[TelstraClear] Frequent Disconnections

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apoth99

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#21805 7-May-2008 12:33

Hi Geekzone Members,

I have a TelstraClear cable modem (Surfboard) with an Asus router.

I am an avid online gamer and play World of Warcraft.

Over the past eight weeks I have been experiencing random disconnections from the internet. These disconnections involve being disconnected from the WoW server, Ventrilo, Instant Messenger, uTorrent P2P downloads. It appears that the whole network will suddenly go down. Both computers attached to it.

I have replaced the Zyxel router believing this to be the problem, only it persists with the new Asus one. The connection is almost always immediately restored and my cable modem lights continuing going through the whole thing.

I am at an impasse as to what might be causing this.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Apoth99

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#129124 7-May-2008 14:33

Which suburb are you in?

If you have a read around you will see that a lot of TCL customers have been having frequent disconnections of late.

Can you ping your router while your internet is down? If so it looks like it is your internet connection.

I would call TCL and ask them if they can check your connection logs during the time period where you have been disconnected. They will be able to see when your modem has been re registering onto their network. If that is the case then log a fault, hopefully they will do it without you asking, and hopefully it will get sorted for you.
Otherwise join my queue where I am waiting for the local capacity to be upgraded which could take several moons, so far I have been waiting for around 5 moons.

apoth99

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#129174 7-May-2008 16:34

Woburn.

I am thinking of changing to SlingShot. TCL customer service is worse than anything I have ever encountered before.

nigelramsay

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#129423 8-May-2008 17:08

I suggest you ask around before making the switch to that ISP

BarTender

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#129461 8-May-2008 19:42

I suggest you read this thread: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=44&TopicId=18975

In short the following is recommended to resolve the problem:

1) Replace your router with a Linksys WRT54GL and load it up with DD-WRT.
2) Change the internal IP Address range on your internal network from 192.168.1.x to something different like 192.168.36.x or some other random number between 1 and 254 in the third octect.
3) Ring up TCL (during the day, early morning is the best time to get through to Tech Support I find) and get them to come out and check the line et al.
4) As part of #3 get the tech to replace the surfboard at the same time, others have reported this to fix your problems.

However I have found that 99% of the issues are resolved with 1 & 2.

apoth99

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Geek

#129573 9-May-2008 07:13

TCL are coming out Saturday to give me a new Cable Modem. Replacing the SB5100 with the SB5101. Hopefully that should fix it. My router is not the problem. I have tried direct connections to the cable modem without the router and experienced the same solution. I have also replaced my router once already believing that to be the problem. Thank's for the replies.

CyntaxEra

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#135044 2-Jun-2008 21:35

Howdy,

Any joy with getting your frequent disconnection problem fixed?

Have been having similar problems (admittedly, it's a crappy wireless DLink I've got - has been working fine for the last few months though; plus someone else bought it so is a freebie for me :) ).

Only thing being that I've got the DLink NAT'ing to my home lappy hosting an FTP server so I can transfer stuff between home and the office.

Since it's someone else's name on the bill here (I used to have my net cable connection and had issues when swapping between machines so figured there was something locking down the MAC address to access so similar prob?) I don't have much to do with it, but it's a pain when I can't VPN into the office, being the workaholic I am :D

*sigh* guess I'll have to go back to using my VMC card and paying *gasp* for my Internet connection instead.

Dyson

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lchiu7

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#135076 2-Jun-2008 23:00

The past week has been hell for me with random disconnections happening at least 5-6 times/hour. I can't replace my router since I need 802.11a. But I did change all the local addresses in my network to something that is not 192.168.1.x and also a month or so ago replaced my modem. It's getting really frustrating but since when it work, TCL cable is the best, I can't really jump ship. Now if a really fast DSL turned up with good upstream speeds and downstream speeds at least 8-10Mbs I could be tempted!

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.

BarTender

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#135092 3-Jun-2008 07:18

CyntaxEra: Since it's someone else's name on the bill here (I used to have my net cable connection and had issues when swapping between machines so figured there was something locking down the MAC address to access so similar prob?) I don't have much to do with it, but it's a pain when I can't VPN into the office, being the workaholic I am :D

The TCL Cable modems unless you had the "configuration upgrade" are locked to a single MAC address after booting. So the first MAC address that registers itself against your Public Static IP will be the only MAC address the Cable Modem will accept. TCL Made a firmware or configuration change on their side to allow you to change the MAC address dynmicially without needing to reboot the router, otherwise the sure fire way to change between two machines using the same physical public IP is to reboot the cable modem. I suggest you ring TCL today ~10:30am and ask them to confirm your Cable Modem config, when I did it (and since I had changed plans to the 5GB plan) my speed increased, and I was able to change devices plugged into my cable modem without reboot.

I have been working from home for the last 3 weeks, and never had a dropout at all. I run a Linksys RV042 with a different internal IP address range from 192.168.1.x. Plus I have before I upgraded to the RV042 two months ago, I used my Linksys WRT54GL loaded with DD-WRT without having a dropout either.

lchiu7: Now if a really fast DSL turned up with good upstream speeds and downstream speeds at least 8-10Mbs I could be tempted!

That's what keeps me with TCL.

CyntaxEra

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#135117 3-Jun-2008 09:41

Sweet - thanks, BT.

Now, I don't suppose having multiple PC's on this side of the router running P2P software would cause a bit of havoc? :) It hasn't been a noticeable problem (in other words, I've never noticed any probs) over the last few months, but the last couple of weeks have been pretty crap.

A TCL tech (I'm guesssing a 3rd party contractor tho) is supposed to be coming out here today (according to the person on the bill here) and I just happen to be workin' from home today, so we'll see where that leads us. I might just reset the DLink and reconfigure just in case someone else here's been playing (they say that they haven't, but after a while, you stop believing people when they say that they haven't changed anything...).

Will update with where things are with my probs just in case it helps anyone else out. My guess is that they'll swap out the cable modem, but we'll see how we go :)

Thanks again for yer help.

BarTender

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#135135 3-Jun-2008 11:17

CyntaxEra: Now, I don't suppose having multiple PC's on this side of the router running P2P software would cause a bit of havoc? :) It hasn't been a noticeable problem (in other words, I've never noticed any probs) over the last few months, but the last couple of weeks have been pretty crap.

That can be the cause from having a cheapie router. Since what happens is the ARP cache gets filled with ARP entries on both sides (public and private), plus having P2P software means you will have a stack of IP connections to all over the place, and the more clients you run, expoentially the more connections you will have to maintain in your NAT table.

CyntaxEra: A TCL tech (I'm guesssing a 3rd party contractor tho) is supposed to be coming out here today (according to the person on the bill here) and I just happen to be workin' from home today, so we'll see where that leads us. I might just reset the DLink and reconfigure just in case someone else here's been playing (they say that they haven't, but after a while, you stop believing people when they say that they haven't changed anything...).

Will update with where things are with my probs just in case it helps anyone else out. My guess is that they'll swap out the cable modem, but we'll see how we go :)

Normally TCL come out and check the line quality, plus often replace the Cable modem with little or not effect.

I can only re-iterate that going out and getting a Linsys WRT54GL and loaded DD-WRT will be your only guarenteed way to resolve this... Perhaps I should write up a new thread and get it added as sticky!

apoth99

16 posts

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#135198 3-Jun-2008 15:10

TCL came out and replaced my cable modem with the newer version. It has not fixed the problem, but the disconnections are few and far between. Gaming throughout the long weekend (Saturday - Sunday) I would have had about 4 disconnections in total. It is frustrating but not game breaking. I was previously getting anywhere between 2 - 3 an hour.

HP

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CyntaxEra

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#135456 4-Jun-2008 15:19

Well, the TCL engineer came by and checked all connections - said all looked fine - and replaced the cable modem. He also mentioned that there was some work being done on the network which wasn't *supposed* to have any effect, but may be causing problems as others in the area were experiencing similar issues. Must say that the disconnections seemed to become less frequent tho.

I'm liking the idea of replacing the DLink, but that'll have to wait when I've got some "spare" cash lying around. Maybe I'll just post some requests for money online and wait for the donations to roll on in. heh.

lchiu7

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#135464 4-Jun-2008 16:16

Thanks to Bartender I am testing out a Linksys WRT54GL with new firmware. So far so good - while I was getting several disconnects each hour, last night I had none. Configuration was a little more complex than my Dlink but one done, it was fine.

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.

geoffwnz

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#136007 6-Jun-2008 15:38

lchiu7: Thanks to Bartender I am testing out a Linksys WRT54GL with new firmware. So far so good - while I was getting several disconnects each hour, last night I had none. Configuration was a little more complex than my Dlink but one done, it was fine.

Another convert.

The WRT54GL with DD-WRT has been up and running for several months now without issue.
Still the occasional disconnection, but it is occasional (two or three days between each) rather than the norm.

MotorDrive Rallying

lchiu7

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#136036 6-Jun-2008 17:21

I wonder if it's related to the TCL cable network only? Others on DSL using other routers might have this problem or perhaps do many of them have combined DSL modem/routers? No combined cable modem/router devices available

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.

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