[TelstraClear] Micro outages on TCL cable

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [TelstraClear] Micro outages on TCL cable

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BarTender

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#114127 2-Mar-2008 15:25

Build a JTAG and jtag the firmware back into the box, building a jtag is pretty well documented online, and the software required once you have built the cable can also be found online. That will bring your box back. Just involve a bit of soldering :) If you want some help with this PM me and I will see what we can do (if you live in wgtn)

lchiu7

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#114158 2-Mar-2008 17:16

I am still getting the micro outages, to the point now where I have the cable modem on power switch so I can easily recycle it. When it occurs interestingly, both the modem and my router still are responsive. I can't upgrade easily from my D-Link DI-784 since it's A/B/G. But I suspect my modem so will try to get TCL to replace it for me

Larry

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geoffwnz

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#114162 2-Mar-2008 17:22

lchiu7: I am still getting the micro outages, to the point now where I have the cable modem on power switch so I can easily recycle it. When it occurs interestingly, both the modem and my router still are responsive. I can't upgrade easily from my D-Link DI-784 since it's A/B/G. But I suspect my modem so will try to get TCL to replace it for me

Larry

Someone else was going to try that also. Can't remember who, and pretty sure we haven't had a response as to the outcome of that plan.

You could always try the change of local IP address range fix suggested in one of the threads on this issue.

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Mangonz

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#114456 3-Mar-2008 22:08

If its something on the network that is causing routers to drop off every 2 or 3 minutes or if it is an unrelated issue it is new to me but incredibly frustrating. Don't really want to throw away my $400 D-link router - has been great for the last year.

Seems to happen a lot more in the evenings - had to refresh a few times to even post here!

It doesn't seem to matter if you are using international traffic or connecting to someone else on the cable network. Tried to play some Diablo II with my buddy 200m down the road - we were both on cable and had to give up

Pinging www.clear.net.nz [203.97.33.220] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Reply from 203.97.33.220: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=59
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 203.97.33.220:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 1, Lost = 3 (75% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 27ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 27ms

Mangonz

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#114483 3-Mar-2008 23:27

Yay all fixed!

Tried the IP range fix suggested further up - no more lost packets :)

Gremlin

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#114555 4-Mar-2008 13:12

Which IP range fix are you referring too ? we seem to be having the same issues and I know for a fact it's not DNS related which is the only IP talk I can seem to see in this thread.

imo everyone should consider using www.opendns.orrg for their dns, paradise's have always been a little flakey.

BarTender

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#114559 4-Mar-2008 13:23

There have been a number of recommendations to change your INTERNAL ip adress range from 192.168.1.x to something else such as 192.168.123.x etc.. Due to dodgy routers having a single ARP cache, and some of said routers advertising Internal ARP entries on the cable network, you can have ARP table corruption due to the same IP Address being on both the Internal and Internet sides of your router. Any private range should be fine such as 10.x.x.x or 172.16.x.x - 172.31.x.x or 192.168.x.x for your internal subnet, just so long as it's not already being used by someone else on the cable network who has a dodgy router advertising private network ranges on the cable network. This probably also caused the STB's to reboot as well due to TCL running their STB Cable modem and Internet Cable Modems on the same network, and dishing out 172.16.x.x IP addresses, if someone else on the Internet side with a dodgy router was sending out ARP's on that same IP address thing could get messy.

Quic Broadband

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Gremlin

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#114563 4-Mar-2008 13:28

Thanks, that's definitely not our issue then (we're using private IP's and have nice custom tomato firmware on our WRT). As far as I can tell these micro outages don't appear to be router related for us anyway, it's the cable modem I suspect. We have a dozen or so micro's (most noticable when playing online games becuase you get booted out of them) then lately also one slightly larger disconnect at which time the cable modem appears to loose it's carrier signal or something and reset itself.

lchiu7

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#117630 19-Mar-2008 20:37

As the OP I got so fed up with this I moved the power cable for the modem to a power bar with a power switch so when the lockups occurred I could easily power cycle the modem! Not satisfactory but it takes ages to get through to TCL help desk.

Anyway got through on Monday and had a tech come Tuesday. He wanted to check cable signal strength etc. but I insisted he just replace the modem which he did. So far no random disconnects/micro outages so here's hoping. In spite of all the talk about Dlink routers etc. I have a Dlink DI 784 (a/b/g router) and I don't think that was the issue. All was fine for over a year until about a month or so ago.

Larry

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

WellingtonBoy

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#117704 20-Mar-2008 00:21

I experienced the same periodic outages a while back, when I used my Netgear WGR614 v 5 Router, with latest firmware available. For a while I couldn't determine if it was TCL or my hardware at fault, which was frustrating. However I noticed the DNS servers would usually be unavailable when my web access stopped and if I started a continuous ping, the web would start once the DNS Server became accessible again. Sometimes I had to power cycle the cable modem.

As a test, I removed the netgear router from the picture and connected my laptop directly into the cable modem and the problems immediately went away. This convinced me that the problem was related to my router. I googled the words "Netgear Wgr614v5 problem" and found that many other users had similiar problems with that specific router.

I agree that TCL should ideally provide advice to customers about which router models work best with their network. Will that happen?
(insert sarcastic comment here).

geekiegeek

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#117712 20-Mar-2008 06:08

Gremlin: Thanks, that's definitely not our issue then (we're using private IP's and have nice custom tomato firmware on our WRT). As far as I can tell these micro outages don't appear to be router related for us anyway, it's the cable modem I suspect. We have a dozen or so micro's (most noticable when playing online games becuase you get booted out of them) then lately also one slightly larger disconnect at which time the cable modem appears to loose it's carrier signal or something and reset itself.

Its not just having to use a private IP range. It has to be uncommon also. Most routers out of the box use 192.168.1.* or 192.168.0.* so unless you change to something like 192.168.243.* (example) then you will be using a common range that hundreds of others will have as well.

Also this does not just affect "cheap" routers. I install Cisco 800 series routers at work and we are having the same issue with some customers on TCL cable.

BarTender

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#117767 20-Mar-2008 14:12

Or as I said from other posts, you could use the 10.x.x.x range or 172.16.x.x 172.31.x.x range. Both are private network ranges, and I am sure you won't have a collision using that range.

truantsailor

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#121911 7-Apr-2008 21:40

BarTender: Build a JTAG and jtag the firmware back into the box, building a jtag is pretty well documented online, and the software required once you have built the cable can also be found online. That will bring your box back. Just involve a bit of soldering :) If you want some help with this PM me and I will see what we can do (if you live in wgtn)

Have built the interface cable and run the software. It tells me that it can see the Broadcom xxx chip but that it can't recognise the flash chip. It is not on the supported list and apppears to be made by 'Eon' although has a part similar number to the supported ones. About this time I figure I'm better off buying another and being more careful when I upgrade it.

Cheers
Jim

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