Hi,
I have an interesting problem with my home network and TCL, and I was wondering if anyone else has a similar setup or struck the same issue recently.
I've had telstraclear cable for about two years and have always had it plugged into a linksys router then on to about 4 PCs in my home, this has been running fine for years with no problems. Actually it has been great, (2mb, 5gig plan very good.)
But last Monday I lost internet connectivity, after a bit of trouble shooting, I reset the router, checked all the settings, etc, etc... did the hard resets, powered off, blah, blah, but still no go.
Also the cable modem and internet worked fine when I plugged it directly into a PC.
So I assumed the router had died and replaced it with a new D-Link, but got the same problem, so in the off chance that it too was faulty I returned that and got another, again same issue. So its not the hardware. I also replaced my cables, and tried the router with different combinations of PC's, no go there either.
The annoying part is, if I connect the modem to a PC it works fine, so obviously the TCL help desk is a nightmare as they won't help me once they establish that that it works in a PC. Even had one guy hang up on me (ouch!)
When I connect the cable direct to the router, I seem to sort of get connected to their network, but I can't seem to get out, I can't ping the default gateway or dns servers, or see any machine on the internet, however I can ping other cable users on my subnet, which is weird? Ocassionally it will work for 3 or 4 seconds then stop again.
My current work-around is to have a PC plugged into the modem with ICS turned on, then with a second ethernet card in the PC, I plug that into the WAN port of my router and go from there, and this works no problem, so this also proves that the router is fine.
So this is very annoying. Especially since I have been doing this successfully for a couple of years, I am pretty familiar with how to setup routers and networks (not an expert) but I am confident its not a configuration issue at my end.
So does anybody else successfully use a router directly?
I have bluntly asked TCL if they are blocking routers somehow and they say no, and that its not even possible.
A tech even came out and replaced the modem for me because I pestered them so much.
Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated, I have completely run out of ideas....