Sometimes my internet goes down, so I have to wait for it to come back online.
Sometimes my internet goes down, so I have to wait for it to come back online.
For the past week, I've been getting bizarre internet drops and I can't really pinpoint the exact reason as to why it's happening. My network uses Verizon Fios 1Gig and is a G3100 router connected by ethernet to the ONT. I have a laptop (Acer Predator with a E2400 NIC) hooked directly to the 3100 via ethernet. I also have a G3200 extender connected to the router through ethernet, and on the other end to my desktop (I225-V NIC). Both are on Win11 2H22. I know Verizon has issues with Intel NICs, so I have turned off IPV6 in the router (which did fix problems I had previously, but it seems like this is a separate issue). I've read about how some issues can arise if the router assigns the same IP to 2 devices, so I have set both computers to be assigned a static lease type under DHCP Connections in the router settings. All of the other devices (Macbook, tablets, phones,TV) in the apartment connect through WiFi and have no interruptions at all, even when the two computers are experiencing connectivity issues. As for the issue itself, it seems like the problem is cyclical. There will be a period of time when I have internet and then shortly after it just drops, only to come back for a period of time, before repeating. I test this by running a continuous ping in command prompt to aol.com and it seems like I get "Request timed out." to display 47 times, before it'll get uninterrupted replies from aol, and then after a period of time, it'll display request timed out again 47 times, and then go back to responding. Even when I am timed out/no internet, I can ping the router without an issue with no packet loss, and I also run a Plex server with media hosted on both computers, and my tablets and computers can view the media just fine with or without the disruption, which seems like the ethernet cables aren't the issue. Verizon also came by the other day and replaced both the router and ONT, yet the problem still persists, so I doubt it's a hardware problem on their end either, as the WiFi devices have no interruptions at all. I've seen some threads saying to run ipconfig /all when it's working and not working to see if there are any differences, but everything has the exact same values. What's strange is that when I connect both of the computers to my VPN (I use Mullvad), I get no problems at all (I'm typing this forum post while connected to the VPN right now actually). They both can use internet with no interruptions and the ping to aol runs fine. I restarted the router yesterday and my desktop was able to connect to the internet without an issue and I played video games for a couple of hours without a hitch, but after connecting to the VPN, the cycle starts again after disconnecting. Maybe there's a connection there, but I'm not sure how to properly diagnose this, which is why I am asking anybody who's seen something similar to give me guidance on how to solve this. My guess is that it has something to do with either the router software or Windows screwing things up, since I use the VPN pretty much everyday with no issues for the past few months up until last week, but I'm all ears to any suggestions.
Many people have problems with IPv6 but you already turned that off. I would run a tracert to an IP like 8.8.8.8 and see if it shows anything. The goal is to find the router's IP in the path, then open several cmd windows and keep pinging the router at hop one, which is usually connected by your first ISP, while also pinging at the second hop where you connect to your house. You can try using AOL as well if you really want to do that. Basically, what you are trying to find is exactly where the connection stops working in the network. Since hop 1 works fine, it means the ethernet cable or your first ISP isn't the issue. For most people, the problem happens at hop two because that's how you connect to your house. That same connection will also affect VPNs. So keep trying pinging routers farther away to see if things start failing consistently. Be careful though; some software stops you from using ping for denial of service attacks and might stop responding completely on a router. The key thing is: do you drop at the hop that has the problem exactly when it drops at your final destination? In many ways, you need to hope you find nothing wrong. If the issue is somewhere between your ISP and Google but not between your ISP and Level 3, then fixing it won't work because the problem might be a different ISP entirely. The reason VPNs can help with things like this is if you have a good path through the data center that has a different route to your end site. I assume you are running vpn software on your pc, not on the router? I tend to hate vpn client software because of how it connects into your system and sometimes it's hard to remove them. What you also usually see is vpn bypassing other networking tools like QoS or traffic shapers. Killer was one of the worst offenders for having this garbage software hidden in their drivers. You often find this bundled with motherboards, video cards, etc. A common name is CFOSpeed but anything that talks about favoring certain types of traffic over others needs to be uninstalled because it causes all kinds of strange issues and cannot affect traffic outside your machine. If you get stuck on a network bottleneck inside the computer, then you have a much bigger problem. Maybe try booting one of your machines up with a linux USB image and keep pinging some IP address. That would eliminate windows as the cause because who knows what microsoft might screw up next? I mean they stopped the role out of the latest win11 patch because it caused such massive performance hits to so many people.
Thanks for replying Bill, I appreciate you taking time to help out. I ran tracert three times: once while the internet worked fine via my VPN, once when it was mostly down, and once right after it completely stopped working. I'm not sure how to read these results well enough yet, so if I misinterpreted things, please forgive me. It seems like when everything is totally broken, nothing gets through except the router itself. Here are the traces while everything worked fine: https://imgur.com/4rBJn9D and here is the one when it was mostly working: https://imgur.com/YcJHv0Y And finally, when things were really down (the last trace hits right before a new cycle started): https://imgur.com/qUwzSk2 _ On the VPN side, yes I am using the client on both my laptop and desktop. The software was updated once ago on Oct 14th about a month prior to now, so I don't think the client itself is the problem since I've used it every single day for two years on both machines. My laptop has Killer Suite installed, but my desktop doesn't. There have been no recent updates related to it either, so I'm not sure why that matters, though I will check anyway. The desktop does indeed lack anything like that. You raised a good point about Windows 11. Looking back at the update history, there were several big updates in early 2023, including cumulative updates and various .NET framework changes. That timeline fits when things started failing, so I might try running Linux later to see if it's software-related or just need a system restore.
Usually, tracert isn't a good way to check if something is wrong because it only works when that exact problem happens right now. This feels very strange. The problem looks like something is broken between your house and the internet company (ISP). You see hop 1 but you don't see hop 2. That could also be just a software glitch, and maybe it happened right after tracert checked your router. Since all your traffic goes through that connection, you'd think it would mess with your VPN too. I guess you should check your router to make sure there aren't settings like QoS or a firewall blocking certain stuff. It's 2h22 who seems to have the problem, but it's hard to say if most people just play games and watch videos. What shows Microsoft is idiots are people who got emails from six months ago telling Microsoft that their games were lagging.
Just checked my USB stick in Ubuntu by doing a continuous ping test, and everything looks okay. I didn't see any dropped packets after 1.5 hours (Windows used around 10 minutes). Even after installing the VPN for another hour and half with no drops, I disconnected it and tested again on the USB stick. Only one packet was dropped in the last hour. Here is my Traceroute: https://imgur.com/9JH9xdw View: https://imgur.com/9JH9xdw Ping Test: https://imgur.com/FKlqqhd View: https://imgur.com/FKlqqhd I haven't tested the laptop yet, but it feels like this problem comes from Windows software or something not on Ubuntu. I'm going to start by removing recent Windows updates.