Why did this happen?

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Last night my electric cut off for no more than a minute in the house, the computer was on at the time. My router is somewhat rubbish in that when power goes off on it you have to enter the username and password plus port settings again as they dont save. So I did that but the internet just would not connect. The routers power/ethernet/WLAN/DSL LEDS were lit but not the Internet LED. So i tried just restarting the computer, rebooting the router etc but again it wouldnt work, i even turned the computer off for about 20 minutes and gave it a try. So i thought maybe there was a fault with the router from a power surge(even tho i use a surge protector) So dug out an old one that i had free with sky broadband, again these didnt seem to want to connect but thought they were a bit dodgy when i used them last anyway. So i gave up and figured i'll look into it more today.

Computers been off all last night, router still running from the mains. Turned the computer on, did the whole user password stuff again, and its working?!

Anyone know why suddenly its working again now?
 
You were trying to fix things rather that first learn what is and is not working. Therefore you cannot yet provide facts necessary to have a useful reply.

Start with what connects to what. For example, from the PC (Command Prompt), enter the command PING 192.168.1.1

What gets reported? Does any computer ping that router? And what numbers?

Then log into the DSL modem server page using the browser and an address of 192.168.1.1. Find the status page or a page that lists signal strenght numbers in dBs. What are those numbers?

Best way to connect that router is directly to AC mains. And with nothing (no protector) connected to its phone wire. You also have zero reasons to believe a surge existed. Power off (from its switch, yanking the cord from the wall, or when utility disconnects) is a blackout (zero volts); not a surge (tens of thousands of volts).

Leaving computer off for 20 minutes is another 'old wives tales' cure. Does nothing other than suggest how confused you were.
 
Happens a lot in power conditions..... At a Guess your router is a Thompson Speedtouch or a rebranded one there normally dark blue in colour, Sky Broadband did use and rebranded these at some point....

It's certain firmware versions that does not save the username & password upon hard reboots of the router,

I see this day in day out in my Job always having customers ringing up saying we had a power cut and now internet is not working, in most cases it's the above fault......

Firmware update the router re enter all the config for the router then do a full config backup via it's own util, as it's easier to re upload a config file than having to go through the setup each time there's a power cut etc.

Also another known fault on some routers is that the built in firewall & intrusion prevention features get re enabled upon hard reboots of routers and this somtimes causes NONE NAT ADSL connections & in rare cases even NAT ADSL connections to fail as most ISPs have an auto detect feature that taps into your router and prediffines certain configs within your router.... The pure fact that yours didn't work last night after the power cut..... but this morning it does means with the router being on overnight at somepoint your ISP would have done somthing....
(im not saying that a guy at your ISP logged into your router to did somthing but more likely the ISP detected you were offline and ran a routine router check all ISP's have this sort of system in place but will never admit it)

somtimes you can check your logs on the router and you will find a random entry of a connection or in most cases a router reboot or DSL reset was done on your line.


Of Topic here now but info that's usful:

I'm with Virgin Media and often see activity within my router logs ok not DSL but still a external network.... so much so I enabled a syslogger server to log everything and found out that over a space of a month Virgin Media had accessd my router over 500 times on tcp & udp I looked into what they was doing and it turned out most of the connections were DNS address updates or what seemed to be, I whacked a firewall rule in place to block these connections from outside to inside after a few day's my service went down, I called tech support and after being passed to 3 tech people I finally got to someone that could answer my question.

They said they could not see my router from my cable modem to check things I said hang on one min turned off the firewal rule and told them to try again, they said they could now and what did i do I told them and they said that i was in breach of contract by blocking there connections and not to do it and that's why my service was stopped.

I was never given an reason to why they need access I can only persume that it's some sort of monitoring service they do to see what you are doing and accessing on the internet.
BIG BROTHER ALERT! :D
 
Yeah I am a bit useless when it comes to troubleshooting as you might have guessed. Just to note as well that my router is connected via ethernet cable and the wireless is not being used anymore(except if i connect through my phone). So its mainly just used as a normal Modem, its a Zoom X6 5590C series, and the sky boradband routers i have that are spare are old Netgear ones.

I just couldnt understand why this morning i went onto my browser went to the router page put in my details again and it worked. If it happens again for whatever reason should I go through the PING process? as mentioned by westom. Or is there something else I could do?
 
If it happens again for whatever reason should I go through the PING process? as mentioned by westom. Or is there something else I could do?
One reason why the greater CA area is so innovative. So many do not fear to make a mistake. Then learn from their mistakes.

Learning is the number one reason for fixing things. Therefore learn from our mistakes. The Ping test and numbers from the router's status page (especially dB numbers) goes a long way to identify what is wrong. Or let others with better knowledge help you or teach you.

Now that everything is working, learn. Do a ping to learn what to see when something does and does not work. A ping to the router (192.168.1.1) and a ping to other computers on the other side of that modem (ie ping microsoft.com). Also learn what TRACERT does - the other important tool.

Learn what numbers from the router's status pages are important. For example, your modem is working. But is it working 100%? Post those dB numbers to learn what you have and what you should have for 100% normal operation. IOW learn what is good when things are working. Then if anything fails, no longer remain a victim of that problem. Or even see a problem before it causes a failure.
 
thanks for the input, heres screenshots of what happened when i pinged my router

ebtnV.jpg


heres my dB numbers(i think..)

dkWWP.jpg


and heres what happened when i pinged microsoft.com?

yuv0r.jpg
 
thanks for the input, heres screenshots of what happened when i pinged my router
A connection between your computer and router is good and clean with less than a millisecond response time.

DSL signal levels are sufficient. But I would be concerned with that download 'signal to noise' ratio. 12 dBs is marginal. Consider investigating where the noise or signal loss exists. For example, temporarily connect the DSL modem directly to thee NID with all other household phone lines disconnected. Learn if that causes a signal increase. If so, then you have identified a wiring problem within your building.

And finally, the choice of Microsoft was not good. The request for Microsoft.com did get the MSFT IP address (207.46.197.32) from your DNS provider. But a microsoft computer at that address is (apparently) not responding to pings.

Try another computer such as your own ISP. Or maybe ping buckinghampalace.co.uk. A good internet connection should result in short response times - maybe tens of milliseconds.

You may or may not have discovered a weakness in your DSL line. Further investigation is suggested.
 
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