Randseed Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Posts: 111
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Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 6:43 pm Post subject: Re: Intermitten Blackouts |
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crahen wrote: | I have a question that I thought I'd run by the forum. Someone else is sure to have had this.
I seem to have very interrmittent internet connection blackouts. Its really annoying because they
seem to last a minute and then be ok. I think its my cable connection. Is there any kind of test I can to
check this out? Like some app I can run that will measure the connection and rate or anything like that? |
I get the same thing. When it appears to go out, do this:
ping <some machine on your LAN>
ping slashdot.org
Replace slashdot.org with anything you know is up. If you can ping the LAN but not the Inet machine, then you know the fall off is at your cable modem. If you can't even ping the LAN, then you know it's your wireless, your router, or whatever else on your local system.
My cable modem has a power light, a "cable" light, and a "data" light. Occasionally, my cable light will go dark, indicating that it can't see the cable line. Usually, pulling the power cable on the modem, waiting three seconds, and plugging it back in fixes the problem. I don't know why it occurs, and it occurs semi-randomly, related to the amount of data going through the connection. Personally, I think it has to do with the construction going on around my home, and it only detects that someone temporarily unplugged the line in a box somewhere when it's trying to send data. (i.e., if it doesn't get a huge number of faults, it's more tolerant.)
I've actually considered rigging up a switch that I can plug into the parallel port on my routing machine (a Linux box) that will just power cycle the thing when it detects that the net has gone down. |
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