I have a Motorola Surfboard SB5120 Cable/Modem. Attached to it is a Netgear Router (Wired) which is connected to my Cat-5 connection port. I'm running XP Pro w/SP2. Every day or more, the PC/Connectivity light goes out and I no longer have access to the internet. When I unplug it and replug it back in it works just fine. Does anyone know how I can eliminate this annoying problem?
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If unplugging the Surfboard resolves the issue you could have a bad modem.
You could download IPMonitor which is a utility that sends out pings and monitors the connectivity of specified devices. I like to set it up to check every minute and point it to the router, the modem (ISP's gateway) and an Internet IP. This way you can check where and when the connection fails as it creates a log file. You might find the connection to the Internet is lost but modem and router stay connected which would definitely indicate a problem with the service provider or modem. Or, perhaps the modem and Internet drop off which would indicate modem or router problem. If all are lost then the router is likely at fault. You even add to that the computer itself when testing to verify it is not a computer issue.
http://ipmonitor.tsarfin.c
Is it just the activity light that goes out? No other lights? This usually means that the connection to whatever device is on the ethernet is lost. Is it just the modem you are power cycling? The test would be to connect directly from a computer to the modem and see if the problem persists. If it does, you probably have a flaky ethernet port on the modem. If it works fine, you probably have a flaky router. If you are losing other lights on the modem it will be and entirely differnet problem.
I want to thank all of you for your input. I have indeed found the problem. I had Cox come out and they checked all of my connections. They found enough line noise on the line and changed out most of my connections and put a filter on the line. This has resulted in no down time for over a week. Do to the nature of this problem I was unable to resolve this in a more speedy manner. And finally I did install ipmonitor. All that told me was what I already knew. I was not able to see the network.
Thanks again for your support.
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by: RobWillPosted on 2006-01-06 at 14:05:56ID: 15633841
>>"When I unplug it and replug it back in it works just fine."
When you "replug" the computer or Netgear. If it is the Netgear, I would recommend getting the newest firmware from the Netgear site and installing it, even if same version as you have now. Write down all configuration settings first as this may set it back to factory default settings.
On the computer check the power saving configuration both in control panel and an the network adapter itself and make sure "turn this device off to save power" is not enabled.