Wifi dropping on Technicolor TC7210, Sure signal on cable?

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dylanp

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#226270 29-Dec-2017 11:16

Hi folks

Wondering if anyone has experienced issues with wifi dropping on the TC7210 cable modem, and/or using a sure signal on the cable network?

I'm staying in a place on the Kapiti coast that's a mobile black spot so there's a Sure Singal here too. Periodically a Note 5, Macbook Pro stop working on wifi, but switching to mobile data (running through the sure signal) works. When wifi stops working the devices can see the wireless network still but can't join it, and the only solution I've found is power cycling the cable modem.

The cable modem is definitely still connected to the network 'cause the Sure Signal is still working. I was in a Vodafone shop yesterday and overheard that they don't recommend Sure Signal on cable - has anyone come across that too? Seems to work fine for us.

I'm thinking that it might be best to suggest they switch to fibre, but wondering if anyone has any other solutions.

Cheers

sbiddle

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Biddle Corp

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#1926513 29-Dec-2017 11:39

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That almost seems like a DNS issue. I've seen numerous routers in the past few years experience an issue of the Internet seemingly "stopping working" but on analysis pings work fine and the local Dnsmasq (or similar) process process on the router has died. Netcomm suffered this on a number of their routers for quote a while and finally fixed it, but in my experiences the issue seems to have occurred primarily when Apple hardware was used.

When the Internet isn't work do pings still work? And if you do a nslookup to a removDNS server (say 8.8.8.8 for Google) does that work while a nslookup to the router IP fail?

dylanp

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#1926663 29-Dec-2017 19:45

Thanks for the reply Steve. Yeah, I was thinking along those lines, I'll take more time to troubleshoot it when it happens next. Problem is it's just all a bit weird! -

We were out for a few hours today and when we returned it had buggered up again. When I opened up my laptop it wasn't connecting to the wifi, when I chose it from the list of available networks I received the message "The wi-fi network "[network name]" could not be joined. Try moving closer to the wireless router. ..."

On the phone it had an exclamation point next to the wireless icon up the top. I tried manually setting dns to 8.8.8.8 then I think applying that change caused it to re-join the network and it wouldn't join. When I went to manually choose the network from the list it periodically gave me the message "Authentication error occurred" and wouldn't join.

Turned the modem off and suddenly they both work.

And nope, I haven't moved closer or further away from the modem, or changed the saved password.

Also, again the Sure Signal keeps working throughout. Rather annoying!

dylanp

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#1926762 29-Dec-2017 21:55

Happened again - laptop showing still connected to wifi and I tried pinging 8.8.8.8 and the modem 192.168.0.1 - nope, both just timed out.

Really not a fan of this modem. :)

techo

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#1927518 1-Jan-2018 09:24

On the laptop, go into the Network Adapter configuration settings and under the advanced tab you may come across 'Roaming Sensitivity' or 'Roaming Aggressivenes' and try setting to disabled/lowest.

MadEngineer

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#1927545 1-Jan-2018 10:09

sbiddle:

That almost seems like a DNS issue. I've seen numerous routers in the past few years experience an issue of the Internet seemingly "stopping working" but on analysis pings work fine and the local Dnsmasq (or similar) process process on the router has died. Netcomm suffered this on a number of their routers for quote a while and finally fixed it, but in my experiences the issue seems to have occurred primarily when Apple hardware was used.

When the Internet isn't work do pings still work? And if you do a nslookup to a removDNS server (say 8.8.8.8 for Google) does that work while a nslookup to the router IP fail?

+1. I've found routers that seem to be on their last legs - a guest turns up and suddenly the dying router is found to not support more than the one laptop it's been happily serving for years and the owner blames the guest. Logging into the admin web-interface on the router quickly kills it within a minute or so then after a few reboots you find it's completely dead except maybe if you only hardwire a device in and don't go near the web-interface.

A quick call to their ISP lands them a new router.

Aredwood

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#1932488 9-Jan-2018 01:06

If you have any Ethernet switches in your network, try resetting them separately as well. I have a switch that sometimes gets its MAC address tables corrupted, symptoms are some computers loose network access. restarting the switch fixes the problem. That switch has long since been replaced. But still sits on the shelf as a backup in case my main switch suddenly dies.

Also check If there is a device on your network that is sending out too many broadcast packets. One of my WiFi Access points decided to send out lots of broadcast packets one day. again weird things happened. Do the activity lights keep flashing for no apparent reason?

And older Android versions have buggy DHCP clients. things like if they renew their IP and the router assigns a different one. Device will sometimes start using the old IP again, and cause IP conflicts. Workaround is to give static DHCP assignments to those devices.