice like this... to my untrained eye the figures look ok, right?

I'm wondering if the problem is a new wireless network nearby. The list of detectable networks seems to have grown and one or two have very strong signals. We have two laptops and another computer on our network and each are reacting differently ie one can be connected while the other two can't or are extremely slow. Frustrating!!!

[jb66]

I always find most routers use channel 6 so try putting yours to 13

[Kymmy]

Round here all the BT openzone routers are channel 10 so I tend to use a lower channel

[h.cowell]

Thanks - we were channel 6 and had been for months, but since the problems started I've tried 11 (worked briefly) and now 8 (doesn't work at all). Sigh :-/

[Ben B]

Have you tried restoring the router to defaults?

[LondonRoad]

I think looking at a wireless problem may be a red herring. The fact that you are also have a very unreliable connection when you are hard wired suggests another issue.

To narrow the problem down I'd try running with one hard wired PC for a while and log any problems.

Only after I was confident that there were no other issues would I explore if there was a wireless problem.

[h.cowell]

Still having problems here :(. Decided it was the router so bought a new one (Netgear WN150) and connected to laptop with no trouble. That was yesterday! Today the (now wireless) signal is flaky again and I can't get e-mails! Trouble is it's just not practical for me to hard wire to the modem all the time to see if the connection is the problem afterall. Sigh.

[pip08456]

Still having problems here :(. Decided it was the router so bought a new one (Netgear WN150) and connected to laptop with no trouble. That was yesterday! Today the (now wireless) signal is flaky again and I can't get e-mails! Trouble is it's just not practical for me to hard wire to the modem all the time to see if the connection is the problem afterall. Sigh.

You don't need to hard wire all the time, just for a few hours, if the problem persists then you can rule out the router and kick yourself for wasting money unnecessarily.

[h.cowell]

Hi Pip (and everyone) - thanks for the advice. I did as suggested and hardwired for a few hours in the evening and everything was ok, so went back to the wireless and miraculously that turned out to be ok too!

Tonight the connection was fine for the first few minutes (wireless) - then all slowed down again both on the laptop and on the desktop. I mean, reeaaaallly slow. Rebooted a couple of times and we're back to normal. Trouble is, it's such an intermittant problem. I'm becoming more and more convinced there's interference with a nearby network - is that possible??? Just before the connnection went tonight, the neightbours came home and (presumably) switched everything on.... :-/