Dodgy Modem?

sticker

Hey all,

Quick question... I'm with BT a couple of years now - in the past week, my BB connection has been dropping. If I leave the PC on all night, the connection is lost to firefox browser / outlook mail... BUT torrents still active?!

After a reboot of the PC and restart of the modem (ZyXEL 600 series) the web returns... Anyone any suggestions?

I grabbed this info from the maintenance window for the modem: While web was working obviously! >

_____________________________________

System Status

System Name: P660RU-T1
ZyNOS F/W Version: V3.40(ST.4) | 8/26/2005
DSL FW VersionMT FwVer: 3.1.0.3_A_TC, HwVer: T14F7_0.0
Standard:ADSL_G.dmt

WAN Information

IP Address:194.125.106.107

System up Time: 0:09:31
CPU Load: 7.72%

WAN Port Statistics:
Link Status: Up
Upstream Speed: 384 kbps
Downstream Speed: 3072 kbps
IP Subnet Mask:255.255.255.255
Default Gateway:N/A
VPI/VCI:8/ 35

LAN Information

MAC Address:00:13:49:47:20:c2
IP Address: 192.168.1.1
IP Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
DHCP: Server
DHCP Start IP: 192.168.1.33
DHCP Pool Size: 32

noise margin downstream: 26 db
output power upstream: 18 db
attenuation downstream: 42 db
carrier load: number of bits per symbol(tone)
tone 0- 31: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 32- 63: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 44 55 55 55 34 66 77
tone 64- 95: 08 77 88 88 88 88 88 88 88 89 88 88 88 88 88 88
tone 96-127: 88 88 88 88 88 88 78 77 77 77 77 77 77 66 66 65
tone 128-159: 54 20 02 44 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55
tone 160-191: 55 55 45 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 43 33 33 33 33 33
tone 192-223: 33 33 22 22 22 22 00 22 22 20 22 22 00 00 00 00
tone 224-255: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 256-287: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 288-319: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 320-351: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 352-383: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 384-415: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 416-447: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 448-479: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
tone 480-511: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

ATM Loopback Test Success
____________________________________

It appears to work perfectly when back up - But I keep experiencing a loss of service every day. My thought are the modems at the end of it's life...

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance...
__________________

snappieT

Yeah, I had this modem. They're grand for your normal browsing, etc, but torrents just open too many connections, and they brick themselves.

There are two routes to take:
1) Decrease the number of active connections in your torrent client
2) Get an ADSL router (I would strongly recommend Linksys, mine does 4000 connections not a bother, < €100), and run PPPoE, DHCP and other services from that. Your phone line will plug straight in, as will your ethernet cable. You also get the benefit of wireless, if you haven't already upgraded.

I would suggest option 2, using a Linksys ADSL wireless router. Argos have them. Less than 100 squids.

sticker

snappieT wrote:

Yeah, I had this modem. They're grand for your normal browsing, etc, but torrents just open too many connections, and they brick themselves.

There are two routes to take:
1) Decrease the number of active connections in your torrent client
2) Get an ADSL router (I would strongly recommend Linksys, mine does 4000 connections not a bother, < €100), and run PPPoE, DHCP and other services from that. Your phone line will plug straight in, as will your ethernet cable. You also get the benefit of wireless, if you haven't already upgraded.

I would suggest option 2, using a Linksys ADSL wireless router. Argos have them. Less than 100 squids.

Grand - Where the cheapest spot for that router? I'm not all that proficent when it comes to hardware - Is it a simple plug and play? or do I have to tinker with settings to optimize for my torrent use?

Thanks for the help...

snappieT

You'll have to tinker with settings to get PPPoE up and running, but you can copy all of these values from the admin screen of the existing modem, so it's not too bad.
Apart from that, it's simple. Just your normal portforwarding etc. etc.

Argos is the safest bet tbh. If you decide it just isn't working for you, you can return it like.

sticker

snappieT wrote:

You'll have to tinker with settings to get PPPoE up and running, but you can copy all of these values from the admin screen of the existing modem, so it's not too bad.
Apart from that, it's simple. Just your normal portforwarding etc. etc.

Argos is the safest bet tbh. If you decide it just isn't working for you, you can return it like.

Cheers mate!

rogue-entity

I have the same ZyXEL Modem, and I have never had any issues with torrents or the like. I did notice however that two successive WiFi routers have given me consistant problems.

1. A NetGear RangeMax WPN511 Wireless Router used to randomly restart, often if I was chatting to someone on MSN Messenger, it would reboot, killing my connection as I was operating in bridge mode, it would come back up and die again. The frustration eventually led me to buy a new WiFi router.

2. A Linksys WRT54G (Model 7) WiFi router, this consistantly gives trouble if using Torrents or P2P programmes for any lenght of time, like when I had my friend down for the weekend and he decided to download a load of Futurama eps, the router would reboot crash and reboot.

Needless to say, I have a stable and reliable DSL Modem, and two consistantly troublesome WiFi routers, though the Linksys one is as solid as a brick when no P2P or torrent applications are running, or if just the one torrent is being downloaded. And the Netgear one is probably stable if it is operating in router mode. I will say one thing in defense of the netgear device, it had a better content-filter system where you could just enter a list of keywords or domains into a listbox, with no limit and its outbound log always showed domains, this was perfect for blocking ads on MSN Messenger, and on websites in general.

sticker

rogue-entity wrote:

I have the same ZyXEL Modem, and I have never had any issues with torrents or the like. I did notice however that two successive WiFi routers have given me consistant problems.

1. A NetGear RangeMax WPN511 Wireless Router used to randomly restart, often if I was chatting to someone on MSN Messenger, it would reboot, killing my connection as I was operating in bridge mode, it would come back up and die again. The frustration eventually led me to buy a new WiFi router.

2. A Linksys WRT54G (Model 7) WiFi router, this consistantly gives trouble if using Torrents or P2P programmes for any lenght of time, like when I had my friend down for the weekend and he decided to download a load of Futurama eps, the router would reboot crash and reboot.

Needless to say, I have a stable and reliable DSL Modem, and two consistantly troublesome WiFi routers, though the Linksys one is as solid as a brick when no P2P or torrent applications are running, or if just the one torrent is being downloaded. And the Netgear one is probably stable if it is operating in router mode. I will say one thing in defense of the netgear device, it had a better content-filter system where you could just enter a list of keywords or domains into a listbox, with no limit and its outbound log always showed domains, this was perfect for blocking ads on MSN Messenger, and on websites in general.

I'd have a good amount of torrents on the go on any given day - Which is the best way to go? I'm a little confused tbh

snappieT

rogue-entity wrote:

2. A Linksys WRT54G (Model 7) WiFi router, this consistantly gives trouble if using Torrents or P2P programmes for any lenght of time, like when I had my friend down for the weekend and he decided to download a load of Futurama eps, the router would reboot crash and reboot.

That happens to be the router I use. Without a bother. In excess of 300 torrents running at the same time, going at about 300k in total.
That said, I have it flashed with DD-WRT.

rogue-entity

SnappieT, are you sure you have a Model 7 WRT54G, because I was under the impression that there were no third party firmware's for that one, since it has significantly less memory to work with then the earlier models that ran Linux.

@OP: I have same firmware version on my ZyXEL Modem, but I was never heavy with torrents. I rarely had more then two open at any one time, because they were and are as slow as tar. It took me nearly a week to download the Beta3 of Windows Vista (legal one from MS). A direct download of the 4GB ISO would have taken less then a day. My download speed never stayed above 10KB/sec for long, and on a few occasions it dropped as low as 4KB/sec for hours.. quite frustrating.

The ZyXEL modem probably does brick with too many connections open, but this can probably be worked around by placing the modem into "bridged" mode, and using your computer to "dial up" the connection, this way, your DSL modem just blindly forwards the data between the DSL line and PC and doesnt worry about routing connections.

sticker

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sticker

I was on to BT yesterday - then told me there was a problem in the Clonee area for the day. He was pretty dismissive of the fact that my modem was crashing out at least once every day...

He suggested to uplug the usb - as it was probably corrupted usb drivers. I reinstalled new Zyxel drivers and the problem persists.

I'm at a loss as to a remedy... will a new modem dolve my problems? / Are BT liable for a replacement? / Are there any tests I can do to concrete the fact that faulty hardware is the root cause?

Sorry for the ongoing rant!