A few years ago, my wife and I made the switch from dial up to DSL. We got it through QWest, who uses Actiontec. Everything was OK, but occasionally we’d have problems connecting to some, or all, web sites. To remedy this, I have to unplug, and then replug the modem.
After a while of doing this, I thought about buying a new modem, but somebody we know, who was upgrading her DSL service, gave us her old DSL modem, which is actually newer than ours. And since she has QWest also, the modem is an Actiontec. Now, even with the new modem, I still have unplug and replug the modem in, sometimes once every other day, and sometimes twice in a day. And I’m pretty certain it’s the modem itself that’s the problem.
So, either I somehow ran across two duds in a row, or it’s more likely that Actiontec just makes crappy modems.
So, keeping in mind that there are three computers hooked up to the internet in my house, what DSL modem would you recommend?
Or, I think more likely, the quality of the signal on the line is marginal. The ISP / phone company can probably test the line. There’s usually a page in the modem configuration which gives statistics such as signal to noise ratio.
I’d tend to stick with whatever the ISP recommends. If you have something else then they won’t / can’t help when things go wrong.
I would call QWest before ponying up for a new modem. I had connectivity problems once and called my DSL provider. They noticed that I had a lot of noise and had me try a few things. We eventually narrowed it down to a DSL filter that had apparently crapped out and once that was replaced everything was back to normal.
Hope it’s OK to resurrect my own thread. It isn’t very old, so I think it’ll be OK.
Something I completely forgot about, is that, when I loose my Internet connectivity, I can’t even ping my modem/router. That’s what makes me think it’s the modem itself, because my local LAN is affected as well as my Internet connection.
I’ll also add, one final reason why I think it’s the modem. A couple of times now, when I’ve gone to download a torrent, and things started humming along, BOOM! The Internet goes down, and I had to reboot my modem.
I think I fixed my problem with Bittorrent, but I remain convinced that I’m probably overloading my modem, so to speak.
So what DSL modems are good for handling lots of traffic?
I replaced my parents Intel USB DSL modem with a 2wire modem/wireless router that a friend gave me. Both the friend and my parents use Qwest.
The friend bought the modem online. They (he actually gave me two, in case one didn’t work) were used and previously from another provider (BellSouth, I think) and they had the BellSouth firmware rather than the Qwest firmware. I plugged it in, enter setup to set my parents username and password for the DSL account, and it work the first time. Didn’t change the firmware at all. Shows a BellSouth logo when I access the modem setup page, but it works fine.
If you look long enough at the Qwest DSL support website, you will find the list of compatible DSL modems that Qwest supports. You probably need to be careful with exact model numbers, as some 2wire modems are listed and others are not, but you are not limited to Actiontec. Qwest supports other modems.
The company the DSL modem was originally for is SBC, not BellSouth. The model number of the modem that worked perfectly with Qwest DSL is a 2wire 2700HG-B.
I noticed that it really only happens at night, and that a few years ago when we had problems at night, it was the phone company’s fault, and they fixed it.
Last night, I called tech support, the guy said that the line was clear, he asked me about my modem, and then said that it was an older model, and I should call and get a new one. So I’ll give it a try. Except for the fact that we mostly have problems in the evening, I’ve been suspecting my modem anyway.
On the QWest Web site, they list a 2-Wire® 2700 HG and a 2-Wire® 2701 HG modem. Since there’s two votes for a 2-Wire modem, maybe I’ll give it a try.
The 2-wire isn’t very configurable, in my experience, although many people swear by it.
I’d recommend the Speedtouch 516v6. It’s a compact little bugger
I’ve only had one die on me out of 5 or 6, which is not bad. If you can pick up a “Speedtouch Home” on ebay, those are fantastic. They don’t make them anymore… they also don’t make 'em like they used to
Can you ping other computers on your LAN? I’d first make sure ping works at a time when there isn’t a problem. If the other computer is Windows XP then I think you need to enable the “File and Print sharing” exception on it’s firewall before it will return a ping.
I’m just asking that to make sure it’s not a bad cable or something but if you’re sure that the network out from your testing computer is working but you can’t ping the modem then yes, that certainly suggests a modem problem.
All three computers are part of the same workgroup. The other two computers can access the share folder on my computer, and can print using the printer physically connected to my computer.
As for pinging, one time it went down, and I couldn’t seem to ping anybody. Another time it went down, it pinged one IP address that I think belonged to one of the other computers, but it wouldn’t ping the second computer, or the modem.
Well … that does confuse things a bit. Is the “modem” also a router? i.e., do all the computers connect to the modem? There are “modems” (ActionTec make one) that are modem, router and wireless access point all in the same box.
If the modem is separate to the router then next time you have a problem I suggest physically disconnecting the modem from the LAN. If you then can’t ping the other computers then there must something else wrong other than just the modem. But again, I’d make sure before the problem occurs that you can ping the other computers when things are good. Go to the command line and run ipconfig (assuming Windows) to see what their IP address is.
I don’ t know what you’ve got, but I would recommend against what Verizon gave me. It’s a (walks across the room) Westell 6100f. The big problem is that it’s a pain in the ass to configure, and has some pretty bone-headed default configuration options. It tries to be a router and a DHCP server… but it only has one ethernet jack for the LAN, and no wireless access point. So I plugged in my own router… and nothing worked. I had to dig around obscure and mostly useless forum posts to even figure out how to configure the fucker. More digging before I figured out how to set the “just be a damn modem” setting.
It’s a modem/router combo. And I know the addresses. For a short time I had all three statically set, but I put the other two back on DHCP. The modem/router is 192.168.0.1, and then everything that attaches is 192.168.0.2 and up.
I have a wired LAN set up, because two wireless adapters in my wife’s computer burned out. If I get a modem/router with a single Ethernet port, I can buy a cheep switch. Or, from when I got my first modem/router, I bought a Belkin Wireless G router/4 port switch combo. Also, since I can set the IP addresses statically, DHCP shouldn’t be a problem.
