Cable Modem/Wireless Router Problem

[Jacksfork]

This is my first post here. A little about my background first. I worked at a state university for 30 years in Audio/Visual/Video/Technical installation/design and maintenance. I know how to troubleshoot for electronic equipment problems.

I own an Arris Surfboard cable modem wireless A/N router and have Xfinity for internet service. About the only problems I have experienced with this device is keeping our network printer connected, we have too turn off the printer and turn it back on to get it to show back up on our devices. This has been a minor problem wee have just lived with.

Lately we have been experiencing an outage of Internet connectivity wiith this router. I woud unplug it annd wait 10 seconds then plug it back in and it still would not reconnect. On the front of the Arris Surfboard there are two lights that turn blue for the 5.4Ghz channnel when it is working correctly. These were not lit. Even though our devices showed connectivity to the wireless router, there was no Internet connection. I called Xfinity tech help because I wanted to see if there were any problems reported in our area. They claimed none were present and went through the process of having me unplug it, plug it back in and they also tried too remotely reset it. This did not work.

I was just about to go out and plunk down another $150 to get a new unit but decided to try one last test. I unplugged the Arris Surrfboad unit then disconnected the coax cable. I waited ten seconds then plugged the unit back in and then connected the coax cable. It connected to the Internet, the blue LEDs lit up for the 5.4Ghz connection and we had the Internet on our devices again.

This happened again 24 hours later and I reset it the same way wiith success. IIt happened once again the next day and I got it back up and running using the same reset procedure. I. Also tried too doo it wiith just unplugging it without disconnecting the coax cable just in the case it was a fluke doing so. It wouldn't work again unles I disconnected the coax.

My question is, is this problem related to the Arris modem/router or is it something related to Comcast/Xfinity? I can't imagine why disconnecting the coax cable would do anything related too the Arris Surfboard modem/router but I don't claim to know everything. Any thoughts on this anyone?

Thank you in advance.

 

[mickevh]

When the Internet service drops, without disconnecting anything, can you still ping the router?

How is your printer connected - wire or Wi-Fi?

 

[Jacksfork]

Our devices still show a connection but my wife's laptop shows no internet connection warning on the network icon. My iPad shows a connection but any attempt to connect to the internet results in unable to connect warning.

The printer is connected via wifi. The Xfinity provided cable modem wireless router we had before never had this problem. The Arris Surfboard I purchased to deflect the rental fees from Xfinity experiences this regularly.

If I have Xfinity come out it's $60 if it's a problem with my equipment/wiring. I haven't touched anything equipment or infrastructure wise to think that may be a cause.

My cable service comes directly into the house and is split with a digital splitter and goes directly into my router and digital tuner. There are no other splits before these two connections.

I'm mainly puzzled because it doesn't connect until I disconnect the coax cable and reconnect it.

 

[mickevh]

Ignoring your printer, it's sounding like an issue with your Internet connection rather than your router.

Be wary of things that show various "connection" states: The sort of data networking technologies one uses at home are intrinsically "connectionless" ("connection oriented" and "connectionless" are phrases with prescribed meaning in the field of data networking) so (for example) a Windows computer that is showing itself "connected to the Internet" need to be viewed a little skeptically as strictly speaking, there is no such concept.

The testing I've advocated by pinging your router when the connection drops will help ascertain whether you've "just" got a problem with the Internet connection, or something more fundamental is going wrong with your router (or possible the Wi-Fi airwaves in your locale) and stopping it working.

Ideally one would want to test with both a wired ethernet and Wi-Fi connections pinging both something locally (your router) and something "on the Internet."

I suggest you do this when everything is working to "get used" to how it's working when it's OK - ping both your router and something on the Internet - though be aware that a lot of web sites are now routinely not answering ping as they regard it as a security risk. In the UK, the BBC are still kind enough to respond to ping.

Thence, when you next get a failure, repeat the tests and compare the results, and by a process of elimination, one should be able to infer whether the fault lies with the link to your router (wired or Wi-Fi) and if that's OK & the Internet is not, then it indicates a fault with the ISP link.

With regard to your printer, it sounds rather like either it's going to "sleep" and not waking up again, possibly loosing is Wi-Fi Association. You could use a similar set of ping tests against the printer to see if it's completely disappeared.

It looks like you have potentially got two issues (printer/Internet) which would be worth addressing "one at a time."

It's worth noting that it's not unheard of for an ISP link to fail, but the router is just fine and pulling out the "Internet" cable (however it's delivered) and reconnecting it gives (the ISP link) the "kick" it needs to re-establish.

 

[Jacksfork]

That does sound reasonable. I'll have to do some ping tests to determine what's going on when it's working well and what I get when it's not. At least it has been 2 days now thhat the connection has been flawless.

I did do a speed test last evening using the app Speedtest and everything was up to par with 89.59 Mbps download and 11.81 Mbps upload speed with a 15ms ping to Chicago. This was wireless connection to my iPad.