Internet Service Problem or Not?

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Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
Originally Posted By: Rolla07
Why don't you do a factory reset on the gateway?
Then ensure firmware is up to date, reconfigure it and run trace route again. It shouldn't time out. If it does, get a new gateway or see if you can borrow one for testing purposes.


Do you have an idea on what setting(s) I need to change in my current gateway to be able to run a traceroute test without it timing out as I showed earlier in this thread?

About the firmware, it looks like this gateway has ISP specific fireware since it was a Qwest starter kit when I purchased it. When logged into the Actiontec, there is a link in the firmware update section that links to a Qwest webpage for firmware updated for this gateway model, but that link is non-existant anymore since they don't support this model any longer.

I went to Actiontec's website and they show a firmware update that was way back in July 2005, but they also say this which makes it sound like I can't use their firmware update due to the original Qwest setup.

"This Firmware Upgrade (3.0.1.0.6.0) is for the GT704-WG ONLY. It is not to be used on any other model of router or gateway. This is a NCS (Non-Customer Specific) Firmware, and is not intended as an Upgrade for ANY ISP Specific Firmware, regardless of version number. Therefore, you should not load a NCS Firmware Upgrade on to a gateway that currently has an ISP Specific Firmware installed."

My Actiontec model GT704WG says the Firmware Version is: QW04-3.60.2.0.6.3-GT704-WG

Actiontec says their firmware update for my model GT704WG is version: 3.0.1.0.6.0, and is Non-Customer Specific (NCS), which makes me very leery to even try it based on their statement above.



The traceroute isn't the issue. I would be more interested in how it performs with the borrowed device.
 
Why aren't you willing to try a live CD from a linux distro?

It certainly CAN be OS related. It doesn't take a whole lot of time to either verify or eliminate one of the variables.
 
Originally Posted By: Subdued
Why aren't you willing to try a live CD from a linux distro?

It certainly CAN be OS related. It doesn't take a whole lot of time to either verify or eliminate one of the variables.


I'm willing to, but I have no idea how to even begin burning a Linix image CD or whatever I need. Might not even be able to do it from my computer since it only has a CD burner and not a DVD burner, so if the CD needs more space than a CD I'm dead in the water.

My machine seems to run a lot better with less CPU usage, and the network lock-ups have seemed to go away after setting the modem itself to static DSN servers (as suggested earlier) and also doing some registry clean-up with CClean and some Adware clean-up with AdwCleaner. Maybe it was software related and cleaning up with those tools took the lock-up away. That could also explain why Firefox was running the CPU near 100% while the network was locked up and all the Firefox tabs were churning for 5 min with the message saying "Waiting for xxxxxxx.com .... ".

I still plan on trying the other DLS gateway box however to see if the speedtest.net tests show it to be a better performer, and to verify if my current DSL gateway is slowly degrading in performance.

One thing that I noticed doing speedtest.net with Firefox, Google Chrome and IE8 back to back was that IE8 resulted in the best network performance. I thought it would have been the worse of the three.
 
Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
Puppy Linux should fit on a CD as well. Puppy Linux


I might give that a try, thanks for the link.

But first I think I do want to try this other DSL gateway, which I will probably pick-up tomorrow. Reason I want to try the other gateway box is because I do think my gateway is flaky at times.

Almost all day yesterday it seemed to be working near 100% after I cleaned up my registry and addware off my computer and changed to static DNS servers in Windows and in the DSL gateway. I did see one slow down around midnight but that just could have been the network.

I left my computer and the gateway on all night running, and this morning everything worked fine for a short time then got the zero network traffic slowdown again. I power cycled only the modem and it's been working fine ever since. Just seems like the modem is slowly dying, and that along with some computer slow down and excessive CPU usage I think that previously just magnified the issue.
 
No problem, all you have to do is burn the iso to a CD and boot from the disc... nothing will touch your hard drive unless you tell it to.
 
Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
No problem, all you have to do is burn the iso to a CD and boot from the disc... nothing will touch your hard drive unless you tell it to.


I'll have to read up on the info in the link you gave me. So if I burn this CD and boot from it, I should then be able to open Firefox (or another browser) and get on the internet to checkout performance, etc?
 
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
No problem, all you have to do is burn the iso to a CD and boot from the disc... nothing will touch your hard drive unless you tell it to.


I'll have to read up on the info in the link you gave me. So if I burn this CD and boot from it, I should then be able to open Firefox (or another browser) and get on the internet to checkout performance, etc?

Exactly. That version of Linux doesn't have Firefox, but you get Opera.
 
Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
No problem, all you have to do is burn the iso to a CD and boot from the disc... nothing will touch your hard drive unless you tell it to.


I'll have to read up on the info in the link you gave me. So if I burn this CD and boot from it, I should then be able to open Firefox (or another browser) and get on the internet to checkout performance, etc?

Exactly. That version of Linux doesn't have Firefox, but you get Opera.


Ok, sounds like a good test. If I still see these network lock-up using the OS and browser on the CD then it most certainly would have to be a hardware.
 
ClutchDisc - question concerning surfing the internet with Puppy Linux & Opera. What about anti-virus software? Is it needed in this case? If I understand this correctly, if I boot up from the Puppy Linux CD it just loads the OS, etc into the RAM and therefore there is no connection to the HD, so if there were any viruses/malware encountered on the internet it couldn't get on my computer. Can you clarify this please? I want to burn a CD and try this out.

I've had two network lock-ups today. One time I power cycled just the modem and it came back. The other time I just restarted the computer (without touching the modem) and it came back. Don't know if restarting the computer also re-initializes the modem somehow. Hard to discern what the root cause is, so need to try the Puppy Linux test.
 
I need some assistance to make sure I do this right. I'm looking at the instructions to download the Puppy Linux .iso file. It directs me to the webpage to "Download latest version of 5.2.8 from ibiblio.org: Get lupu-528.005.iso"
http://puppylinux.org/main/Download Latest Release.htm#lucidpuppy

If I click the link, I get a pop-up window to open or save the iso file "lupu-528.005.iso" (133 Mb).

If I save this to my HD, can I then burn the CD image from the saved .iso file by using Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 (which I already have on my computer)? In Roxio, I see an option titled "Record CD from CD Image ...". If I open that menu, I see where I can select an .iso file for it to burn from. I take it this will do the correct CD burn of Puppy Linux that I can boot from (?). I obiously don't do much .iso image burning.
grin.gif
 
1. You don't need an antivirus because it's Linux. Totally different than windows. Don't even worry about it!

2. Sounds like you are doing everything correctly... Go ahead and burn the disc and you should have yourself a bootable CD.

Let us know how it works!
smile.gif
 
^^^ Well, I got there ... I'm typing this post using Firefox in Puppy Linux.

So now that I'm using a whole different OS, is there are any tests I can do with the modem while in Linux?

I noticed there is no "Task Manager" available to monitor the network traffic. Maybe there is in Puppy Linux but haven't found it yet. If anyone knows, please point me to it.

I tried running speedtest.net in Linux FF, but it needs a plug-in that it doesn't have. Speedtest said to use Google Chrome, so I guess I could have PL download Google Chrome somehow. Do I need to reboot off the CD and then do the whole Ethernet setup and pick which browser I want again?
 
Well that is good! I'm not sure if there are any other tests you can do.. that is beyond my knowledge.

I don't use Puppy Linux much at all, so I'm not sure if there is something like the task manager... I know other Linux distros have something similar, but not sure on puppy.
 
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
I tried running speedtest.net in Linux FF, but it needs a plug-in that it doesn't have. Speedtest said to use Google Chrome, so I guess I could have PL download Google Chrome somehow. Do I need to reboot off the CD and then do the whole Ethernet setup and pick which browser I want again?

They must have added FF to Puppy in the version you are on.. My LTS (5.7.1) didn't have it. Any other browsers besides FF?
 
Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
I tried running speedtest.net in Linux FF, but it needs a plug-in that it doesn't have. Speedtest said to use Google Chrome, so I guess I could have PL download Google Chrome somehow. Do I need to reboot off the CD and then do the whole Ethernet setup and pick which browser I want again?

They must have added FF to Puppy in the version you are on.. My LTS (5.7.1) didn't have it. Any other browsers besides FF?


Yes, I think I saw Google Chrome and IE listed also. I chose FF because it took the least amount of RAM and probably runs faster. I might have to exit and reboot from the CD to choose Google Chrome.

The newest FF version was 11.0 which is what I'm using now. Not sure what versions of Google Chrome and IE were listed to choose from.
 
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
Yes, I think I saw Google Chrome and IE listed also. I chose FF because it took the least amount of RAM and probably runs faster. I might have to exit and reboot from the CD to choose Google Chrome.

IE? I don't think so.. sure it's not something else? IE isn't going to be on a Linux distro. You shouldn't have to exit and reboot to use Chrome.. Just click it open like your regular OS.
 
Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
Yes, I think I saw Google Chrome and IE listed also. I chose FF because it took the least amount of RAM and probably runs faster. I might have to exit and reboot from the CD to choose Google Chrome.

IE? I don't think so.. sure it's not something else? IE isn't going to be on a Linux distro. You shouldn't have to exit and reboot to use Chrome.. Just click it open like your regular OS.


I'm probably wrong about IE. It was a list of different browsers to choose from and I picked FF. I've looked around the menus and can't see how I can setup a different browser. Once you choose one, it looks like PL downloads it into memory.
 
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