home network

I have been having random network restarts at home. I didn't think much about it because at the same time I bought my new mbp, we moved into our new house. We had a telephone and cable technician come into our home to check four any line faults or wire grounding issues, but everything was great! We called att, which is our high speed internet provider, which provides 6mbps download and 700kbps upload. I have my macbook pro, an hp laptop, and an xbox 260 connected to it. My laptop is usually both wireless and hard wired to the router, which I forgot to mention is a 2WIRE wireless router and came from att. The xbox is always hard-wired. The hp is always wireless. The mbp is usually always connected to the router, both the xbox and hp get substantially less time on the network. However, the random network restarts can happen as much as 15 times a day, which seems to not be dependent on the xbox or hp to be connected for it to restart. When I called ATT, they told me that the router can restart whenever it thinks something is trying to enter it's network...or something along those lines. I'm sure there has to be someone else besides me who has att for their internet service. This is driving my BANANAS! I have online college exams that are done at home, if the network failed while taking one of those tests, I would bring out the sludge hammer and go to town on it!

Anyone have experience with this kind of problem. I read on other threads where turning off the firewall can solve some problems. If I turn off all the firewalls(mbp and hp) what kind of vulnerabilities am I opening up myself to? Thanks for any help in advance

Let's not worry about the HP or the XBox. How is your MBP connected? Is it using ethernet or wireless? If you're using the MBP for your on line exams it might be a good idea to temporarily use an ethernet connection to ensure a steady flow to the net.

As for the "story" AT&T gave you about the starts and restarts, that's pure conjecture on their part (an excuse for not knowing what's going on). Turning off your firewall is not going to help if AT&T can't keep a steady signal coming your way. Anyway, don't turn it off - why leave yourself open to other problems? I don't know anything about 2Wire routers except it seems there are other folks who are likewise having difficulties with them.

My only other suggestion is to keep complaining to AT&T support until they rectify the problem. Or, switch to another ISP (if possible).

Regards.

I would suggest the obvious - An isolation test. Do you have another modem/router?

I used to work for Telstra Bigpond here in Australia, we used to supply 2WIRE modems to customers and I'm sure it would be the same ones?

We used to have a lot of issued with them.

The router wont just 're start' for no reason. Maybe check the router settings to ensure that the connection up time is set to say 24hours?

I had the same problem with another router, it was d/c every hour until I changed it to never d/c - that causes problems in its self but I just restart whenever I have an issue.

chscag,
the whole modem, which is also a router, goes into restart mode whether I have my macbook connected on wireless or ethernet cable. I was thinking of the firewall idea because I read on here that it might help.

bennjiboi,
Are you sure att is lying about the restarting thing? It seemed like crap as soon as she started talking about it.
I will try that 24 hour setting thing.

This is SUCH an inconvenience. It seems to always happen when I need it most, and doesn't happen when I could care less if it did. I would love to switch companies, but I don't know of a good one in my area besides COX cable, which we already had but left after having unreliable cable service.

Does anyone know of an internet service provider that has service(good service) nation wide...at least 6mbps is needed...

Yes - all modems/routers have an 'up time' which is the amount if time they will stay connected for before restarting/re connecting to the ISP.

The longer you stay connected the more chance you have of slower connection ect..

It's like anything though, if you have a problem with your Mac you restart it and usually it fixes whatever the issue was lol

Modems are the same, I wouldnt go looking for a new ISP yet, do an isolation test and see if it is the hardware or the network.

If you connect a new modem/router and it works fine then you know its your hardware, if you still have the same issues they will need to run a line check to see if there is noise on the line etc..

See if you can borrow a modem off a friend for a day, pref someone who knows about their router and knows it works.

Let us know how it goes