My cable modem or wireless router going down?

I haven been having a ton of connectivity issues for the past month or so. Nothing really has changed as far as settings or the way things are wired up. Before I would have no connection from time to time for a few minutes or so. Typically I could just wait a bit and it'd come back up. Every once in a while I'd need to go power cycle the router and the modem to get things up and running again.

Lately the wife is using the wireless throughout the day much more and tells me that it disconnects a few minutes here and there throughout the day. The security mode I'm using for wirelss is WPA Personal with only a few other small changes from the default settings (mainly just change the password and the SSID name.

Whats the best thing I can do to try to determine if it's a piese of the hardware that is failing or if it's my cable company having problems? Same thing happens on our iphone/itouch.

TIA

I've had similar issues with TimeWarner (my cable provider) and it's either the modem or the cable company.
he easiest way to tell which is failing is to look at the modem when you have no connectivity. If the modem status lights indicate no connection then it's the modem/ISP, if it does then it's the router.
I'm assuming the iphone/itouch is using your local wireless network? so when the Internet fails it can't get a signal either.

curtis1552 said:

I've had similar issues with TimeWarner (my cable provider) and it's either the modem or the cable company.
he easiest way to tell which is failing is to look at the modem when you have no connectivity. If the modem status lights indicate no connection then it's the modem/ISP, if it does then it's the router.
I'm assuming the iphone/itouch is using your local wireless network? so when the Internet fails it can't get a signal either.

Click to expand...

Yes, the iphone and itouch are on the wireless connection. When it goes down they too cannot connect to the internet. So short of looking at the lights on the modem, there is no way to utilize an app or anything within windows that would allow me to pinpoint which piece of the system is failing?

You can access the modem through the web based software, but you'd have to type in your modem's IP into your browser. It'll give you a little more info than the blinky lights. IP depends on the modem, and if it has been reconfigured.

Before you start messing with the routers Internal Pages you should connect one PC direct to the modem to see if the problem persists (be sure to have a firewall up). If so, then its the ISP. If you work and the wife stays home then I would suggest you try this when you only need 1 device on the net.

I just had a four day fight with my cable modem in the uk

win7 could not reach the cable routers default page wired directly so I switched to the laptop (xp) and reached it first time?

then cleared the logs out and reset. still didnt work in win7 so I uninstalled the ethernet drivers and deleted them and all was well again.

seems my ips changed(seemed static for months) and im now actually on a network with a title belonging to the company I signed up with... why win7 couldnt handle it I dont know?