intermittent @home connectivity

[Skeetez]

Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but here goes:

Here's the scenerio: I have a cable modem w/ @home. It works fine most of the time, but sometimes I will randomly lose my connection. During a particulary bad spell of this, I can set up a ping to my gateway and watch it go from pinging to timing out. Once it has started timing out, there is no reconnection or received pings, it just keeps timing out. The weird thing is that if I do winipcfg release all/renew all, it will start pinging again. Sometimes all I have to do is release/renew once and it might work fine for a few hours. Other times I can do the cycle of losing the conn. and getting it back for hours. Of course I have talked w/ the @home people and they say that its a problem on my end. I have tried reinstalling the NIC hardware and software and all of the TCP/IP software. Any ideas?

Here's my setup:

Windows 98SE
SurfMachine SM100 Cable modem
Realtek 8029(AS) PCI NIC
ASUS A7M266 v1.04 BIOS
AMD TBIRD 1200 MHZ/FSB@266
Mushkin 256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM w/ Hyundai chips
GLOBALWIN:FOP32-1 Heatsink
Turbo-Cool 425 ATX Power Supply
75GB IBM Deskstar
RICOH MP9120A CDRW/DVD
SOUND BLASTER LIVE! Value
Mitsumi 1.44 MB Floppy
ET7896A ServerTower

[Grimm]

Replace your NIC with a brand name card. 3Com, IBM, SMC, Netgear or Linksys. Realtek cards are garbage, I had some and I had the same problems.
If that doesn't solve the problem, ask them to replace your cable modem. If that doesn't work, get DSL.

[Skeetez]

I got a Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter. I thought it had fixed the problem, but in the last five minutes I've had to release/renew five times just to write this. I guess I'll look into getting DSL...

[LPMiller]

Originally posted by Skeetez
I got a Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter. I thought it had fixed the problem, but in the last five minutes I've had to release/renew five times just to write this. I guess I'll look into getting DSL...

If this is a recent problem, it could be related to the Code Red worm that's running around. It doesnt' infect you, but it does infect exchange servers, and if your ISP has it, it has a nasty side affect of constantly crashing dsl/cable routers.

It is also possible your cable modem is starting to fry - a common symptom is the inability to maintain a connection. What I would do is call tech support, see if others are having the problem, and if not, have them get you a new modem.

[Skeetez]

The problem has been going on on and off for a while so I don't think its the code red worm, though that did cross my mind. I've tried everything regarding IRQ's, even removed every card but the NIC and video card. Oddly enough its been working fine this morning...so far. The lights never blink when I lose my connection. I guess the next step will be trying a new modem when it stops working again. Thanks for the help.