Hardware-based Westell repeated dropouts last four months....

Cantiloper

Somewhere between three and six months ago my DSL connection seemed to drastically worsen. At least a dozen times a day, I'll get bounced and on checking the router lights the DSL light will usually still be on and steady, but the Internet light will be dead. It will often come back on its own after one to ten minutes, or, alternatively, I can make it come back in about two minutes by turning the router off and back on.... after which it'll be fine for at least fifteen minutes to a half hour or more.

The fact that the outages are so regular, had a fairly discreet beginning point, and are always "fixed" just by turning the hardware router off and back on (with no real pause.. just a second or so), would seem to indicate a strong likelihood that the problem is hardware based within the router itself rather than in the software or the wiring.

Does that analysis make sense? Based on that can I just request a new modem without going through all the gymnastics of plugging/unplugging fifteen combinations of things while on the phone for an hour?

:?

Michael

Cantiloper

Heh, here's one for you X-Files fans: after having those intermittent drop outs which would always either fix themselves or be fixed simply by on/offing the router for four months or so, I posted the preceding message this afternoon. Shortly after I posted that the router decided to deny me access to the internet ALTOGETHER -- No matter WHAT I did. 90 minutes on the phone with a tech doing that whole magic verizon number screen reset thing eventually pulled the dead "internet light" from the grave on the router and it lit up again and they'll be sending a tech on Wed. Heh, you'd think it'd be cheaper for them to just send a new router!

- MJM