Why is my modem clogging up daily?
December 26, 2011 1:52 PM Subscribe
My modem: every day I must kill the power, wait a few minutes, then power it back up in order to have any decent speed at all. Without this crude fix, I'm getting around 400 Kbps. Once I reboot it, however, I can manage a decent 4.0 Mbps. I've bypassed the router, tried different computers, and the issue persists. (Oh, and I don't have any kind of per-day download limit that's throttling me.) I'd rather try to correct the problem myself before spending endless hours on the phone with my ISP's tech support. Any idea what's going on here?
Best answer: Call your isp the next time it happens. Get them to troubleshoot while you have slow speeds. I'm a network engineer at an ISP and that's what I would do if I was experiencing this problem. Have your computer connected directly to the modem when you call them to save everyone time.
You might want to ping some websites to see if you're getting packet loss or latency problems that are contributing to slow speeds, but really, it's your ISP's job to figure it out. My guess is that your modem is junk, but they should replace it, if so.
posted by empath at 2:14 PM on December 26, 2011
You might want to ping some websites to see if you're getting packet loss or latency problems that are contributing to slow speeds, but really, it's your ISP's job to figure it out. My guess is that your modem is junk, but they should replace it, if so.
posted by empath at 2:14 PM on December 26, 2011
Could you be infected with a trojan that is consuming your bandwidth?
posted by rhizome at 3:13 PM on December 26, 2011
posted by rhizome at 3:13 PM on December 26, 2011
Response by poster: Just pinged a few sites and found a 50% (!) packet loss . . .
posted by jackypaper at 3:25 PM on December 26, 2011
posted by jackypaper at 3:25 PM on December 26, 2011
Next step is to traceroute and see where the packets are being dropped...
posted by empath at 3:36 PM on December 26, 2011
posted by empath at 3:36 PM on December 26, 2011
(In Windows, go to Local Area Connection > Properties > Configure.) On the Driver tab, make sure the drivers for your network card are up to date. On the Advanced tab, see if any of the "offloads" are enabled, such as jumbo packet offload, checksum offload, and so on. See if it makes any difference to enable or disable them.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 3:40 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 3:40 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
Please note that while the terms of your agreement with your ISP may not call a lot of attention to information about their bandwidth cap policy, many ISPs put them in place anyway. Comcast went through a series of lawsuits regarding their stealth bandwidth cap in Washington State a few years ago. They bury the legality in weael words like "UP TO 4MbPS" and "some restrictions apply."
One thing that happens when you reboot your router is that you get a new IP address from your ISP. Bandwidth caps are frequently tied to IP addresses.
Therefore, the next time this happens, try just renewing your DHCP lease. You should be able to do that from your router's web admin panel (which is usually accessible by pointing your browser to an IP like http://192.168.0.1 but varies by router).
Whether getting a new IP address fixes the problem or not, it's a valuable bit of information for the escalated tech support that you will no doubt end up talking to eventually.
If it DOES fix your problem, then I would strongly suspect you're being throttled at the ISP level.
posted by ErikaB at 3:57 PM on December 26, 2011
One thing that happens when you reboot your router is that you get a new IP address from your ISP. Bandwidth caps are frequently tied to IP addresses.
Therefore, the next time this happens, try just renewing your DHCP lease. You should be able to do that from your router's web admin panel (which is usually accessible by pointing your browser to an IP like http://192.168.0.1 but varies by router).
Whether getting a new IP address fixes the problem or not, it's a valuable bit of information for the escalated tech support that you will no doubt end up talking to eventually.
If it DOES fix your problem, then I would strongly suspect you're being throttled at the ISP level.
posted by ErikaB at 3:57 PM on December 26, 2011
50% packet loss is bad. It could be one of two things. It could be that your Layer 2 data link is flaking out (ie: your DSL or cable), in which case you need your ISP to sort it out. Or it could be that some process on your computer, malware or Bittorrent or something, is saturating the link.
If the problem is reproducible with two different computers and no router, I'm more included to blame the data link. But it's possible you have the same malware on multiple computers. You could try to diagnose this yourself with a packet sniffer like Wireshark but it takes some expertise. Your ISP could also help you.
posted by Nelson at 4:55 PM on December 26, 2011
If the problem is reproducible with two different computers and no router, I'm more included to blame the data link. But it's possible you have the same malware on multiple computers. You could try to diagnose this yourself with a packet sniffer like Wireshark but it takes some expertise. Your ISP could also help you.
posted by Nelson at 4:55 PM on December 26, 2011
I have my modem on a Christmas tree timer. It turns off for 15 min everyday at 4 am.
posted by jeffamaphone at 6:49 PM on December 26, 2011
posted by jeffamaphone at 6:49 PM on December 26, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by gadha at 2:05 PM on December 26, 2011