It has been some time since I posted to this blog. My original intention was to post as often as possible, at least every other day. But alas, I have been overly busy and I have also been having problems with my Adelphia broadband service.
About 3 weeks ago I began having trouble reaching some of the web sites I maintain, including this one (all of the sites are hosted on one machine by Buzzsawhosting). Initially I thought it was my hosting provider having an excessive amount of downtime. Fortunately, this was not the case, and the problem resided only on my internet connection. No one else had problems reaching the sites.
So I started diagnosing the problem. I cycled the power on both the Linksys router and the cable modem. That didn’t seem to work. So I hooked up my laptop directly to the cable modem and cycled the power on the cable modem once more. Surprise! I was now able to access my web sites. Hmmm, problem with my router?
After unhooking my laptop from the modem I hooked the modem back up to my router and cycled the modem’s power once more. Once this was done I was now able to access my sites again through the router. This lasted maybe two hours, then the problem returned.
Another unusual thing I discover while diagnosing the problem: Even while I was having trouble connecting to my sites through the router, I had no problem getting to them through AOL(we have one machine in the house with AOL on it,using the Adelphia connection). This may be because all requests done through AOL go through their proxy server.
At this point I called Adelphia’s tech support. They were of little help, doing the same things I had already done. When we finished they proclaimed that the problem wasn’t theirs and that the problem was probably my router.
So, going on the possibility that the problem existed with the router, I purchased a new router - A brand new Linksys 8-port DSL-Cable router/switch.
After getting everything hooked back up and cycling the power on the modem everything worked as it should. I had no problem accessing my web sites. This lasted until the next morning, when the problem returned.
At this point the problem clearly wasn’t the router, and since the problem occurred on every machine in the house and on every web browser (I tested Netscape 7.1, IE 6.0, Opera 7.11, Konquerer, and Mozilla 1.4)
The only conclusion I can come to now is that the problem is with the cable modem. It must be some very intermittent problem that causes the modem to be unable to request my sites. I know that sounds silly, but I have nothing else to go on. I even did an nslookup (it used Adelphia’s name servers) from the DOS prompt while the problem persisted and it had no problem resolving the web sites’ IP addresses. So clearly the modem should have been able to supply the router with the web page I requested.
This problem has been quit an annoyance for the past 3 weeks. My only recourse to correct the problem has been to cycle the power on the modem. Then I am able to access my sites for 2 hours, or sometimes 2 days. I will probably be calling Adelphia tech support back and demanding that they replace the modem so I can at least eliminate it from the list of potential causes.
