# I have a problem connecting to the internet with my router in place and need help....



## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

A few times over the last couple of months if I would lose power in the house of unplug my router or modem for whatever reason I would have problems getting reconnected to the internet. I never have a problem with my local network. I would call Comcast my local ISP and they would resend the signal to the modem and that would seem to fix the problem.

Well a few hours ago I unplugged my router (Linksys WRT54G) to reset it to try to get something else to work and after plugging it back in I could not get a signal from the internet. I called Comcast and they said I had a signal to my modem and the lights were on like normal so I thought I was getting a signal before even calling them. The tech had me a do a few things (things I already tried) and it did not help. So I by passed the router and went modem to PC hardwired. After playing around with it some I finally got connected to the internet. Then I tried to add my router back in and no internet again. Local network is fine but no internet. So I by passed the router again and my internet was not working again. So I played around with it some and finally got the internet to work again with the modem going directly to my PC hardwired.

My questions are could it be a problem with my modem? I only asked this because I did not have this problem with my old modem that I had to swap out for the one I have now and after swapping the modem is when this problem started.
Or do you think my router just died? I am thinking this is the case but I would like a few opinions before going to buy a new router. I planned on swapping it soon anyway for a wireless N router but I was trying to hold off 3 or 4 weeks but I may have to just go and do it.

BTW I thought I had UPnP turned on before in the router but I didn’t. I just turned that on the other day. Could that be causing this? I have not went back in and turn it off yet to test it because I don’t want to have to fight with getting the internet to work again so I figured I would ask first.

Thanks


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## cdizzy (Jul 29, 2007)

I had somewhat of the same problem awhile back except I don't have a cable modem with verizon fios which uses a dlink wireless router. I hate that router so I hardwired the internet to my Linksys wrt54g. 

Anyway, I assume you have more then just one internet device around the house? Have you set any of them up with a static IP? The reason I ask is that I found my router was assigning the same IP address to my desktop that I had set up for my xbox. So the internet on my desktop was either very slow or non existant. It frustrated me for weeks.

Don't know if my problem relates to yours or not but I just wanted to throw out a possibility.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

cdizzy said:


> I had somewhat of the same problem awhile back except I don't have a cable modem with verizon fios which uses a dlink wireless router. I hate that router so I hardwired the internet to my Linksys wrt54g.
> 
> Anyway, I assume you have more then just one internet device around the house? Have you set any of them up with a static IP? The reason I ask is that I found my router was assigning the same IP address to my desktop that I had set up for my xbox. So the internet on my desktop was either very slow or non existant. It frustrated me for weeks.
> 
> Don't know if my problem relates to yours or not but I just wanted to throw out a possibility.


I have a lot of devices on my network (wired and wireless) and my DIRECTV HD DVR's are setup for static IP addresses but they have been like that for a very long time now so I don't think that is the problem. I have also went through everything and it looks like everything has it's own IP address.

Thanks


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## cdizzy (Jul 29, 2007)

Michael D'Angelo;1603594 said:


> I have a lot of devices on my network (wired and wireless) and my DIRECTV HD DVR's are setup for static IP addresses but they have been like that for a very long time now so I don't think that is the problem. I have also went through everything and it looks like everything has it's own IP address.
> 
> Thanks


Ok, well as long as thre isn't any duplicate IP's then that's probably not your problem. My computers are all wireless so my router will assign them. I just found that it had assigned the same one as I had set my xbox too.

I have seen more problems with modems going bad than routers. But I'm no expert.


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## dragonbait (Jan 20, 2007)

I would check the signal levels as reported by the modem diagnostic screens.

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/comcast/2.1_Modems

The first FAQ at this link describes how to access the signal level diagnostics in various modems. The second FAQ describes what the numbers mean.

Also the Comcast forum over there is extremely helpful.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/comcast


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## dragonbait (Jan 20, 2007)

Forgot to mention that you should remove the router and connect computer directly to the modem when accessing the diagnostic pages.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

dragonbait said:


> I would check the signal levels as reported by the modem diagnostic screens.
> 
> http://www.dslreports.com/faq/comcast/2.1_Modems
> 
> ...


Thanks this may have help. I have to log out so I can try something. Hopefully I will be back.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

No go but I did figure out the trick to get me connect with just the modem to the PC hardwired so I don't have to play around with it too much.

One thing I did notice is my router is not getting any info from the modem at all now. I have it set up for "Auto Configuration HDCP" and it is now not getting the info from the router like the IP address and things like that. Everything is just 0's (0.0.0.0 something like that).


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

a couple months ago i walked into my home office
& could not get on the internet the lights on the modem
where flashing as normal....as usual i figure something
is wrong on my end as i have lots of devices on my network
as well...so i did everthing short of restoring router back to
factory default....i gave up & called charter & they tell me there
is nothing askew in my area....well the next morning i walkied
into the office prepared to unhook everthing & start from scratch...
lo & behold everything was working fine....so if your isp says
no probs....they may be wrong.....

also have you tried different DNS servers in your router
here are 2 that will work....from opendns.com.....
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

may also try those 2 dns addrs. manually added to your nic
card....


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## phat78boy (Sep 12, 2007)

Cable modems hold an IP for the first MAC they see. Usually they only have one IP to give, however if you purchase more it will give more. Once the IP is given to that MAC, you will need to pull the power to the cable modem for a minute or so to get it to forget the MAC. 

I say this because you say when hooked to your computer it works fine, yet when you move the connection to the router it breaks. Thats because the router has a different MAC then the computer. 

So it seems like your modem is fine and I would also say your router is fine as your local network is functioning properly. UPnP would have no effect on DHCP issues. I would look at your WAN port settings, if you have any, for your router. Some router WAN ports can be configured for anything from 10 to 1000 Mbps. Most likely the cable modem will only work at 10 Mbps so I would suggest making that setting your router. My other suggestion is to make sure your router is completely up before plugging in your cable modem.


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

I don't have cable but I encountered a similar situation when I had a modem replaced. The modems AT&T use are what they called a router/modem and the modem needed to be in "bridged" mode for it to work with my Netgear router. AT&T was kind enough to talk me through the procedure. It was quite simple to do.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

FINALLY!!! After trying everything I decided to go ahead and turn off the UPnP just to see and that was the problem. Even though I turned it on a couple of days ago I guess finally resetting the router something happened and caused the problem.

Anyone know why turning the UPnP on would cause this problems?

Thanks again everyone for the help.


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

i think this last CE done something....i had my units
hang on the reboot like it did way back last fall...
going back to NR fixed the issue


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## phat78boy (Sep 12, 2007)

Michael D'Angelo;1603787 said:


> FINALLY!!! After trying everything I decided to go ahead and turn off the UPnP just to see and that was the problem. Even though I turned it on a couple of days ago I guess finally resetting the router something happened and caused the problem.
> 
> Anyone know why turning the UPnP on would cause this problems?
> 
> Thanks again everyone for the help.


Honestly that makes no sense as UPnP should only be active on your internal network. The WAN side should have nothing to do with UPnP. I suppose this could be bug with the firmware on your router, but still odd IMHO.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

phat78boy said:


> Honestly that makes no sense as UPnP should only be active on your internal network. The WAN side should have nothing to do with UPnP. I suppose this could be bug with the firmware on your router, but still odd IMHO.


I completely agree but I logged back into my router and turned it off. As soon as I saved my internet connected.


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## boilerjt (Jan 12, 2007)

Michael D'Angelo;1603568 said:


> A few times over the last couple of months if I would lose power in the house of unplug my router or modem for whatever reason I would have problems getting reconnected to the internet. I never have a problem with my local network. I would call Comcast my local ISP and they would resend the signal to the modem and that would seem to fix the problem.
> 
> Well a few hours ago I unplugged my router (Linksys WRT54G) to reset it to try to get something else to work and after plugging it back in I could not get a signal from the internet. I called Comcast and they said I had a signal to my modem and the lights were on like normal so I thought I was getting a signal before even calling them. The tech had me a do a few things (things I already tried) and it did not help. So I by passed the router and went modem to PC hardwired. After playing around with it some I finally got connected to the internet. Then I tried to add my router back in and no internet again. Local network is fine but no internet. So I by passed the router again and my internet was not working again. So I played around with it some and finally got the internet to work again with the modem going directly to my PC hardwired.
> 
> ...


I have lost internet connection 2 times in the past day on 1 PC, but the local network is still up and running. What is weird is that the other PCs on the network have internet connection. A reboot of the PC reconnects internet.

This has never happened to me in the past and the only significant change to this PC has been installing the Media Share PC application. My router has no uPnP and I had to manually configure the port forwarding on my router.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Michael D'Angelo;1603787 said:


> FINALLY!!! After trying everything I decided to go ahead and turn off the UPnP just to see and that was the problem. Even though I turned it on a couple of days ago I guess finally resetting the router something happened and caused the problem.
> 
> Anyone know why turning the UPnP on would cause this problems?
> 
> Thanks again everyone for the help.


Mike.. I have seen a lot of problems over the years associated with enabling upnp on routers and it continues to be an issue. When DirecTv issues the "pokeeyenow" keyword, it was the first thing that popped into my mind. I enabled the upnp, but am watching it very carefully. So far there have been no issues but should I start having problems, disabling it will be the FIRST thing I do while diagnosing. The easter eggs arent worth network problems.


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## dettxw (Nov 21, 2007)

Did you have the router set to clone the PCs MAC address?

Is the router's MAC address set up in your firewall?


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## bmachia (Dec 20, 2006)

Hi Folks,
UPnP has some problems and appears to have different effects and results depending on flavors of equipment and ISP (i.e. Comcast in this case).

I went to an FBI Internet Security class one time and they really recommended Not using UPnP if at all possible. The reason is UPnP has many back doors and outside sources can install and remotely operate software inside of a NAT'd Switch or Router. You don't even need to run an application to get stuff installed on your PC. UPnP just opens certain ports that bad outside sources can take advantage of.. To be honest, I don't use it here on my network.

If I can ask a question what is the need for UPnP? Do you have software that won't run unless it is turned on?

Also, Concerning lost internet. I have a combination network here in the house. It consists of Linksys, Belkin Routers and Linksys and Netgear NIC's. I have found it can be critical to boot the network equipment in a specific order, starting at the modem and working back to Router1, Router2, ..., and then onto the Computers. This sync's all the network equipment in proper order. I live out at the end of the power run, and we often get quick drop-outs, flickers, and brown-outs. Of course I protect all my valuable equipment with Computer UPS, but sometimes I will loose part of my network connectivity with a quick flicker.

In Mike's case, I'm wondering if Sync was lost between the Modem and the first Router.

Didn't know if this info would help, but they are just some of my experiences.

Bill


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