For some reason playing certain games causes my cable modem to shut down, all the lights go off of it for about a minute. This has been happening when I was playing Lord of the Rings online and Mythos. Yet I’ve yet to have a problem playing a game like Titan Quest or Company of Heroes online, or while playing any single player games that’s not using the modem. Is this a problem with the modem, or the ISP, or even the game itself? I have comcast cable if that helps.
If you’re leasing the modem, it’s easy to swap it out. Just find out where their local office is and swing by on a Saturday morning.
I’m on my third or fourth cable modem, they rarely last more than 3 or so years.
So this would be a problem with the actual modem itself then? I think I had this modem for about 2 years now.
It would be easy enough to find out. Go out to Best Buy or CC, pick up a $50 cable modem, and see if that fixes it. If not, take the modem back and get a refund.
The Comcast folks told me if I did that I’d have to have them authorize or something the new modem, in some remote control fashion. So I couldn’t just swap one out without having them involved somehow. Anyone know if that’s so, or if it varies by provider or something?
Just wondering, but what cable modem did Comcast give you for your service, or do they have one brand for all areas? I have a SurfBoard SB3100 modem.
If they’re anything like Time Warner Cable, they’ll have a variety of brands, even in the same area. But yeah, definitely just swap it. You could call them and try to troubleshoot it, but would be easier to just replace it right off the bat.
When I had to switch out a modem with TWC, I just brought the old one (with as much of the stuff included as I could) and they gave me a new one without any sort of support reference # or anything.
I just got Comcast cable, and it worked right when I plugged in the modem. Everyone told me I’d need to call Comcast and give them the MAC address but I didn’t need to do that. Maybe it’s different in your area.
Thanks! I rather doubt it…I think they just tell you that because it’s policy or something.
SB4100 SurfBoard here. Had it for five years so far…
I just want to suggest something that may seem really odd at first, but it strangely worked for me. Early last year, I had the exact same types of issue that you describe: I’d be browsing the net then I’d suddenly not be able to load any pages. I’d look at my cable modem and see that it had no connection; however, it’d happen at any time regardless of whether I was on the net or not (which may be slightly different than the original issue). After a bit, it’d come back and I’d continue but it’d fail again eventually. This happened in a seemingly random fashion. I called my ISP about it (thinking it might be an issue on their end) but they had no problems and suggested it was my “ethernet card”. Since I have dual gigabit ethernet built into the mobo, I thought that’d be odd for it to go. Then, after days/weeks of struggling to figure out how to get it back working…my PSU went kaboom. After replacing it with a new one, I’ve not had an issue since.
I’m only tossing this out there as an obscure bit of info to suggest that it might not be your modem or connection at all. Could a faulty PSU cause such an odd failure? I’m leaning towards yes only because I’ve some evidence suggesting it. Something to think about, anyway.
I have Comcast. My cable modem was fried about a month ago due to a close lightning strike. Replaced the modem from the local Comcast office, but it wouldn’t give my router an IP address. After about 15 minutes, it finally did, but when I tried to browse, it took me to a Comcast proxy page to sign up for service.
I called up Comcast tech support and they had to activate something on the cable modem to allow me to access the Internet.
It also registered to the mac address of my PC (I had taken the router out of the loop as I was troubleshooting the IP address issue). Which was sort of lame, but I think almost all WAN routers let you change its public mac address anyway, so I just gave it the mac of my PC.
I had an issue somewhat like that and it turned out to be the cable coming into the house. Perhaps have them come out and test it.
I’m not sure if it could be the PSU, as I never have any problems while playing other games. Just seems to be online games where the modem is constantly in use and random times online. I did have a black out one night from a power surge while the computer was on, but my power strip had an emergency power supply to keep the computer from turning off.
edit: I was skimming thru the LOTRO forums and read that a modem can be overloaded from too many packet transfers, can that actually happen?
Quite possibly. The cable modem needs to translate from ethernet to whatever transmission protocol it uses so if it can’t keep up, it could gag.
How could I fix that problem? Is that something that would require a new modem or is that on the game maker’s side?
edit: While checking some pages out the modem went off again, so I guess that means that it’s on my end.
Erratic behavior is very common for a failing cable modem.
Swap, I tells ya.
Spuriously cutting out on the connection is obviously not correct behaviour for your internet connection. It could be caused by bad wiring, or a failing cable modem. Comcast is unlikely to swap out your modem without going through some troubleshooting first. I’d suggest that you call up Comcast and jump through the troubleshooting hoops. If it continues to fail, then they are likely to swap it out.
Just finshed with Comcast, and their going to replace it with a better model, I’m going to head over there on Thursday to switch it out.
The service center didn’t have any new modems or those of the same brand that I had, and I had to call them up to fix the account once I got back with the old modem. So I’m back with the old modem until I can find a comcast service center with the right modem type.