Question Internet drops out for a few seconds every hour or so (hardwired)

[P0tluck94]

Modem is one furnished by charter
Router is netgear nighthawk ac1900
Connected devices are 7
Hello again, I have had an issue with my internet dropping out since I upgraded my package for faster speeds, went from 70 mbps to 500, I got a new modem from charter and I bought a netgear nighthawk ac1900 smart router, as well as all new ethernet cables to cat6, I thought it was just warzone as I saw alot of people complaining about getting disconnected but tonight I was playing elden ring and decided to stream it for my nephew, I had 3 disconnects in 1.5 hours, just long enough to end the stream for a min, I Googled issues with the internet disconnecting and saw alot of stuff to troubleshoot so I did the following.

Updated drivers for adapter (didn't need updated?)
Checked for firmware update for modem and router, they're both up to date.
Checked cables they're all new but I switched them out with other new ones (I bought 6)
Checked router logs
Reset modem and router.
Changed up address.
Made sure nothing was overheating.
Flushed DNS
reset network through windows.

I saw another thing about disabling green ethernet, wake up magic packet and energy efficient ethernet setting. ( could those 3 things cause these internet issues?)

I haven't tested the connection to see if it cuts out again as it's late but from the things I listed that I have done is There something you all could point out or try that I'm missing if the things I tried do not work?

 

[bill001g]

You need to find out where the connection is breaking.

Does the event monitor in the pc show anything of interest at the time you see the failure. Mostly what you are looking for is it sees the ethernet port go down. Many other things just mean it can't talk to the internet which you already know.

Can you get into the modem. A common ip is 192.168.100.1. See if there are any log messages. Things to really look for are things like SYNC errors. You will always see some that do not mean much. You are looking to see if any happen about the time you see the outage. Also see if you can find a screen
that shows the power levels. You can lookup what is considered a good power level, the details vary a bit depending on exactly which type of docsis you are running. What you might also see is the number of errors. Uncorrectable errors are more of a concern because they represent data loss.

So to start with I would open 2 cmd windows and leave a constant ping run to your router IP and to a common IP like 8.8.8.8

Your goal here is to see if the failure is between your computer and the router or farther into the network.

 

[P0tluck94]

You need to find out where the connection is breaking.

Does the event monitor in the pc show anything of interest at the time you see the failure. Mostly what you are looking for is it sees the ethernet port go down. Many other things just mean it can't talk to the internet which you already know.

Can you get into the modem. A common ip is 192.168.100.1. See if there are any log messages. Things to really look for are things like SYNC errors. You will always see some that do not mean much. You are looking to see if any happen about the time you see the outage. Also see if you can find a screen
that shows the power levels. You can lookup what is considered a good power level, the details vary a bit depending on exactly which type of docsis you are running. What you might also see is the number of errors. Uncorrectable errors are more of a concern because they represent data loss.

So to start with I would open 2 cmd windows and leave a constant ping run to your router IP and to a common IP like 8.8.8.8

Your goal here is to see if the failure is between your computer and the router or farther into the network.

I have a LOT of event ID 4000 and 6100 and a fee 5000, WLAN auto config, diagnostic networking, I had 2 conflicts from back in December for ip conflict but none since then, I never had connection issues until I upgraded my speed /hardware.

It's saying in the description that WLAN AutoConfig successfully started, I'm not 100% sure these are from when the internet goes out for a few seconds it's like a hiccup.

MY router up is what I changed it to when I set up port fowwarding for warzone right? Not what it defaults as?

 

[bill001g]

Yup things like 4000 mean pretty much nothing. It says it has DNS server issues. But that is caused by anything that prevent the machine from talking to the DNS server. Can be anything from a DNS setting to you smashed your router with a hammer. It will give the same message. You already know that your internet has issues and because your game is actual active it is much more than DNS since DNS is only used to get the IP address associated with a name after it get the IP it does not use DNS again until the next time it doesn't know a name.

The wlan autoconfig is one of those pain in the butt errors. This is microsoft being stupid and trying to make things easy for wireless configuration. It causes all kinds of strange errors. Some people say you should disable it and other say it must be running.

In any case it "should" not matter because you are using ethernet. Problem is if the wifi port is also active on your machine it might try to switch. It should in theory always use ethernet if both are active but it is safer to manually disable the wifi.

In general you should not need to portforward anything unless you are hosting a private server. There is massive confusion and lots of mis information that is cut and paste by gamers who have no actual network background. In general most the so called ports needed by a game are allowed just because of how NAT functions. Others features link UPNP in the router dynamically open.

In any case port forwarding is not going to cause your internet to go down. Then again if it is only the game going down and not other things then there might be some issue.

This is why you test with simple ping commands rather trying to diagnose problem based on game output.

 

[P0tluck94]

Yup things like 4000 mean pretty much nothing. It says it has DNS server issues. But that is caused by anything that prevent the machine from talking to the DNS server. Can be anything from a DNS setting to you smashed your router with a hammer. It will give the same message. You already know that your internet has issues and because your game is actual active it is much more than DNS since DNS is only used to get the IP address associated with a name after it get the IP it does not use DNS again until the next time it doesn't know a name.

The wlan autoconfig is one of those pain in the butt errors. This is microsoft being stupid and trying to make things easy for wireless configuration. It causes all kinds of strange errors. Some people say you should disable it and other say it must be running.

In any case it "should" not matter because you are using ethernet. Problem is if the wifi port is also active on your machine it might try to switch. It should in theory always use ethernet if both are active but it is safer to manually disable the wifi.

In general you should not need to portforward anything unless you are hosting a private server. There is massive confusion and lots of mis information that is cut and paste by gamers who have no actual network background. In general most the so called ports needed by a game are allowed just because of how NAT functions. Others features link UPNP in the router dynamically open.

In any case port forwarding is not going to cause your internet to go down. Then again if it is only the game going down and not other things then there might be some issue.

This is why you test with simple ping commands rather trying to diagnose problem based on game output.

I have 2 pings going right now like you recommended and saving them to a text file, how long should I let it run for? I'm pinging my router and 8.8.8.8, in thought it wasn't working until I opened the notepad 😂😂 I'm doing a - t


Reason I have the warzone ports forwarded is what I've read which people just to get the game to not disconnect they need to be allowed in inbound abs outbound in the firewall and port forwarded in the router or they won't connect or will disconnect randomly, idk this is all really technical but I can get you articles if that makes it easier. I do know I get disconnected on warzone every 4 matches at best, "says disconnected from blizzard servers," tonight it was twitch, steam and elden ring so now I know it's not just warzone

 

[P0tluck94]

I let it ping for 1 hr, both router and 8.8.8.8 have 0 loss, the 8.8.8.8 has 17 ms, tourer is 0 ms, so effete do I go from here?

Could it be I'm stressing the network to much when playing Games? Like overloading it? If that's a possibility how can I test that if i can?

 

[bill001g]

Nope games use almost no traffic maybe 1mbs. Then again the more traffic you run the more errors you get on a broken connection.

So did you run the ping commands while you play the game. If you get a disconnect in the game but see no issues when you quickly switch to the ping commands then the issue is going to be more complex than some simple network problem.

It can be anything from the game code itself having a issue to maybe some issue in the game company ISP or some other ISP in the path between your ISP and the game company ISP.

Maybe check that you do not have some of the bloatware installed. There are programs that claim to give game priority or acceleration. These cause all kinds of strange issues and should be unistalled. They come bundled with motherboards and video cards and can get installed unless you are very careful to uncheck boxes.

 

[P0tluck94]

Nope games use almost no traffic maybe 1mbs. Then again the more traffic you run the more errors you get on a broken connection.

So did you run the ping commands while you play the game. If you get a disconnect in the game but see no issues when you quickly switch to the ping commands then the issue is going to be more complex than some simple network problem.

It can be anything from the game code itself having a issue to maybe some issue in the game company ISP or some other ISP in the path between your ISP and the game company ISP.

Maybe check that you do not have some of the bloatware installed. There are programs that claim to give game priority or acceleration. These cause all kinds of strange issues and should be unistalled. They come bundled with motherboards and video cards and can get installed unless you are very careful to uncheck boxes.

I don't have anything installed except dragon center, i did see its considered bloatware but I only use it for Mystic light, I can't tell if there's anything else installed in it I don't se anything but it does have an area for power settings, I also read once installed is hard to uninstall it. If not true how do I uninstall it without messing up things and what program would I use for lights.

 

[P0tluck94]

Update, cfosspeed was not installed as shown in dragon center I also didn't see it in services, but I went to the folder directory for msi in sub folder lanmanager and I did see cfospeed was in there but didn't say it was installed, so used the uninstall tool in that section and all the files disappeared, all I have in there now is a dll called API_lanmanager.Dll, how do I check to make sure this bloatware isn't running I can't find it anywhere, it's not in dragoncenter>support>scan section, it's not in add remove programs, I looked in revo Uninstaller to see if that would pick it up but it's not there either, I'm afraid to uninstall the whole dragon center program as it controls my fans / lights

Update, I researched how to uninstall it manually without dragoncenter and what I did was the steps I had to follow (should of researched first lol) go to c:/program files (x86) (or wherever dragon center is installed) go to msi>one dragon center >lanmanager > click uninstall icon on there it doesn't say uninstall it says something. Like uninst001 or something like that, click that, you'll get a prompt, click yes, and its uninstalled, I'll go play some games now and report back whether it disconnects or doesnt (reason I posted this update is just because dragon center doesn't show cfosspeed installed doesn't mean it's not and that's the method to uninstall manually without dragon center) wish me luck. Sorry for my wording of things I'm a stroke survivor and my words get scrambled.

 

[P0tluck94]

Still disconnects 😩

 

[P0tluck94]

I ran a ping test for router and 8.8.8.8 while I played games, I did get disconnected, at the time of the disconnect I immidiately opened the notepad for the ping logs and saw I had 1 packet lost to the ping to 8.8.8.8 at the time of the disconnect but I had no packets lost to the router.

 

[bill001g]

1 packet loss makes it hard to say. Normally you see 2 or 3 in a row at least. I leave constant ping run all the time and just stopped it to see. It lost 6 out of 85000.

But if we assume this is correct the next step is to ping the ISP first router.

Run a tracert 8.8.8.8

It will likely show no issues but it does not run long enough or send enough data. The key here is to get the list of routers in the path. Hop 2 for most people is the first ISP router.

Leave a constant ping run to your router IP (this is hop 1 in the trace) and hop 2. If hop 2 is configured by the ISP to not respond then you need to try hop 3 instead.

What you are hoping to see is no loss to your router but loss to the ISP router. This is the most common place to take data loss and easist to get fixed. It generally is some kind of issues with the wires outside your house.

If you still see nothing to hop 2 then you work your way to higher hop numbers but the farther you get from your house the less likely you can get it fixed. The problem could be in another ISP.

 

[P0tluck94]

1 packet loss makes it hard to say. Normally you see 2 or 3 in a row at least. I leave constant ping run all the time and just stopped it to see. It lost 6 out of 85000.

But if we assume this is correct the next step is to ping the ISP first router.

Run a tracert 8.8.8.8

It will likely show no issues but it does not run long enough or send enough data. The key here is to get the list of routers in the path. Hop 2 for most people is the first ISP router.

Leave a constant ping run to your router IP (this is hop 1 in the trace) and hop 2. If hop 2 is configured by the ISP to not respond then you need to try hop 3 instead.

What you are hoping to see is no loss to your router but loss to the ISP router. This is the most common place to take data loss and easist to get fixed. It generally is some kind of issues with the wires outside your house.

If you still see nothing to hop 2 then you work your way to higher hop numbers but the farther you get from your house the less likely you can get it fixed. The problem could be in another ISP.

No idea what that means, charter tested my modem and lines,, they show no connection drop from the modem logs, when I got kicked out of the Game I looked at the ping status but stopped it immidiately, I did not see a timeout in the lines but in the conclusion area where it shows packets sent/received/ lost, I didn't have any lost in 10,000 packets sent to the router but I did have 1 lost out if 10000 to 8.8.8.8 I shouldn't of stopped it, it is better though not as many disconnects but I'd really want none.

 

[bill001g]

So this is looking more and more like it is not a actual internet problem......or if it is the problem could be in the game company ISP or some place else you can't fix.

So after re reading your post are you disconnecting from the game or is it you are streaming your game play and that feed is dropping. Streaming stuff is massively complex and has all kinds of things that will drop it.

A actual network issue tends to be easier to fix because you can see it with common tools like ping. When you are talking gaming or streaming software it can be all kinds of stuff that can make this fail. It would be nice if the game developers did not always blame the network for their poor coding mistakes.

 

[P0tluck94]

So this is looking more and more like it is not a actual internet problem......or if it is the problem could be in the game company ISP or some place else you can't fix.

So after re reading your post are you disconnecting from the game or is it you are streaming your game play and that feed is dropping. Streaming stuff is massively complex and has all kinds of things that will drop it.

A actual network issue tends to be easier to fix because you can see it with common tools like ping. When you are talking gaming or streaming software it can be all kinds of stuff that can make this fail. It would be nice if the game developers did not always blame the network for their poor coding mistakes.

I am not streaming right now, what happens is I get disconnected from blizzard servers in the middle of games which I have to relaunch the game. Happens right now about once every 10-12 games, when I was streaming the internet dropped which closed my stream and it showed in the obs log as lost connection.

I don't see any log in router saying it dropped signal but I see alot of Lan access from remote, and I do see one (internet connected log), and one time synchronization with ntp server right after the log that says internet connected literally 1second after by the timestamp

 

[bill001g]

Hard to say you need to find a way to actual detect that is failing. That is why a ping command is so nice it is very simple and can constantly run.

Problem is when ping does not show a issue to say 8.8.8.8 it tends to be something much more complex. What the ping is saying is your connection is going from your machine to your router and modem and then outside your house through the ISP network to google and it sees no problems.

This pretty much tests the vast majority of stuff that can cause the problem. What makes it messy is ping packets use a different protocol and packet pattern than say game data. Sometimes that can make a difference. Verify that you have not set anything in your router like QoS that would attempt to favor different kinds of data.

The problem is now you do not have a simple tool that will show where the problem is. I mean it would be really nice if the game company would give detailed errors or some kind of log but many you are lucky to even get forced to the login screen rather than having to force stop the game.

The only other true network issue that might cause it is if there was data loss in the path to the game company that is different from the path going to google. Maybe try one of the vpn services and you get lucky.

 

[P0tluck94]

Hard to say you need to find a way to actual detect that is failing. That is why a ping command is so nice it is very simple and can constantly run.

Problem is when ping does not show a issue to say 8.8.8.8 it tends to be something much more complex. What the ping is saying is your connection is going from your machine to your router and modem and then outside your house through the ISP network to google and it sees no problems.

This pretty much tests the vast majority of stuff that can cause the problem. What makes it messy is ping packets use a different protocol and packet pattern than say game data. Sometimes that can make a difference. Verify that you have not set anything in your router like QoS that would attempt to favor different kinds of data.

The problem is now you do not have a simple tool that will show where the problem is. I mean it would be really nice if the game company would give detailed errors or some kind of log but many you are lucky to even get forced to the login screen rather than having to force stop the game.

The only other true network issue that might cause it is if there was data loss in the path to the game company that is different from the path going to google. Maybe try one of the vpn services and you get lucky.

The game does give an error code BLZBNTBGS000003F8, but the issue isn't the game when my stream loses connection as well, I also dropped a few packets when I get disconnected while running the ping to 8.8.8.8, I can see it in the notepad document (ping 8.8.8.8 >> drive I created the notepad document on so ping 8.8.8.8 >> D:\ping.Txt - t), I do not however see drops in router, modem, isp themselves dont see it, event viewer doesn't see it but my internet burps which causes the drops in the game or stream. I don't lose packets between my pc and router, only router and 8.8.8.8.8 or my connection and game/stream (streams not important I don't do that often only here and there for my nephews)

 

[bill001g]

I though you said you only had 1 ping drop and it did not correspond to the loss in the game.

The next step is as I mentioned run tracert and ping the ip in hop 2.

 

[P0tluck94]

I though you said you only had 1 ping drop and it did not correspond to the loss in the game.

The next step is as I mentioned run tracert and ping the ip in hop 2.

No Idea what that means, what's hop 2, unless you mean tracert 8.8.8.8 and ping the second hit


Hop 2 timed out, I have 3-13

 

[bill001g]

All you can do try hop 3 I guess. The ISP has configured their equipment to not respond to ping.

 

[P0tluck94]

All you can do try hop 3 I guess. The ISP has configured their equipment to not respond to ping.

the tracert was 8.8.8.8 which is google but didn't get a second hop I got a third, this is frustrating! I didn't have any issues until I upgraded my speeds, modem and router, I'm going to eliminate the router tonight and just run on modem to see if I get disconnected which would tell me if it's something to do with the router as I've done all the fixes for disconnects in warzone, and most of the fixes for intermittent connection drops (updating drivers, firmware, rese and omg everything, flushing dns etc etc the list goes on forever)

 

[P0tluck94]

Update : it has to be the router, I hardwired it today directly to the modem after resetting everything and I had no disconnects what so ever, hooked the router back up and had a disconnect within an hour, my router is a netgear nighthawk ac1900/ R6900p, I'm done with netgear tbh they don't offer support after 90 days unless you pay$160 bucks, I rolled the firmware back to before armor which is reported to be the issue and smart that will end up BRICKING the router eventually, can you recommend a good router that doesn't break the bank, (no netgear) ty. Or how to get this router to stop disconnecting lol

 

[Alex Fare]

Update : it has to be the router, I hardwired it today directly to the modem after resetting everything and I had no disconnects what so ever, hooked the router back up and had a disconnect within an hour, my router is a netgear nighthawk ac1900/ R6900p, I'm done with netgear tbh they don't offer support after 90 days unless you pay$160 bucks, I rolled the firmware back to before armor which is reported to be the issue and smart that will end up BRICKING the router eventually, can you recommend a good router that doesn't break the bank, (no netgear) ty. Or how to get this router to stop disconnecting lol

Yeah I'm pretty sure the issue is your router. I will never go back to Netgear. My nighthawk would average 150-250 on speedtest. Straight from modem would get me around 950 on average. Downgrade my nighthawk firmware and I averaged around 600. Tried downgrading to an even older version but it screwed my router and I had to reset it. So many reports of my issue and similar issues to yours. I ended up going with an ASUS router and no complaints so far.

 

[bill001g]

The pricing on routers has been kinda strange lately some newer models are cheaper than older ones and even then prices are all over the place.

Although one of the most expensive options ASUS tends to have extremely good firmware support. What I would do is get a asus router that supports the merlin firmware image. Merlin firmware is indirectly supported by asus but since it is user supported and open source it tends to get fixed very fast.
The merlin image even though it has more features than the factory image values stability over extra features so it is very stable compared to say dd-wrt.
I would look though the list of supported routers and try to find one that is inexpensive.

Home | Asuswrt-Merlin

www.asuswrt-merlin.net

If price is a huge concern you can get used asus devices fairly cheap and you seldom see hardware issues.

TPLINK in general also has pretty stable firmware and is cheaper than lot of other brands.

 

[P0tluck94]

The pricing on routers has been kinda strange lately some newer models are cheaper than older ones and even then prices are all over the place.

Although one of the most expensive options ASUS tends to have extremely good firmware support. What I would do is get a asus router that supports the merlin firmware image. Merlin firmware is indirectly supported by asus but since it is user supported and open source it tends to get fixed very fast.
The merlin image even though it has more features than the factory image values stability over extra features so it is very stable compared to say dd-wrt.
I would look though the list of supported routers and try to find one that is inexpensive.

Home | Asuswrt-Merlin

www.asuswrt-merlin.net

If price is a huge concern you can get used asus devices fairly cheap and you seldom see hardware issues.

TPLINK in general also has pretty stable firmware and is cheaper than lot of other brands.

Not a huge concern just don't want to spend $200 on a router, which Asus is good? They have so many models, I have 500 mbps down 25 mbps up, I play Games and occasionally stream, I read somewhere to make sure it's docsis 3.0 /3.1 I don't know ever that means but I'm sure you do,, could you give me a model router that's compatible with my modem which is docsis 3.1 2.5g but don't know the brand, I took a picture but I can't upload it says admin approval , I don't want another netgear I've had nothing but issues and there support is terrible.

Been wired to the modem since 5 am not one drop but netgear genie did something where I couldn't view websites which was fixed when I Uninstalled it.