[This is a historical look at what happened, didn’t work, and what ultimately worked in my “home network” setup (router controls DSL modem PPPoE login & connection to internet) that had always worked, then suddenly didn’t, and now works again.]<\/p>\n
Late yesterday morning all of the sudden we had no internet connection. I lived with it, knowing it sometimes goes south, but comes back later (internet connected).<\/p>\n
Hubby on phone (conference call) most of that time, and finally wanted internet in afternoon, so he called Windstream for help.<\/p>\n
Usually I have to reboot the router or something if it doesn’t automatically connect after awhile, and doing that didn’t help. Turning it all off then on again didn’t help. I wasn’t about to connect the modem to my computer. I hate messing with all that junk when it’s not really the router that is at fault ever.<\/p>\n
Yesterday the router was blamed by Windstream, it being the router’s fault we couldn’t connect and they wouldn’t help. Hubby did connect the modem to his laptop after awhile and it wouldn’t work. The person on the phone tried all the things to see if it was connected and obviously it’s such that many people are not savvy as to what it means to be connected, & I do know some about it. I find tech help over phone tedious, not helpful to those who are at the end of the line who have a clue.<\/p>\n
In the end it was just that the LAN ethernet port was disabled on hubby’s computer. Enabling it, the modem connected. So Windstream immediately said they were done. Adios! But that’s not our usual setup. The whole affair was, the modem wasn’t connecting through the router. Phone Service –>Modem–>Router–>wireless signal to computers. This is the usual setup. Our computers look to the router for the internet. Our computers have nothing to do with connecting. Just the router connects & sends us our internet ability.<\/p>\n
I set it all back up as usual, and the modem wouldn’t connect with the router controlling it. So I tried the rebooting and all that to no avail. I reset the router too. Nothing would work to make the internet come back. We had another modem before just a few weeks ago, our original DSL modem from ALLTEL back in the day. When we upgraded to 12mbps recently the phone guy gave us a new modem. It worked fine until yesterday late morning.<\/p>\n
The newer modem is similar to our older one, lower model number than our older one, in fact. But new, branded Windstream, Siemens Speedstream 4200. The tech at Windstream had hubby do all the stupid stuff to see if internet would work with doing this and that, and jumping through hoops with NEVER ONCE saying to push in the RESET button thing with a pen, or whatever. (I know, why would they?)<\/p>\n
I was trying to make ICS work to have modem connected to desktop computer LAN then distribute the internet through our wireless home network, which is part of the router, the good old router that always works but wouldn’t seem to work with modem successfully any more. Home network was just fine though.<\/p>\n
I did get that internet distributed, but it was flaky, I couldn’t stand it. It worked on desktop mostly, sometimes on networked computers, but not always without re-doing the network setup on the desktop. I had enough of that and re-put everything back with router between the computers and modem. It still wouldn’t work to connect internet.<\/p>\n
Then I spotted the little hole on the modem and sayed “What the heck, why not …” and voila! I loaded my router status page and it was INSTANTLY displaying connected information. The thing is, the information in a modem is branded, and reset puts it back to factory, like how you got it originally. If it’s been tweaked by some employee somewhere, that’s not going to be a killing factor of getting online if you reset. The thing about it is, it works or it doesn’t, and eventually you’ll get something done that will help.<\/p>\n
Get your customers the information they need. Don’t do anything except check to make sure everything plugged in correctly, lights on, then RESET the stupid modem with the RESET push in thing, not the power on\/off button, the RESET. I say this from the bottom of my heart, RESET is there for a reason, and this inane going over all the possible scenarios and not getting to the bottom of it is purely not helpful, obviously I use their signal to distribute on my network differently than they will support. So, if modem connects with laptop, it’s fine. Goodbye! Yet it’s absolute that we didn’t call in the first place to get the modem hooked up to the computer. We have an unsupported setup, doesn’t mean I want them to help with the router. I just know that if my router was routing everything just fine on my network just not getting the modem to dial up, it’s more like the modem was connected all by itself and my router couldn’t deal with the signal coming into it’s WAN port. [Fully know that we never connected to the modem with a browser. Never used the modem as router.] Your disdain for home networks being between modem and computer is evident, understood, but not acceptable without first RESET of modem. That’s the FIRST thing to do. We won’t call for help again, that’s for sure. You know why. It’s always the signal is down, or it’s something we have to figure out ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[This is a historical look at what happened, didn’t work, and what ultimately worked in my “home network” setup (router controls DSL modem PPPoE login & connection to internet) that had always worked, then suddenly didn’t, and now works again.] Late yesterday morning all of the sudden we had no internet connection. I lived with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[155,205,208,206,207,204],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","tag-dsl","tag-dsl-modem","tag-pppoe","tag-router","tag-router-controlling-modem","tag-windstream"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":932,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2010\/03\/09\/more-speedstream-4200-windstream\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":0},"title":"More Speedstream 4200 & Windstream","author":"Maisy","date":"Tuesday, March 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent the whole day until just the last half hour jumping through Windstream hoops with that dratted horrid thing called speedstream 4200 from them. To be fair, it may also be the Belkin wireless router at fault to some degree, but the only thing I can attest to is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":930,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2010\/03\/09\/further-speedstream-4200-windstream\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":1},"title":"Further Speedstream 4200 & Windstream","author":"Maisy","date":"Tuesday, March 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote about the troubles I've been having with our Windstream DSL on Sunday past. This morning I awoke and came downstairs to see the router blinking blue where it should be solid if connected, but blinking means \"connecting\" and it just sat there doing that, and nothing was actually\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":926,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2010\/03\/07\/speedstream-4200-windstream\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":2},"title":"Speedstream 4200 & Windstream","author":"Maisy","date":"Sunday, March 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm sick of Windstream DSL. We've had issues \"connecting\" in the past here and there. Every time it was a reset to the modem that allowed us to connect to DSL again, only after trying it a few times ... I wrote about it when it was happening in 2009.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":880,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2009\/10\/30\/dsl-frustrations\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":3},"title":"DSL frustrations","author":"Maisy","date":"Friday, October 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Our DSL internet cut out again suddenly late this morning, and nothing helped again, until I got my hubbies Treo Stylus to push in the reset of the modem and voila it all connected through my router just fine again. This is frustrating since I never had to do this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1585,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2012\/03\/06\/windstream-issue-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":862,"position":4},"title":"Windstream issue again","author":"Maisy","date":"Tuesday, March 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This seems to be an occasional post: Windstream being offline, and they won't fix it, don't see that the problem lies on their end exclusively. Yesterday, March 5th, around 8:50am it went out. Hasn't yet come back (over 24 hours now.) 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