Facing my own problem this weekend. My DSL internet has been very spotty. Like I said, I'm just a hobbyist, so I have some knowledge, but probably have gaping holes in fundamentals elsewhere.
It started getting spotty Friday night, was horrible Saturday, and a bit better on Sunday. It seems ok right now.
Some of the things I've done:
Usually just doing the following helps when my DSL modem seems less than full power:
- Turn modem off
- Check phone line, power line and ethernet cable connections
- Turn modem on
- go into the command line (Win7 Pro)
- ipconfig /release
- ipconfig /renew
BTW - it is a dynamic IP address, not static
Doing that every now and then seems to keep it running on all cylinders most of the time
This time it reconnected to the Net, but severely slow and what seemed like latency or DNS problems
It is the Universal Plug N Play modem (aren't they all these days?), so setting it up from scratch can usually be done via auto settings. But I went into the modem direct interface (which is still very fast, so that would seem to suggest the hardware is ok). It has some diagnostic tests, which all come in pass. It gives the DNS (primary and secondary) IP addresses, so I put those in manually and it seemed to help, but still not full speed. And every time I think it is running better, it then goes back to crappy.
Now I'm thinking the problem is actually at the ISP and not locally, but they will never admit that of course. The modem is almost 10 years old, so there is a chance it is just starting to fail.
Anybody have any suggestions for:
- other diagnostics/troubleshooting steps you take with your own DSL modem
- what you look for if you were to just go buy a replacement DSL modem (I'd do this right now, but I hate assuming the problem is the hardware without knowing for sure)
Thanks