GTA 416/905 Rogers@Home connection running router that needs resetting. Help please?

[AubZ]

I am in Toronto and have a Rogers@Home cable connection.
Have the internet connection shared through a MaxGate UGate 3200P router.
Running WinXP Pro on one computer thats connected to the router, and Win98SE on the other one that is hooked up.

The router will periodically cease to function, meaning it will not allow any traffic through it at all.
I will have to power the router down, and reset it manually for my internet to come back.

I will also note that on my XP machine, I can't get to the setup window for my router.
IE won't load it.
Whereas on my 98 machine I can load that up no problem.

With the recent changeover on the Rogers network, I'm thinking the changes that occured might have something to do with it.
But then again, I never had this problem until I switched over to using XP on my machine from 2k, which was before the changeover happened.

Any ideas anyone?

 

[yllus]

Hey there AubZ, I've had practically the same problem for months now. To basically sum it up:

Low bandwidth usage like websurfing is responsive and free of problems, but either putting a heavy load on the line in terms of speed or in terms of connections made cuts out service. At that point, one must unplug and plug the cable modem back into the wall, wait for the modem to reinitialize - and then everything is working just fine again.

Now because you seem to be resetting the router and not the cable modem yourself and getting back online that way, this sounds to me like a widespread problem with Rogers itself. I've had the problem with Windows 95B and 2000 Pro SP2, between two different network cards and two machines. A friend in North York (I'm way over in Mississauga) has the exact same problem in Windows 2000 Pro SP2 as well. My list of suspects goes like this:

1. A problem with Rogers' network that drops us when we get busy.
2. Multiple versions of Windows handling our connections badly.
3. Widespread NIC driver problems.

#2 and #3 are extremely unlikely in my view, so I'm guessing this is Rogers' fault. However I'm also willing to entertain the notion there's something we need to tweak/hack in Windows to get this fixed. For those in the forum familiar with Win2k network architechture, what exactly happens when Windows detects a network disconnection and later a reconnection? I get a little icon in the system tray that indicates Windows DOES know there was a momentary disconnection while I reboot the cable modem. Is Windows resetting something that perhaps messed up that is causing this problem in the first place?

 

[AubZ]

Hmm...

Cause I've had Rogers tell me that they were doing 'work' in my area to split it into two, because of numerous complaints of intermitent service, which was casued by too much traffic. But this was first half of 2001. I have no idea whether they've finished that work yet or not, cause I have a temp flyline now for 4 months that is STILL waiting for them to send someone over to bury. (And this is the second time that I've had to use a temp flyline too might I add.)

In regards to the icon you get in the tray for disconnect/reconnection in Win2k, I get that too when I was running 2k. It happened to me whenever there was a loss of connection, whether it be a physical disconnect/unplugging of a cable, resetting the cable modem itself, or even changing a setting on my router. But the connection would always come back, and my internet would not have been disrupted at all, except for that momentary pause.

I've pondered over the idea of calling up tech support and asking them, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I swear I remember something along the lines of it being against the terms of service for running a router and sharing the connection with more than one computer? I've been red flagged before and had them take my modem offline for violating their terms of service previously so don't really wanna chance it this time around.

 

[yllus]

Just to let you and any other lurkers know, I'm going to assume for now this is my crappy NIC's fault and am moving to half-duplex mode to see if that changes anything. I've also started a thread about this at the Residential Broadband Users' Association which serves Bell Sympatico HSE and Rogers/Shaw Cable Internet customers, very good forum there for these issues. My thread there is linked here.