Recent Internet Issues: Sorting Out the Truth, RG6 vs RG59

I have had a Netgear C7000v2 for approximately 3 years, it is a DocSys3.0. We have 3 hardwired Ethernet connections, two computers, one to stereo/tv. It has worked pretty much flawlessly until two weeks ago.

The Internet is now intermittently dropping out without pattern other than it reliably drops for a period of 30 seconds to 1 minute, then recovers. Logs in the modem show "no internet" but doesn't show a corrective measure or recovery time.

The ISP came out checked out the hub, lines to the house, tightened the coax connections where applicable, says it should be fixed but it's not, still dropping out. they're going to come out again.

He is telling us our house built in the 90's has (I believe) RG59 coax that runs from the junction, inside the house to our main outlet to the modem. I say "I believe" because I could swear he said RG56 but may have misheard.

He is saying if tightening the connections doesn't fix it, we're going to have to swap out the house cable with RG6 cable, which will involve 1) me climbing around in the attic to run a new cable, 2) paying a ridiculous amount of $$$ to a contractor to do it, or 3) the ISP will run a butt ugly cable outside the house and drill a hole in our living room wall.

Something just doesn't sit right with me about the claim, a connection is a connection, it works or it doesn't, the intermittent drops sound more to me like a failing electronic component in the modem or a fault at the ISP. Replacing the cable sounds like a shotgun approach and we could go through all that and still have a problem. So here are my questions:

Would upgrading to a DocSys3.1 modem possibly address the issue? If everything was working before, what good would an upgraded RG6 cable do other than eliminating it as a possibility? What is the significant difference between RG59 and RG6?

I know the question is as likely as an answer to "how long is a ball of string?" but was hoping someone could shed some light on it, my choices at this point are throw down $300 for a DocSys3.1 modem/router or run a new wire, just looking for insight on which is the most likely culprit.

Edit: ISP is scheduled for another visit and requested they bring another modem to test, whether they do or not remains to be seen. Additionally they'd have to wait for a drop, so I'm not too hopeful this will help.

 

Is that an all-in-one modem, router, WAP, switch combo deal? I'm not really a big fan of netgear in general, and always opt for linksys or cisco networking gear when possible. I also prefer a separate modem from the other network gear. Especially since it makes trouble shooting a bit easier, in terms for replacement. IE just replacing the modem, or upgrading the router/WAP... I have found the modems in particular to be more sensitive to power surges, so I have all my network gear hooked up to a small UPS to prevent that.

Do you own the network gear, or is it rented through the ISP?

Either way, if there is a pattern in duration to the outage, I would be really surprised if it is a physical layer (coax cable) issue... I'd be leaning more towards the modem.

 

RG59 really is crap cable, but it sounds like you have a modem problem

Just replace it with 6 quad shield of a good brand. Home Depot should have a smaller spool

 

Thank you for the replies, it's kind of confirming what I'm thinking. Service call won't be until next Wednesday.

It is a modem/router combo, I've always had luck with NetGear. <shrug> At the time is was the top of the line for DocSys3.0. I used to go modem/router separate and experienced a lot of issues.

Own, supported by their ISP, firmware is latest (which only the ISP can update anyway.)

That's what I was thinking. There is no pattern to the frequency of the drop, the only pattern is when it drops, it's out for anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute, maybe a minute and a half. I could see it as a cable problem at a connection, like our trucks the problem is rarely in the length of wire, it's usually at the connection, but we checked all those.

RG6 didn't exist when this house was built. the problem with replacing it is I'd have to crawl through the attic, chase wires up and down the walls . . . while I could do that it's something I'd really like to avoid, like swapping out a frame in a truck. If I have to pay a contractor, might as well upgrade the circuit breaker box (those two have nothing to do with each other but we could stand to upgrade.)

 

Most modems will have a web page you can pull up to see signal info. If they are all within a good range and stay relatively steady, it's doubtful that the cable is the issue. It's likely misbehaving equipment at either end. Here's a good reference: https://www.speedguide.net/faq/what-cable-modem-signal-levels-are-considered-good-78

You could rent a modem from the provider temporarily, and if that fixes it, go buy whatever you want.

 

If you’ve had really bad weather that can effect it by getting moisture in where it doesn’t belong. I’ve had a router/combo get knocked out of service from lightning too.

 

It does, but in the logs it only shows "internet disconnected" when it happens. I asked them to bring a modem to swap out, the problem is it can take from 20 minutes to an hour for the signal to drop so I'm not sure if they will leave it for testing or wait until it happens.

 

Given how these things usually play out, there is zero chance of it happening while a tech is onsite

 

Yeah, considering the infrequency of it . . . it's dropped once since my last post, came back, it's been almost 2 hours and hasn't happened. I was thinking of throwing $25 or so at it with an RG6 cable from Lowe's, connecting it outside of the house at the cable junction, and through a window barely cracked and into the modem, heck I've got until Wednesday to sort it out LOL . . . that might eliminate the cable as the issue. Then I'd have it on hand if I need to crawl through the attic. :-\

 

This may not have any relevance to your issue, but this happened to me a few years ago. I was having internet and TV troubles. My ISP/TV provider found the service coax had melted insulation around the center conductor. It turned out the coax was damaged from when the electric service connection failed a few weeks prior. They said when it dropped/lost the neutral, the excess power found a path back through the coax. They replaced the service coax from the pole in the street to the house and I was back in business.

 

Welp, service call, different tech, he found that the inner wire going through the cable plate was sticking out 3x farther than it needed to be, suspected a short. Sounds to ME like the wire is broke and pulled out, he doesn't think so or we'd get no signal at all. He replaced the connector, this was around noon Wednesday. Thought it fixed . . . first drop came at 3PM. Next 2:11 AM, then 7:20 AM . . . off and on since Wednesday. Not fixed, another service call.

I've been monitoring all drops. The only "pattern" to them is they always drop out from between 23 and 27 seconds, no more, no less. Seeing a bunch around 7:20 - 7:30 AM and early hours, 1 AM - 2:30 AM, but enough randoms to not show a real frequency pattern (10 AM, 8 PM, 9PM, 10PM.) Discussed modem with them, they say it's fine and keep going at the cable. Before they staple an ugly cable around and drill holes in the house we're going to run one loose between the junction, through a window, to the modem. I still don't think it's a cable.

 

that sounds like what my modem did when it died. opened it and all the capacitors had leaked out. explains why it wasn’t stable


i wouldn’t expect the cable to be intermittent like that unless it’s moving

 

Not a modem but I had a Netgear nighthawk router and all was fine save for the occasional need to turn off/on every 6 months or so which is not out of the norm.

One day it just up and decided to take a shit on internet speeds and would drop wifi signal. I made sure the firmware was up to date, reset it to factory and set it up from scratch multiple times. Reverted firmware to older versions a couple times. Re-updated. Nothing worked. Bought a new ASUS router and everything was working again. Sometimes it’s the modem/router hardware. In this case the Nighthawk crapped out after only like 2 years of ownership.

I ended up using the Netgear as just an access point essentially and it seemed to work fine but would no longer function otherwise.

Im not super impressed with Netgear routers and Netgear historic lack of providing security updates the last few years, though I did just buy a new Netgear modem since I’m no longer at a house with fiber and it has been fine.

 

have you tried resetting and checking the modem?
could you relocate the modem to the entry point of the home and go wi-fi? or run cat6a lines

rg6 did exist in the 90s but is was more expensive, being harder to work with,and cable was still analog mostly is was seldom installed

 

Me neither, but that's what they keep returning to.

First on the list, before I even called them.

Nope, one point of entry (it's wired in.) See above. That is the next step if they think it's cable. When it goes out, logs say "internet disconnected" and there's no wifi.

Yeah me too but they're doing the service calls without extra charge so waiting it out.

Will be Wednesday (again) before they show up, might just get another modem and see. Still monitoring drops, still inconsistent BUT still consistent in drop time, around 23 seconds.

 

So today it went down hard, I've been sitting here working on another project with the modem management on the logs page and just happened to catch it as it was starting. Immediately pinged in a terminal window, no response. Refreshed logs page and the local modem page could not be found. This is huge because it tells me it's not the incoming internet cable, the router in the modem is hosed. You should be able to access the router with the cable disconnected. (Riiiiiiight?)

Off to Best Buy, I installed the top of my provider's modems list, Arris SBG8300, Docsys 3.1, (7002v2 was 3.0) 4 Ethernet ports, supports Gigabit, Wifi blah blah blah . . . called up the provider, he updated firmware, got it working, now we wait.

Input on the Arris: the modem management software is SLOOOOOOW compared to the Netgear, the logs may or may not be as informative, and the #4%^7@$ clock is wrong in the logs. Around 6:30PM on the 25th it was showing the timestamp for 00: . . . . the 26th. The auto config set it for Alaska which should still be only a couple hours off (we are MTN) not Japan (it's tomorrow there LOL.) I reset the time zone manually, logs are still wrong. For a retentive old fart that is unacceptable.

Edit: And another thing that puts my panties in a wad, I keep getting warnings about "unsupported browser." I'm on the latest version of FF in Ubuntu 20 (I know, I know . . . ) Developers today seem to have lost track of universal access, one of Tim Berner Lee's core concepts.
</rant>

 

I'm surprised after all this, that you went with another all-in-one device. While I haven't had any issue with Arris modems in the past, I wouldn't recommend them for a router/wifi unit.

 

Actually The 7002v2 replaced a separate router/modem setup, it was my first combo router. I'd always done them separate. To be fair it lasted 4 years, and technology changed (3.1)

I kept having problems after problems, then there's desk space, more wires and wall warts ugh . . . the hours I'd spend trying to cleverly tuck it away, then forget one thing and have to re do it all lol . . . while it used to matter, I just want shit to work.

 

Kind of need to know your isp and how close you are to the fiber node.

have you asked your neighbors that are on the same tap (main splitter that goes to the neighbors)? Or same run?

they can check your neighbors if you call customer service but they normally won’t take the time.

all it takes is for a neighbor to have a bad splitter/short or rat/squirrel chew and cause issues for the whole street.

I had a street that had intermittent service for 10+ years and no one could figure it out. It ended up being a BB inside the cable next to the telephone pole buried in tree limbs. The home owner was plucking squirrels off the tree. The bb went Inside the plastic outer sheathing and sealed up the hole causing an Intermittent short.

going straight to the feed line is a great way to troubleshoot but the signal is made to be split to 4 or maybe more (depends on house size) TVs so going straight to 1 could be too high of RF.

 

Good news: We're at around 18 hours and not a single drop.
Bad news: Yeah not liking the Arris logs, I keep getting these but the signal hasn't disconnected once.

Code:

ti_dhcp6c: 72001009-DHCPv6 - No Advertise or Reply Received 422 times 11/26/2023 08:14:41 Critical
ti_dhcp6c: 72001004-DHCPv6 Provision - 186 Retries Attempted with Last attempt at Sun Nov 26 08:12:43 2023 11/26/2023 08:14:41 Critical

Hate to say it, maybe this is telling me there is a problem with the cable. Signal is not dropping though.

Not fiber in this house, just cable. There are no telephone poles here, it's all underground. The hub for our cable and the 4 surrounding houses is actually in the corner of my back yard, possibly 150 feet around the edge of the yard to the house. Tech checked all those, saw no issues.

Didn't talk to neightbors yet, but the topic did come up: he said if my cable had issues that affected other customers they'd disconnect until we get a new cable in. He didn't see that problem though.

A thought that has crossed my mind many times, those little wood rats are why I don't have a garden LOL . . . was thinking an airsoft gun though.