Intermittent internet connection

Temperal

OSNN Junior Addict
Joined
30 May 2004
Messages
46
Hi all I'm hoping someone may be able to help me iron out my internet connection.

About 1 week ago my internet connection would periodically stop after about 5-10 minutes of useage. I would power cycle the cable modem and wired router and it would come back up. I eventually called the cable company and they said things looked good on their end but would send a guy out. In the interim I bought a new modem. Motorola Surfboard 5120. One of the guys at the cable company said maybe the old modem was going bad, I had it for 4 years. Got the new modem had them update the MAC address at the cable company and the problem seems to have improved some but it is still happening.
Since then the cable guy came out and said the signal strength was borderline. He reconfigured the splitters so that the cable modem is getting a signal after only one instead of two splits and says that the signal strength improved. I have plugged the computer in without the router to rule that out. Still no luck. I have the lateset chipset drivers from nvidia. My motherboard is an Nforce2 with integrated NIC. I'm using Windows One Care(WOC) for software firewall and antivirus. WOC was just updated but the computer seemed to work fine for a while so I don't thing that it is an issue. The regular windows firewall is turned off. I have done multiple virus scans with WOC and using trend micros online scanner. I have also checked for spyware with windows defender, adaware, and spybot.
My internet connection is 3m down and 512 up. I have run numerous speed tests from various sources and I consistently get my rated speeds. That is the strange part, when it works it is spot on. The only other wierd thing is no matter how many times I succesfully install macromedias flash player it will not work on sites that have flash. This seems to have started somewhere around the time that the other stuff started. No clue if they are connected or not.

Motorolas modem test site lists:
Downstream
Signal to noise ratio 38db
Power level 9dbmv
Upstream
power level 38dbmv

I used speedguides tcp optimizer a long time ago to adjust some of the net settings but the computer has worked fine with them in the past. Either way here is what they are set at now
MTU 1500
Rwin 64240

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm trying to rule out whether it is on my end or the cable companies end. If you need more info please let me know. Thanks in advance.
Shawn
 
levels on the modem are good. I like to see the upstream in the mid 40's but 38 is good.

since it still happens when you by pass the router it is remotely possible that it is spyware or a virus.
 
Just ran an online virus scan at Kaspersky's website and it did not find anything. I'm going to try and use a different Cat5 cable. I have no clue if a bad cable could cause a problem like this or not. I figure it can't hurt to try. I just can't figure out how it could work fine for a period of time and then go down. Prior to it going down if I'm playing a game or checking my e-mail the internet seems to slow down and then get better and then eventually it will drop the connection. Also I've not noticed it drop a connection when I am not actually doing something online. Thanks again.
 
not sure if this applies to cable, but with dsl it's always best to have the distance between the telephone exchange and the modem at the shortest length as possible - in the home this would mean having a shorter cable connecting the modem to the wall socket.
 
The cable from the wall to the cable modem is about 4 feet long. I wonder if it is possible for a bad coaxial cable to cause an intermittent problem.
I went ahead and switched the Cat5 cable and still no luck. Thanks for the suggestions. Keep them coming. I appreciate your help.
Shawn
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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