The connection to the modem seems fine, they say the signal is fine when they check it through their end. Like I can be in a chair on my phone near the modem, my connection dies for 30 seconds until it finds the network again and reconnects, but the modem is never offline.
DSL is very rarely better than cable, and fiber has extremely limited availability in the Dysfunctional United States of Freedom and Failed Infrastructure.
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Interesting. Fiber is common here in cities. It’s weird how we have amazing internet but terrible cell plans and you guys are the reverse.
I agree with gregorio - have a similar issue with periodically dropping packets from my ISP. My coworkers have the same ISP, we all have the same issue. No way it’s on my end.
We live in a third world country, lol.
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I’ve been having a similar problem for about a month. At first, the internet connection dropped once or twice a day. Lights on the modem were usually still on and all of our devices were still connected to the router. I even bought a new modem and router to see if that would fix things, but no dice.
One cable tech came out and took an amplifier off my house that was installed about a decade ago. Problem actually got worse, spiking to about five times a day. Internet would conk out, but almost always come back within 5 minutes without me rebooting the modem.
Second tech came out and said the problem was that there was an electrical current in our cable lines. He couldn’t fix it, but he agreed with the previous tech in saying that our cable wasn’t properly grounded and that we needed a grounding rod installed.
So I had an electrician come out last week and he confirmed that that was most likely the issue. About $300 to install the grounding rod and he also replaced the grounding wire. Since then, though, we’ve still had some issues, though they are back down to once a day and I don’t think we’ve had a problem (knock on wood) since Sunday. I had an outage last night, but I think it was just my laptop, not the actual internet connection.
With my wife doing Zoom work calls from home on her new job and the kids about to start Zoom classes next week, should be tons of fun.
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I have Optimum 200, I could upgrade to 300 for 10/m and 400 for 20/m more. The rep said the Arris 1602 modem that I’m renting is compatible with 300/400. So I’m thinking that I buy an Arris 1602 instead of renting, and then get an above average router. Reading the comments so far, it seems like I’m likely to be SOL anyway if it’s an Optimum infrastructure issue, but any reason to hope that their faster mps plan will be an improvement for keeping stable connections throughout the day? 200 mps is more than enough for my needs atm, so I’d be upgrading only for the marginal possibility it improves connectivity.
I’m not an expert but I think it’s highly unlikely a higher speed cap will help with connection stability. The mbps rates are just a software/firmware setting that the cable company controls–in other words, the “line” has some theoretical maximum throughput well above the neighborhood of the cap, but they just set it at whatever you’re paying for.
In terms of diagnosing this thing, am I understanding correctly that all your connection drops are coming with wifi connections? Do you have a laptop or something with an ethernet port that you could connect with an ethernet cable directly to your router (or cable modem)? If you do, you can test the speed (speedtest.net is the one I use) and see if it’s good or bad. Also, if your wired connection stays stable when your wireless connection drops or gets crappy that tells you it’s a wireless problem, not anything “upstream” from that.
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Yeah, all of the devices currently connect through wifi. The wifi does well on speedtests (16 ping, 160 down / 35 up), but what will happen is the connection will just drop out of nowhere, the devices won’t find the network for 10-30 seconds, then they find it again and reconnect, and it all goes back to performing well speed-wise. I can run a cable to my PC, I don’t remember if I tried that already but it’s worth trying again to see if I lose wired when I lose wifi.
I can buy that it’s a wireless problem, but the interruptions are more prevalent during the day (too many zoomaments in the area?), but then sometimes I get a string of days when there are no interruptions at all. I have about the same number of devices accessing the network throughout the day, if anything an extra device at night.
This sounds like you might have a lot of interference. Are there a ton of wifi signals in your area? You could try another band that is less crowded.
I agree increased speed won’t help even though your speed sounds really low to me. However, I’m obsessed with internet speed. I have 940/940 connection!
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It’s a rural area, so in absolute terms not many other signals (I can see one of my neighbor’s networks and that’s it), but a lot more people/kids than usual are at home up and down the road due to the virus. I have not tried messing with the channels, I’ll give that a shot. I think my plan of action after that is: 1) try to determine if the wired connection dies when the wifi connections die 2) get a better router anyway 3) … it is what it is, no other provider for this address
Do you have a landline and wireless hand set? They can interfere with wifi too?
I’d strongly recommend google mesh. It can stabilize most Wi-Fi
Heyo. So I moved the router and modem to the center of the house and ran an ethernet cable to the router for my main PC. It seems that yes, the wired connection has a 100% up time, while the wifi devices continue to drop their connections, albeit at a noticeably lower rate. So hopefully this was just a weak router / bad placement issue, so I’m going to start with a new router and see what happens.
I’m looking to be in the ~$130-160 range for routers (probably overkill but w/e). Any recommends or avoids? @Clovis8 is that Nest Wifi what you were recommending?
I’ve only had the Nest router setup for a few days, but it appears to be perfect. I feel comfortable recommending it because I had a google wifi setup for a long time before that, and it was pretty great.
Router and 2 access points is $279 at Best Buy:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/google-nest-wifi-ac2200-mesh-system-router-and-2-add-on-points-3-pack-snow/6382518.p?skuId=6382518
How many you need depends on how large your place is. For a router plus single access point, it’s $199:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/google-nest-wifi-ac2200-mesh-system-router-and-point-2-pack-snow/6382512.p?skuId=6382512
I’m thinking I may not even need an extra access point, would there be any sense to starting with just the router or is that crazy talk?
It’s purely a matter of cost, because it’s trivially easy to add additional points to the network once it’s set up. The only thing is that I can’t immediately tell how much it is to purchase an additional access point individually.
First option: Buy router only for $169, maybe buy an additional one later for ??? ($169 is the router price on google, with $149 the list price for an access point. They’re probably available cheaper elsewhere)
Second option: Buy router + AP for $199 from the Best Buy sale link
I’d go with the second. One thing that may or may not be relevant - even if a single router were to cover the entire interior, it might be nice to have a reasonable wifi signal outside for things like security cameras or just the ability to have a cheap portable exterior speaker that connects to your network.
Edit: And it looks like nest access points might fetch about $100 on ebay if it turns out you don’t need it.
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Ok, sold, ty
Looks like they rebranded it nest but yes that’s basically what I have.
FYI, the nest version is an upgrade over the original google wifi.
Not entirely sure why I’m so invested in this discussion. I’m apparently SUPER happy with this purchase.
What is better? You have piqued my interest (and likely pissed off my girlfriend).
Comparison here:
The increase in coverage seems accurate so far. The downside is that access points don’t have any ethernet capabilities. (But if you already have a google wifi puck, you can continue to use that in a wired capacity in a nest network.) The difference between nest routers and nest access points may also influence whether you’d want a combo of router plus access points or multiple routers.