Been having issue’s with my cable internet connections that past week or so dropping the signal from the modem, then needed to reboot modem to get it back. This was happening sometimes 2-4 times per day. In other words, the CABLE indicator on the modem would be out and my internet connection would be dead.
I could also see in my routers log that even when things appeared to be working my IP address was being changed every few minutes all day long.
When this started, the company had doubled everyone’s download speeds from 4mbps up to 8mbps. But, I was only getting around 5.
So I call last night about 10p, phone tech got into my modem and said she made some tweaks. The internet connection stayed up and was still active at 4pm today. I could also see in my router log that my IP address had NOT changed since she had made the changes in the modem. But I was still only getting about 5mbps speed.
Tech (using the term loosely here) was here today and replaced my modem. It did get my speeds where they were supposed to be, but I can see once again that my IP address is changing regularly. Then it dawned on me what I was seeing in the router log that they have the lease time set for only 15 minutes!!! 8O I can tell when the IP changes because anything I’m doing online will briefly pause at that time.
Of course the so called Tech’s are far from it, they don’t know the difference between a router and a modem.
DHCP lease times are basically 1/2 of the time allotted, meaning that if you have a 12 hour lease time, the DHCP client (your side) would start to ask for an extension of the lease after 6 hours…
So a 15 minute lease would be 7-1/2 minutes which would cause a huge amount of traffic on their network just to renew leases.
The DHCP Lease is controlled on the Server end, Not the modem/router end so it would be something they have configured (or misconfigured) on their end.
The shortest lease time I’ve seen in the real world was 4 hours. Most of the cable companies that I’ve seen have at least a 24 hour lease time, some as long as 4 days.
My IP address has not changes in over 2 years??? And no it is not a static address. Well at least that is what they tell me. But it looks static to me.
Ok, I have concluded this is being caused by my router.
My ISP recently upped their speeds from 4mbps to 8mbps down and from 400 to 1.1mbps up.
That is when my router started doing odd dances. It chokes on the higher speeds.
It’s a Netgear FVS318V2, it has VPN endpoint ability…which I need.
Anyone have a suggested router with VPN that they believe would be stable?
It’s had the latest firmware for sometime, they haven’t released any new firmware in several years, as they released a new version of this router…that takes different firmware.
Thanks.
On the residential side, I’ve always stuck around with LinkSys. Not that they are great or anything but that is what I’ve had experience with. They have for the most part worked well as a cable router. Recent models are WRT150N, WRT350N and before that WRT54G (though I hear the newer WRT54G’s are not that great).
I don’t play around with VPN on that side though… for remote access I just use RealVNC with encryption.
They do have VPN capable models but I’ve not had any experiece with them myself. Their network storage from my experience is for the birds… complicated and poorly supported. Why I have a 350N now… don’t use the storage. part.
I ended up setting up a FreeNAS instead which does circles around everything LinkSys offered, solid as a rock.
On the business side, I use a Juniper SSG5 which does both routing and VPN, provides a real firewall etc… quite a bit of a jump from the Linksys. In the past, I’ve used Cisco PIX’s for that connection as well. Have a FreeNAS on that side as well.
I still don’t use VPN there except to test some stuff from time to time. Use SSH to the servers etc… RealVNC to the weather box (on the business side).
I agree with that. I have one WRT54GS v2 that continues to work very well, but I’m about to replace the later model WRT54GS on another connection for the the second time. The first one was just unpredictable, the wireless part of the second one is good, but port forwarding and remote admin keep crapping out :roll: