Troublesome Network Weirdness

[Greatwhitewing]

I have a difficult network problem to diagnose and could use some help.

Cable Inet from Charter Spectrum, cascaded 3 router setup. See diagram attached. The cascaded part has been working for years as LAN-LAN

For months I have had to reboot cable modem to get android devices to work wirelessly. Sometimes it's hours and sometimes weeks where it works before another reboot. Computer mostly worked well all the time with rare exceptions.

Lately it's gotten a lot worse.

Yesterday I had cable company remotely diagnose connection and reboot cable modem. I check all my router settings, nothing amiss, still NOTHING even the computer wouldn't work wirelessly.

So I took computer and direct connect cable to modem with great speed, connected router 1 port and cable to computer so on checking each router with very good results with a speed test. Worked great with cables. Wireless still wouldn't work. Wireless would connect to internal part (intranet) but no outside internet worked.

Checked all the other devices (TV, DVD player etc) that connect with a cable and got some funkiness but basically all connected and worked

Connected puter with cable and worked great for a while then lost internet connection, intranet still worked. I did this yesterday and internet still out this morning. Weird thing was when computer worked on wired the phone DID not!

I want to blame cable modem but I got good results with direct connection. We had a wind storm a few days ago where power flickered off briefly maybe 6 times over 24 hours. Hard to imagine all 3 routers suffering same damage to wireless only?

I have a diagram I can't seem to post so I'll describe it. All routers lynksys various generations of WRTG or similar wireless. All same SSID, security and PWD
Cable modem connected to router 1. 1 port to phone, one port to NAS drive, two remaining ports to two other modems with DHCP disabled. Router 2 in living room input NOT connected to LAN but port 1 with the three remaining ports connected to TV, DVD and Home theater. Router three in ma

 

[kanewolf]

I would recommend, for diagnostic reasons to give each WIFI source a unique SSID. It is difficult to work wireless if you don't know for sure which WIFI source you are connected to.

 

[Greatwhitewing]

Thanks Kanewolf, your idea helped but the problem ended up being a funky cable from the cable modem to the first router in my cascaded setup. Replaced that cable and checked every port and cable as I re-setup my network using different SSID. Phone outage turned out to be another bad cable buried in a wall ugh....

 

[kanewolf]

Cables are always the first place to check. In-wall cables are often just a problem at the keystone jack and a re-termination will correct that. You have a complicated enough network that some sort of cable test tool should be in your toolbag.