NTL issues

Andybtsn · 26 Jan 2007 at 10:38

My girlfriend is having a problem with her internet at the moment at her Uni house.
Its a simple connection, router in the lounge and 3 10m cat5's going to three people's machines.
Ever since they moved in, when surfing the net the net disconnects for about 10 seconds, so "page cannot be displayed" is seen a lot. It occurs for all the house mates, it was never much of an issue but now the GF is using her 360 on live, playing online is a nightmare as she keeps getting disconnected. The problem occurs for all of the house mates.

There doesn't seem to be a problem with the router, all ports are showing a link and activity lights constantly.

NTL say there are no problems although their support is pretty crap, they might be sending an engineer out but if they don't find a problem a £25 charge is issued.

Any ideas what the problem could be?

Wyrdo · 26 Jan 2007 at 10:41

Tried plugging one of the PCs directly into the modem rather than the router to see if the problem persists with a direct connection?

If the problem goes away then it's the router, if you still get the same problem it's the modem or NTL more than likely.

Andybtsn · 26 Jan 2007 at 11:46

Getting her to try that.

What is the command for searching for the IP's on your network? I want her to ping the router constantly but I don't and she doesn't know the IP of the router? How do I find it..

Misan · 26 Jan 2007 at 14:22

Just do an 'ipconfig /all' from the Command prompt, then check the Default Gateway address (That's the IP of the router)
If you want to send a ping constantly, type 'ping ipaddresshere -t'

When you say the connection disconnects, are you referring to the clients losing connectivity completely, or do the machines still get an IP address via DHCP? If not the machines would be assigned with a 169.254.* address after performing 'ipconfig /renew' from the command prompt.

To be honest, this issue looks like its more of a DNS issue, have you tried performing an nslookup from any of the client PC's (eg 'nslookup www.google.com' from the command prompt.) when web page requests timeout.

Check the Event Viewer too, under System, does anything get logged there regarding IP related issues on any of the client PC's?

Regards

Andybtsn · 26 Jan 2007 at 14:42

DHCP remains there, the IP address always is present. It's not like when the internet disconnects and a "network cable is unplugged" error comes up.

We are pinging google.com now constantly.

Funnely enough I work in Comms, IT, so I should know all this anyway

Thanks for your reply

Andybtsn · 26 Jan 2007 at 14:46

The request did time out after a while of pinging google so there is definately a problem on the line. Thing is NTL say the line is fine :confused:

Misan · 26 Jan 2007 at 15:29

Figures.. Although we now have the delight of a new rebranded company, Virgin Media (I'm on NTL too) I feel so much better knowing Branson's in charge of things...

arcamalpha · 26 Jan 2007 at 15:40

We had a similar problem. Turned out that the modem was no longer supported by NTL (a Teryon one). The engineer came to install a new modem (NTL 250) and said that he'd replaced some 50 that week alone.

Aparantly NTL didn't know who had the old modem, so simply let users ring up when the internet stopped working properly.

Worth a shot.

Also, ring up early and navigate through the menu to get to customer services in England. They are generally more helpful.

Andybtsn · 26 Jan 2007 at 18:38

Its a 250!

There refusing to send an enginner apparentely now as they cant see a fault.

I'm going to ring them now though so will try and get an update