Charter HiSpeed Internet cable >>> Motorola SB6121 modem >>> Rosewill L600N router
Charter states that my connection is Dynamic, and I can vouch for that because if I unplug the modem for more than a minute or so it will come back with a different IP address than I had before. However, if I run an "automatic setup" on the router, sometimes it reports a Dynamic IP, but more often reports a Static IP. Once I get a connection, I lose DHCP from the modem in anywhere between 15 minutes and 8 hours. Yesterday I did a modem default reset through the browser and reboot of the router and it lasted almost 8 hours, but then dropped handshake again about 15 minutes after I went to bed so when I got up my network was again internet-less ( found this out through my router logs). I've tried doing default resets on the modem through a browser, soft resets on the modem through the browser, hard resets on the modem by unplugging power cable, and of course the same things on the router as well. When I do a reset and get access to the cable modem back, the logs keep seeing ranging errors and T3 errors, so I suspect the modem is timing out so the modem and the router are losing their "handshake". My network stays intact, as I have one computer hardwired in to the router and 4 wireless devices in my network. AFter losing internet, I can still see all my devices on my network using WNetWatcher, and on all the individual devices I see "strong" to "excellent" connection statuses with the router as well as their reserved assigned address in the status connection menu I get by right clicking the icon in the system tray. So I know my router is talking to my network devices, I just don't think the modem and router are talking correctly to each other after a set period of time, and I don't know if it is the routers' fault or the modems. From what I've seen from others' posts, the modem starts giving Ranging and T3 errors, times out, then the router loses access to the internet.
I have tried going to Charter and getting a new SB6121 modem to see if that was the trouble, but it has the same problems. My quandary is that running Google searches come up with both T3 timeout problems with the SB6121 on various IP Providers, as well as recent Newegg customer reviews griping about dropped connections on the L600N (but even then some of those could be from an SB6121?) so after a week and a half of troubleshooting I still can't figure out whether the cable modem is my problem or the router is. I have the Iron Egg guarantee that lets me go until the end of January for RMAs so I have time to figure this out, but my frustration level is BONKERS
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(as well as my wife and kid's for multiple losses of their internet connections until I reprovision/reboot the modem and router).Can any networking gurus shed any light on this problem for me? Thanks!
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). From what I can see by research if there are too many connections then ACK packs can't travel between the modem and router well, and if the modem is asking for confirmations and not getting them from the router then after so many failed attempts it will disconnect my internet, even though it still shows as "up" and using the same Dynamic IP address that it assigned earlier still and connected to my router when I call Charter tech support. What I can't figure out is if it is the modems downfall or the router's. I see that there is four downstream channels in my modem connection but only one upstream, so if that one upstream goes out of sync from too many connections wouldn't that mean that it isn't seeing the ACK packet replies from my router which keeps my internet connection up? Like I said earlier my network (both wired and wireless) stays in place so I can access my router homepage at any time, I just lose internet connection between the modem and the router. Sometimes my router sees my connection as "Static" instead of "Dynamic" and shows an address of 0.0.0.0 when I've lost internet. I have done temporary fixes by going into router and changing "Dynamic" to "Static" and manually typing in the last known IP address that Charter's DHCP server assigned to me and it will resume internet, but then hours later it loses it again even though I am not uploading or downloading any significant amounts (I get 4mb up/30+mb down, and am nowhere near maxing that when I get disconnected). Of course everytime I call Charter they just read off script and want me to do hard resets of my modem and router, which will assign me a new DHCP IP address through the modem but then that can also drop at random times. I do use a paranoid ipfilter in my torrent client so I'm wondering if all those queries are passing through my modem and router but then being blocked from the client leaves too many connections "hanging" and then being resent in an endless cycle that overwhelms the modem or router?
