two unrelated customers - same loss of connectivity problem

[tpadowner]

Sorry if this isn't the correct forum to post in - if not, please advise

I have two customers in two different provinces experiencing the same problem.

The both have a similar setup – a modem from their ISP, a router, a wired connection to the desktop and a wireless connection to the laptop. Both networks are secured. Their ISP at home is Bell Sympatico – both with a PPoE connection type.

Customer A has:
· IBM desktop
· Thinkpad
· both running XPP – SP3
· Speedstream 4200 modem
· D-Link DIR 615 router

Customer B has
· a generic desktop running XP Home – SP3
· an Acer laptop running Vista Home Premium
· Speedstream 5200 modem
· Linksys WRT 120N router

Everything worked fine in their homes until they went to Florida for the winter last December. They both took their laptops and routers and obtained internet service from the same ISP, Bright House. BH is a cable service so I am assuming that the connection was DHCP (although I am not 100% sure). BH setup the users’ routers to work with their service and, to my knowledge did not make any adjustments to their laptops.

Both customers know each other but were in different parts of Florida and live in different parts of Canada. Since they have returned home to Canada they have been experiencing the same problem, they both lose their internet connection from time to time and have to reboot the modem, router and their computers to regain the connection. Sometimes going through this routine does not work and they are offline for hours until they mysteriously connect again. Sometimes, when the laptop connects to the network, the desktop goes offline.

When they returned I reset both routers to factory default and setup the connection and security to what it was before they left for the winter so everything is as it was when it worked fine. I don’t see any changes that Bright House made to either laptop.

They are both running MS Security Essentials and were last December before they left.

Can anyone tell me what I might want to look at here?
Thanks

 

[goombawaho]

If you have checked for malware on the PCs (and I doubt it's malware since there are 4 PCs involved - likely not all of them would have malware) then......... It's almost too coincidental NOT to be ISP-related. I'd see if there is something called "vacation disconnect" or similar concept in effect with the ISP.

Have the ISP ping their modem and see if the connection looks good.

 

[tlcscousin]

Could also be a timeout on PPPOE and a reboot forces modem to re-register.They can call their ISP and ask if the sessions are timing out, or if the ISP has implemented some kind of changes forcing a session to time out after a period of inactivity.

 

[tpadowner]

What are the recommended settings for the router?
I have it set as
Reconnect Mode : On demand
Maximum Idle Time: 0 (0=infinite)

Thanks

 

[tlcscousin]

Reconnect should be set to Always on, otherwise you need to log into router and select connect or reboot the router which then tries to reconnect.

 

[tpadowner]

Does Maximum Idle Time: 0 (0=infinite) have any effect on the connection?

 

[tlcscousin]

It should not really if left at default.This is from a Dlink article but should be the same for most routers


"Maximum Idle time : The amount of time of inactivity before the device will disconnect your PPPoE session. Enter a Maximum Idle Time (in minutes) to define a maximum period of time for which the Internet connection is maintained during inactivity. If the connection is inactive for longer than the defined Maximum Idle Time, then the connection will be dropped. Either set the value for idle time to zero or enable Auto-reconnect to disable this feature.
Auto-reconnect : If enabled, the device will automatically connect to your ISP after your unit is restarted or when the connection is dropped

 

[tpadowner]

thanks