[olug] ping modem

[Jaymz Ringler]

Tim & Alethea Larson wrote:
> I keep losing my connection to the outside world, though my LAN is fine 
> and Cox says my modem is fine.  Usually I end up resetting the modem and 
> sometimes the routers too.  There's got to be something wrong between 
> the modem and the router.  How can I troubleshoot what it might be?
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>   


Down here in Lincoln, Time Warner had issues with the Toshiba cable 
modems.   They wouldn't admit it of course or were completely oblivious 
to the issue.  My friend is a tv repairman and he has a killer set of 
tools..   We figured after opening a a few culprit boxes that Toshiba 
must have purchased a bunch of the bad capacitors that were plaguing 
lots of consumer electronics a few years ago.    As the device got a 
little older, the caps would wear prematurely and cause intermittent 
failure of the device.

The bad caps in the cable modems would cause intermittent failures such 
that the cable modem would quit passing traffic, but would continue to 
run, and would be accessible from the provider's side and show no issues 
in the logs..   They were almost impossible to troubleshoot, because the 
techs @ TW wouldn't have any way to test it.   A power cycle would 
however solve the issue temporarily.     I've had quite a few clients 
and friends that have traded their cable modems in because of this 
issue.   They're no longer using the old Toshiba cable modems and have 
had no issues with the new modems.