About once a week, computers on switch lose access to network/internet

[gman3042]

I have a network setup this way. I have my FIOS router in the living room - connected to a whole bunch of devices. The devices in that room, work perfectly. Then I have a MOCA adapter in my bedroom, that connects to an unmanaged switch. On this switch, there is 4 connections. One to the moca adapter, 1 one to my computer, and one to my HTPC and my NAS. This is where the disconnect happens. they just completely lose connection. They are unable to get an IP, and when they do get an IP, it can't ping the gateway and you also can't access it from other computers on the network.

You say it could be the MOCA adapter? I thought that as well. What I did was connect the moca adapter directly to the HTPC (that was unable to get a connection) and it works perfectly fine. Same for the computer and the NAS. The problem is, when I do that, obviously only one device is on the network, not all 3, because i'm not using the unmanaged switch. I've been using this setup for several years and have not run into any issues using an unmanaged switch.

Next step of troubleshooting, since it seems the MOCA adapter works fine, was the switch. I swapped out the switch. I still run into the same issue.

How do these devices get back on the network? It's hard to say. It's from a combination of resetting the router and unplugging the switch and after a couple times of doing it, it goes back to normal, the two issue devices (HTPC and NAS) get back on the network, and then a week later, the same thing happens.

Anybody ever heard of anything like this?

 

[gman3042]

Also, if I can add one bit of troubleshooting - after the first time I reboot the router and then re-plug in the switch, i'm able to connect to the devices on the switch.. for about 5 seconds. then i lose connectivity.

 

[kmmatney]

In my house, with about 20 devices (including my Ooma home phone) hooked up to the router, through a mixture of LAN, Wireless and PowerLine adapters, I was having a lot of weird dropouts. For instance sometimes wireless devices would work, but wired devices wouldn't. Sometimes it was the other way around. Sometimes everything stopped working. On a whim I bought a cheap refurbished Netgear (WNR2000v2) router for $24 and used that as my router, and converted my "All-in-one" modem.router to be just a modem. After that, no dropouts. That was 3 years ago, and I've changed internet providers twice since then, but always convert the device they give me to be just a bridge, and am still using the same cheap router.