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Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda need testing/connection/communicationservice to diagnose it ???)



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 11th 18, 02:41 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
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Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda need testing/connection/communicationservice to diagnose it ???)

This is a bit of a long shot, but maybe somebody has seen something like this, I am thinking not but ya never know.

Situation is really weird:

My PC can play World of Warships fine, Company of Heroes via Game Ranger fine.

It can browse/websurf the internet fine.

It can even connect to another laptop over same ethernet port by pulling out internet cable modem cable and reconnecting to laptop etc.

But for whatever reason:

If computers from the outside try to connect to my PC it's not working.

Vice versa it's also not working ?!? Maybe cause those devices are natted.

But as far as I know my PC is not NATTED.

Or it's some strange/new ISP kind of NAT that behaves oddly.

Like only big companies/servers are still reachable and not consumer PCs.

As far as I can tell my PC does have a public IP address.

But apperently this is not working/enough anymore ?! Very strange.

I plan on replacing my PC with a laptop, just as a test, to see if it's the PC at fault and it's software, or if something more strange is going on ?!

What kind of electrical defect/or wear and tear could produce such a weird result ?!

(One thing which is on my mind is something different, a hacked or misconfigured/corrupted modem, which somehow blocks this).

For now I will keep assuming that everything is just fine on my PC and that it's the outside world that simply can't connect to my PC.

Though even laptop PC sometimes behaves weird as far as I can recall, but usually I can get it to work (?!) though now I am not so sure anymore.

It's not stupid firewall cause this is turned off and would usually allow anyway... it's something more strange.

I will try to get to the bottom of it though.

Also is there any service out there on the internet where there is a public computer that can send some traffic to a specific tcp or udp port ?!

Just to see if my PC can actually receive this ?!

That would be very helpfull.

Bonus would be if I can then send something back to it's udp or tcp port to see if that computer can also receive from me... and finally it reports this via a website/html or so... or even e-mail or so.

Bye,
Skybuck.
  #2  
Old October 11th 18, 01:49 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
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Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda needtesting/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

Today I decided to call Ziggo, a company who delivers TV, Internet and Telephony.

I originally called to report a problem with my Analog Television !!!

One of the channels "veronique HD/Disney XD" was displaying snow over the screen.

A cartoon was playing covered in mild snow.

The guy on the phone was very helpfull and very motivated to try and solve my problem to my great surprise ! =D

I did not believe they could solve my problem. I thought they would laugh at me for not using digital television, I thought they might tell me to simply switch to digital television or blame it on me and my TV.

But the exact opposite happened.

First he asked me to check the tv channel, it was on a different number then their TV card but that was ok.

I also reported mild snow on another channel.

Then the guy asked me to check the white cable.

I checked it it was firm... all other TV channels play/display well.

Then he asked me to check the "splitter box" which splits the signal into two or three.

One for television, one for internet, and maybe one for radio or something.

I told him the model is CTU 01.

He asked if I was sure if it was not CTUM. I re-checked and told him:

No it really is a 3 letter thing CTU 01.

Then I had to wait/hold for a moment, after a while he came back.

He told me they were going to send me a new splitter and a new cable to my modem.

This new splitter can be directly connected to the wall socket where the green cable comes in and also a little white box is.

Now before I was going to hang up I told him about my recent internet experiments.

Where I tried to have a computer on the internet connect to my computer. I also told him this failed recently... and I also told him my previous contact with ziggo a while ago could not enter my cable modem menu ?!

To my great surprise he said: "I can access your cable modem just fine" !

I was stunned that this TV guy was also capable of checking internet at the same time LOL.

So this was a double surprise.

But now comes the best part:

The guy says: "I can see errors on the cables, he says, it's the packets".

His speech/accent was sometimes a bit hard to understand but not too bad.

At first I thought he said: "I can see 69 dropped packets".

I asked him what did you say ?

He said:

"In the last 16 days there have been 69 million dropped packets !" =D

I could not believe it. I asked him are you sure these are internet packets and he said yes.

Now I did notice a little bit of internet delays and lags, but this was only during a short period, though yesterday indeed there was also some delay.

So I and him were thinking the same thing. Perhaps this very old splitter has detoriated and it's cable and the noise on the TV is also interferring a little bit with the cable modem now and then.

Strangely enough this NOISE has been on this cable for years and it never really bothered my internet connection.

I can play games just fine... though perhaps this could explain why there might sometimes be a bit of lag in company of heroes, though I kinda think this is other guys.

But maybe it was me alll along ?! That would be funny !

So what is now the most revealing and interesting part of this story, what is the moral of the story ?!:

MY ANALOG TV IS WORTH GOLD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cause it can actually DETECT a noisy SIGNAL.

I am not sure if a digital television would have been able to detect it ?!?!?!?!?

So I am now very curious if this will solve all of my weird connection issues.

I am very skeptical, but there is some merit to the story, since the TV signal is indeed snowy on just one channel and slightly a second.

I am very skeptical indeed. But if this is indeed the problem then WOW !!!!!

WHAT

A

STORY

!!!

=D

Bye,
Skybuck =D


P.S.: I tried to report this snow sooner via form/e-mail but that didn't work also told this to this guy.

And usually I watch TV late at night beyond 22:00 when their service is not available, working hours and such... so I never really got to it.

But since these problems started occuring I am desperate to solve this connection issue so I am going through all possible causes including a bad TV signal ! HAHAHAHA !

Funny story in a way !

I hope other ZIGGO users and cable modem/tv users/splitter users will learn from this story !

Cause if your TV signal is BAD it may affect your internet as well !

I am not getting my hopes up too much, there may be other problems, but this is indeed very intrigueing ! =D

Small applause for Ziggo for taking this complaint very seriously !

Thank you, time will tell if this actually solves my connection issues and TV signal issues. I will keep you posted on this ! =D

Bye,
Skybuck.
  #3  
Old October 11th 18, 03:53 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
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Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda needtesting/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

I have a different explanation for the dropped internet packets.

The white cable connecting the splitter to the cable modem was slightly loose on the splitter side.

I attached it firmly.

I did notice tv signal became a bit worse on snowy channel but that might be by chance it fluctuates a bit.

The loose cable modem cable does not explain the bad tv signal on one channel, so there may be something to it.

I remain a bit skeptical though. Perhaps they known something I don't.

I think either their encoding changed slightly or some external device is at cause, but soon I will known the thruth

Bye,
Skybuck.
  #4  
Old October 12th 18, 07:10 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
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Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda needtesting/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

Tomorrow new device will arrive between 10h and 13h according to a mail I got.

So if true, then by tomorrow at least TV signal will be better, maybe my internet connection will be even faster.

It seems wise to wait with testing until this device is replaced, then again, I remain very skeptical that this noise on tv signal has any effect on cable modem.

I shall perform some speed tests just to see if there is any difference before and after replacing the device.

Another explanation could be that PC too slow to achieve certain speeds, then again I think under ideal circumstances, 50 megabyte/sec should be doable for this system perhaps even 100 megabyte/sec.

So far I could download 20 megabyte/sec with bittorrent just fine this year..

The harddisk/cpu can't even keep up with it having to calculate sha256 hashes.

I think 20 megabyte/sec is already pretty insane fast

Cannot imagine it becoming any faster thx to new device.

My hypothesis for now is:

The 69 million dropped packets may have been an incident or some other case, maybe PC too slow occasionally.

Kinda wanted to now if this was sporadic or constantly...

This is why I would like to get into the cable modem's log to see it with my own eyes to see what is going on.

Perhaps this docsis is so good that this noise doesn't even influence the speed to match... then again... a dropped packet is a dropped packet... maybe some docsis frames not sure what this guy ment.

Not being able to go into this cable modem log kinda sucks though.

Now I am not sure if the noise/packet loss was real and what kind...

I do have logs from long ago... showing some kind of signal loss but that was probably when the operating on the net... this was 2004/2005 maybe 2009.... and a different cable modem a surfboard.

Anyway...

Tonight and maybe tomorrow night I will try and scan a certain 10.x.x.x ip range since this is supposed to be the public ip ranges of these cable modems.

In an attempt to find my cable modems IP.

Or perhaps a better idea, phone the ISP... ask them the IP address of my cable modem... but for me it's kinda more fun to perform a scan just to see if that works or not. Since it will be at night not too much of a big deal for me... except system collecting some dust... Maybe I ll try even both not sure yet.

Also depends on if others will test this software with me or not, then I may just skip the whole thing and hope for the best.

What if tv signal does not improve ? Hmmm then I will continue performing software test if I manage to find somebody to do this with.

Bye for now,
Skybuck.
  #5  
Old October 12th 18, 09:45 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Char Jackson
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Posts: 213
Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda need testing/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

On Fri, 12 Oct 2018 11:10:30 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

My hypothesis for now is:

The 69 million dropped packets may have been an incident or some other case, maybe PC too slow occasionally.

Kinda wanted to now if this was sporadic or constantly...

This is why I would like to get into the cable modem's log to see it with my own eyes to see what is going on.


Get your own modem, if your ISP allows it. Then you can see what's going
on inside.

Anyway...

Tonight and maybe tomorrow night I will try and scan a certain 10.x.x.x ip range since this is supposed to be the public ip ranges of these cable modems.

In an attempt to find my cable modems IP.


You aren't likely to find anything in the 10.x.x.x/8 range. You'd have
to do the scan from inside the ISP and at the moment you're only a
customer. They are seriously misconfigured on their end if they give you
access to that range.

Or perhaps a better idea, phone the ISP... ask them the IP address of my cable modem


Once and for all, is it a combo unit or a simple modem? Log into it and
see. Paul and I are guessing that it's a combo unit but you can confirm
it easily enough. Just log in and look around. It'll be obvious.

... but for me it's kinda more fun to perform a scan just to see if that works or not. Since it will be at night not too much of a big deal for me... except system collecting some dust... Maybe I ll try even both not sure yet.


Use a bit of caution. Some network administrators don't like having
their networks scanned. Most will put up with it because such scans are
so common these days, but now and then an admin will push back.

  #6  
Old October 12th 18, 11:26 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
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Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda needtesting/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

I can get a new modem from my ISP whenever I want, I am "eligeable" for it, cause my modem is so old.

But if it ain't broke don't fix it

My cable modem is allowing me the internet and receive so as far as I am concerned it ain't broken.

Also I am not sure if I will like the new one. It must not have a fan/ventilator or it will suck the living **** out of the dust out of room into it and it will overheat within a month plus additional noise could also be annoying.

I do look forward to "multiple ethernet ports" and multiple pcs to such a device and maybe even ipv6 or multicast and maybe even higher speeds.

But that will have to wait till later, maybe when I buy new PC.

Switching cable modems is not a light thing for me.

Internet is very important for me, so I am not just going to switch to some unknown new cable modem.

This old one has served me very well... never let me down connection wise, well almost never.

Seen it hang lately maybe one or twice... but beside from that no real significant issues.

Furthermore I want to try and find out what caused all of this in the first place to try and prevent it from happening again.

Especially if it was a misconfiguration... since new cable modem will be even more complex.

Also trying to diagnose this mystery is interesting in itself and learn from it.

Had I replaced modem immediately for example instead of calling my ISP... TV signal would still be bad.

Tomorrow I will learn more.

Maybe fixing this splitter will allow me to access my cable modem for some strange reason... probably not but who knows.

Maybe the noise on the line, if real, is causing a misconfiguration of the cable modem because some bits are flipped cause of noise.

Perhaps configuration parameters downloaded to the device on reset are not protected by CRC32/integrity checking.

This might explain why the cable modem menu is being locked out, if it's some strange http/webserver misconfiguration by packet/data corruption due to noise.

Bye for now,
Skybuck.
  #7  
Old October 13th 18, 06:38 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
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Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda needtesting/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

Well device didnt arrive yet.

It was a very warm, beautifull sunny and unusual day, so I think the postman/delivery guy took a hike and went to some cafe/terras or something to enjoy one of the last hot days before the winter kicks in... too funny.

Not sure if delivery will go through on sunday or monday...

Probably monday though not sure...

Or it was delivered at some shop somewhere... will have to check status of it...

Bye for now,
Skybuck
  #8  
Old October 11th 18, 04:20 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul[_28_]
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Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda need testing/connection/communicationservice to diagnose it ???)

wrote:
Today I decided to call Ziggo, a company who delivers TV, Internet and Telephony.
I originally called to report a problem with my Analog Television !!!
One of the channels "veronique HD/Disney XD" was displaying snow over the screen.
A cartoon was playing covered in mild snow.
The guy on the phone was very helpfull and very motivated to try and solve my
problem to my great surprise ! =D


I did not believe they could solve my problem. I thought they would laugh at me
for not using digital television, I thought they might tell me to simply switch
to digital television or blame it on me and my TV.


But the exact opposite happened.
First he asked me to check the tv channel, it was on a different number then their
TV card but that was ok.


I also reported mild snow on another channel.
Then the guy asked me to check the white cable.
I checked it it was firm... all other TV channels play/display well.
Then he asked me to check the "splitter box" which splits the signal into two or three.
One for television, one for internet, and maybe one for radio or something.
I told him the model is CTU 01.
He asked if I was sure if it was not CTUM. I re-checked and told him:
No it really is a 3 letter thing CTU 01.

Then I had to wait/hold for a moment, after a while he came back.
He told me they were going to send me a new splitter and a new cable to my modem.
This new splitter can be directly connected to the wall socket where the green
cable comes in and also a little white box is.
Now before I was going to hang up I told him about my recent internet experiments.
Where I tried to have a computer on the internet connect to my computer. I
also told him this failed recently... and I also told him my previous contact
with ziggo a while ago could not enter my cable modem menu ?!
To my great surprise he said: "I can access your cable modem just fine" !
I was stunned that this TV guy was also capable of checking internet at
the same time LOL.
So this was a double surprise.

But now comes the best part:

The guy says: "I can see errors on the cables, he says, it's the packets".

His speech/accent was sometimes a bit hard to understand but not too bad.
At first I thought he said: "I can see 69 dropped packets".
I asked him what did you say ?

He said:
"In the last 16 days there have been 69 million dropped packets !" =D

I could not believe it. I asked him are you sure these are internet packets
and he said yes.

Now I did notice a little bit of internet delays and lags, but this was
only during a short period, though yesterday indeed there was also some delay.

So I and him were thinking the same thing. Perhaps this very old splitter
has detoriated and it's cable and the noise on the TV is also interferring
a little bit with the cable modem now and then.

Strangely enough this NOISE has been on this cable for years and it never
really bothered my internet connection.

I can play games just fine... though perhaps this could explain why there
might sometimes be a bit of lag in company of heroes, though I kinda think
this is other guys.

But maybe it was me alll along ?! That would be funny !

So what is now the most revealing and interesting part of this story,
what is the moral of the story ?!:

MY ANALOG TV IS WORTH GOLD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cause it can actually DETECT a noisy SIGNAL.

I am not sure if a digital television would have been able to detect it ?!?!?!?!?
So I am now very curious if this will solve all of my weird connection issues.
I am very skeptical, but there is some merit to the story, since the TV signal
is indeed snowy on just one channel and slightly a second.

I am very skeptical indeed. But if this is indeed the problem then WOW !!!!!

WHAT A STORY !!!

=D

Bye,
Skybuck =D

P.S.: I tried to report this snow sooner via form/e-mail but that didn't work
also told this to this guy.

And usually I watch TV late at night beyond 22:00 when their service is not
available, working hours and such... so I never really got to it.

But since these problems started occuring I am desperate to solve this
connection issue so I am going through all possible causes including a
bad TV signal ! HAHAHAHA !

Funny story in a way !

I hope other ZIGGO users and cable modem/tv users/splitter users will
learn from this story !
Cause if your TV signal is BAD it may affect your internet as well !
I am not getting my hopes up too much, there may be other problems, but
this is indeed very intrigueing ! =D

Small applause for Ziggo for taking this complaint very seriously !

Thank you, time will tell if this actually solves my connection issues
and TV signal issues. I will keep you posted on this ! =D

Bye,
Skybuck.


An analog TV set is indeed a good noise monitor.

How it works, is the TV set has AGC (automatic gain control),
and the RF amp works with input signals ranging from 1 volt
all the way down to around 1 microvolt.

The cable TV line produces an analog TV signal of perhaps
1 to 3 millivolts, or roughly the geometric mean of the
two end values. That means the signal will not "saturate"
the TV internal amplifier, but the signal also has
sufficient amplitude there will not be analog "snow".

The degradation of analog TV is a smooth continuous process,
making it a good source of both amplitude monitoring, as well
as interference monitoring.

*******

Digital TV on the other hand, has a relatively abrupt "knee".

The video image will have good quality down to a relatively
low amplitude. Then, over a range of about 2dB, you'll start
to see snow and macroblocks. Then, the TV loses synchronization
and the screen goes black, because no packets at all are
being decoded. If the amplitude improves a tiny bit, it
might take ten seconds for the TV to synchronize and put
a picture on the screen.

This makes the digital TV a relatively poor direct detector.

However, some digital TVs have two "slider bars" in the
OSD, which display signal quality metrics. This can be
used to tell you what the TV thinks of the signal.

*******

I hope your new splitter helps.

But I don't think this story has ended quite yet.

A splitter should be relatively reliable.

The problem could be a problem with the cable company
and its equipment mounted on the pole or in a pedestal.

Most of the problems I've had with TV wiring, is with
the ends of the cables and the center conductor. The
wire does not have a shiny finish and is cheap stuff.

Paul
  #9  
Old October 11th 18, 04:23 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Char Jackson
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Posts: 213
Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda need testing/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 18:41:13 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

This is a bit of a long shot, but maybe somebody has seen something like this, I am thinking not but ya never know.

Situation is really weird:

My PC can play World of Warships fine, Company of Heroes via Game Ranger fine.

It can browse/websurf the internet fine.

It can even connect to another laptop over same ethernet port by pulling out internet cable modem cable and reconnecting to laptop etc.

But for whatever reason:

If computers from the outside try to connect to my PC it's not working.

Vice versa it's also not working ?!? Maybe cause those devices are natted.

But as far as I know my PC is not NATTED.

Or it's some strange/new ISP kind of NAT that behaves oddly.

Like only big companies/servers are still reachable and not consumer PCs.

As far as I can tell my PC does have a public IP address.


There's no mystery involved when determining whether you have a 'public'
(routable) IP address. It's very straightforward.

1. Open a Command Prompt and run the command "ipconfig". (no quotes)

The output will be similar to this:

C:\Windows\System32ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::b5fe:220e:f461:d985%20
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.19.20
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.19.1

You can see that the IPv4 address assigned to this PC is 192.168.19.20

2. Next, in any web browser, navigate to
https://www.whatismyip.com/
(There are lots of similar sites, but I suggested that one because it
displays *both* addresses - see below.)
Your local IP address will be displayed, along with your 'Public' IP
address. If the two addresses are the same, there's no NAT. If the two
addresses are different, there is a strong likelihood of NAT, although
not necessarily.

Further, if your local IP address falls within one of the following,
it's NAT because those addresses are not publicly routable on the
Internet:
10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255

What kind of electrical defect/or wear and tear could produce such a weird result ?!


So far, you haven't described anything weird or unusual.

(One thing which is on my mind is something different, a hacked or misconfigured/corrupted modem, which somehow blocks this).


What's the make and model of the modem? We can use that info to see
whether it's a cable modem or a DSL modem, and to see whether it's a
plain modem (no router, no firewall, just a simple Ethernet bridge) or
does it have an embedded router (with firewall, port forwarding, etc.)
If it's a plain cable modem, for example, there won't be any
configuration changes available to you, the user.

Also, if it's a cable modem, there's usually a web server located at
http://192.168.100.1
If your modem has such a web server, it's likely that one of the pages
will include your signal levels, (post that info if you have questions),
as well as statistics on "Corrected" signal errors versus
"Uncorrectable" signal errors. Signal levels and error info are
extremely helpful in troubleshooting most issues.

For now I will keep assuming that everything is just fine on my PC and that it's the outside world that simply can't connect to my PC.


Do you *want* the outside world to be able to connect to your computer?
Most people don't.

Also is there any service out there on the internet where there is a public computer that can send some traffic to a specific tcp or udp port ?!


I second Paul's suggestion to use Steve Gibson's Shields Up! program to
scan your ports, if you're interested in seeing what's open versus
closed versus stealth. Ideally, everything is 'stealth' unless you have
a specific reason for 'open' or 'closed'.

  #10  
Old October 12th 18, 04:45 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
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Posts: 533
Default Mysterious internet/ethernet issue (kinda needtesting/connection/communication service to diagnose it ???)

Also, if it's a cable modem, there's usually a web server located at
http://192.168.100.1


Suppose the cable modem does listen to 192.168.100.1 what should the netmask be on my windows computer to be able to access it ? And what should the ip address of the windows computer be ?

Some guesses:

Windows PC 192.168.100.2

Mask either: 255.255.255.0

or

Mask either: 255.255.254.0 ?

or

Mask either: 255.255.0.0 ?

Tried some of these some time.

Never really understood how to compute these netmasks properly, it's a very fokking annoying feature of the internet tech.

Bye,
Skybuck.
 




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