[tomster2300]

Here's an update on everything:

The internet problem actually got worse - to the extent that we had to call Charter and have them come out and try to fix it. The tech guy laid a new wire from the street to our house, saying that the former one was too old and should have been replaced by Charter long time ago. He blamed it on sheer laziness by the last Charter tech guy who came awhile back.

Before yesterday afternoon our cable connection was split like so: the main cable line entered the house and ran up to the attic. It was then split twice - one end went straight down to the cable modem, the other plugged into an amplifier (booster) and then went to an 8-way splitter which directed it to each room in the house for TV. The Charter tech took out the first splitter and booster and routed the main cable directly to the 8-way splitter.

He unplugged our router, plugged a computer directly to the modem and got our internet to work again. The internet worked, all was well.

It then died on us three times after the guy left. The modem would show the drop instantly then reconnect itself in around 10 minutes and the internet worked via the router on all networked computers (I replugged the router after he left).

After everything was working again, the router (not the modem) randomly lost its connection to the internet and wouldn't re-establish it. I believe the router still showed a link to the modem, and the modem showed it had a cable signal. This morning I got the router to work for a few minutes, but it then stopped and now won't come back on (the network works, the internet does not - it says "Internet: not connected" in the router config page). The modem has dropped the signal 2-3 times this morning as well, usually after unhooking and re-hooking the computer's cat - 5 and the router up in different configurations. I've been trying new cords and nothing wants to work. I do get the internet when I plug a computer directly to the modem.

The man checked our signal strength and got it within Charter's parameters yesterday. He said once it was in there the random drops became our problem, and if anything else happened it would be due to a hardware issue on my end. I've watched the modem stats all morning and the downstream has fluctuated (while plugging and unplugging) from -6.xx to -10.xx. It is currently at this and hasn't improved from -10 in an hour and a half:

Downstream Frequency 681000000 Hz Max Bit Rate 11273000 bps
Downstream Power -10.79 dBmV SNR 34 dB

and upstream is:

Upstream Frequency 24000000 Hz Max Bit Rate 1049000 bps
Upstream Power 38.00 dBmV

Finally, the piece on the modem that the coax cable screws to has some play in it. It can slide out a little and also turns clockwise slightly. I try sliding it in and tightening it whenever the modem loses a signal, but the internet only came on once right after doing that - it waited awhile before. I thought this might be a problem since the modem would lose the internet after moving it around to plug and unplug wires.


So...

1) Does this sound like a hardware issue?
2) Could the signal strength from Charter be so low that the router can't establish a connection?
3) Could the play in the modem coax connection be causing any kinds of problems?

**I just ran a bandwidth test to see if it would stress the modem and it went without a hitch. 10610 Kbps down and 992 Kbps up.