"Anyone experience DSL timing-out after certain amount of IDLE time?"

[DarkFudge2000]

Hi, I have Bell Atlantic InfoSpeed 640/90 service and I have been using it for 2 years now and didnt have this problem until just recently this last month......My DSL service will be fine until my PC is idle for about 20mins or so then when I goto open up a browser, email or anything online i cannot reconnect to the service and I am forced to reboot, After rebooting connectivity is back to normal! I am confused at this because i never had this problem before and it seems ever since bell Atlantic merged with Verizon this started to be apparent along with a very unstable ping that can flucuate between 70-230ms every few seconds that didnt seem to happen before the merger....am i bonkers or could this be a result somehow of this merge??
I can play online for hours without a disconnect but as soon as my PC ISNT doing anything with ONLINE activity for about 20mins or so....I am forced to reboot to get any online connectivity again.

My PC is an overclocked 550 to 793 PIII with an ASUS VIA MB
Netgear 10/100 TX autosensing NIC card
I am also using the LinkSys DSL 10/100 Router as well

I have been using all this equiptment together for about a year along with 2 other PC's going thru the router with no problems whatsover until now.....
any help would be greatly appreciated

Could it be my NIC card is in some kind of permanent SLEEP mode that it doesnt want to WAKE from until I reboot???
I'm lost here

 

[pm]

Can you run "winipcfg" (Win9x) and "ipconfig" (Win2k) and release the IP address and then renew it? Does that bring you back to working operation? That will at least determine if the problem is local to your network (since the router assigns IP address) or if it's something with DSL connection.

 

[LiekOMG]

Hmm interesting. I use bellatlantic.net DSL server too here in NYC, and i'll have you know right now, i've been having problems with them from the start. During this summer, my connection would constantly "die", like yours, and i was forced to reboot. The only difference was that this would happen at any given time, not only when I was idle.
Recently (for the past 2 months or so) i've been having a problem with my connection "stalling" for a minute or two at random. For example, if I was browsing the web normally, and then changed websited, IE would sit for a minute doing nothing until my DSL would free up again and start sending information. It doesn't seem to effect games, but its annoying for browsing the web. And lastly, i notice a GREAT deal of packetloss during peak times. I'm really unhappy, and i will probably try to change as soon as something better is offered in my area.

To try to help you, I would first suggest trying to call them up to see what they have to say. I've never had to wait more than 5 min for tech support.

Lastly, make sure you have the latest verson of PPPOE and all that other stuff they make you install. You might also try turning off all power management on your computer. Its possible that after 20 min of no activity the computer might power down the PCI bus or something causing you to lose your link to the network. Good luck!

 

[DarkFudge2000]

That is what I am thinking too...that it may be a powerdown issue with my PC settings...it's interesting you mention PPOE protocol....I think MOST Bell Atlantic users have the service configured this way....My sales rep in Bergen County, NJ told me that I was actually set up in one of the "newer" offices that don't use PPOE protocol for connecting to Bell Atlantic InfoSpeed.....so I am not sure if this is a GOOD thing or a BAD thing

 

[PCAddict]

My only problem with my DSL is that it has intermittent lags, where nothing happens for like 10 seconds and then it starts working fine again.