Multiple Ip's Backfeeding Connection?

[kbeaud79]

Our ISP is a local wireless provider offering us 5mb/512 service. We're running a home network which consists of a Win 7 desktop (wired), Windows XP desktop (wireless)and occasional wireless connections for xBox, blackberries, ipods and Vista or Win 7 laptops - but these are VERY occasional! In fact our primary connection in use is the Win 7 desktop and most other connections are not initiated other than a single blackberry. We have a D-Link DIR-628 router - which is nearly new.

Question is: We've been having frequent disconnects with our wired connection which requires a reboot of both our wireless radio and router in order to restore service. When we asked our ISP about this issue and how to resolve it they indicated that our radio is "backfeeding the system with multiple IP's" which in turn is causing the disconnects and poor quality service". Our connection is a dynamic IP and I don't understand how or why this would be happening. Any suggestions as to what they really mean or how to resolve this? Is this likely a router issue or could it be related to their radio or our desktop? We're at a loss as to how to resolve this and we have no other options at the moment for hi-speed. We can't reliably use SKYPE as our connections vary in speed resulting in garbled speech and well, forget online gaming! I've spoken with D-Link who says they have no idea what the ISP is talking about and when I spoke with my desktop manufacturer, they too said it was an ISP issue and nothing to do with their pc! Hopefully someone has some suggestions.

[CA3LE]

"backfeeding the system with multiple IP's" which in turn is causing the disconnects and poor quality service"

Sounds like BS to me. If there is a problem with their equipment shouldn't they replace it? Or is that something that the consumer purchases?

- CA3LE

What's the name of the ISP?

[kbeaud79]

Sounds like BS to me. If there is a problem with their equipment shouldn't they replace it? Or is that something that the consumer purchases?

- CA3LE

What's the name of the ISP?

We actually "own" the equipment however the radio was recently replaced by the ISP (Rural Wave - www.ruralwave.ca) after the first one was blown off our rooftop during a lightening storm. That was only 2 months ago and this is not the first instance of them reporting that we are "backfeeding" the network and causing the drop in service. We recently replaced our router from a Linksys WRT54G to a D-Link DIR-628 (running as b/g rather than N as apparently N routers cause problems with the ISP service quality??? We really have no options for hi-speed service where we are and need more information on how to deal with this issue. They are providing us with a new power adapter - just in case that is the cause of the problem and have suggested that they may need to replace the cable between the rooftop mounted radio and our interior POE power injector which then feeds to our router. When the service is running it's not bad....but it's unreliable and we end up having to re-boot our radio at least once to twice a day to restore service over the past several weeks....somehow, I don't think this is how it's supposed to operate???

[mudmanc4]

One question as to the hookup , can you , in any way possible , diagram the way your connection is , from the " radio " to the router and the computer.

If you have one of the cat5 cables on the LAN that should be on the WAN , or on the radio looped to the router , or even internally in the router or radio then you can in theory cause something like this , but you also shouldn't get a connection via WAN either if this is the case. Then again , if the loop is in the router going to the radio , I suppose it's possible in some way.

Instead of them telling you your backfeeding them , they should not allow it from within there radio firmware, and ask you a similar question .

[kbeaud79]

One question as to the hookup , can you , in any way possible , diagram the way your connection is , from the " radio " to the router and the computer.

If you have one of the cat5 cables on the LAN that should be on the WAN , or on the radio looped to the router , or even internally in the router or radio then you can in theory cause something like this , but you also shouldn't get a connection via WAN either if this is the case. Then again , if the loop is in the router going to the radio , I suppose it's possible in some way.

Instead of them telling you your backfeeding them , they should not allow it from within there radio firmware, and ask you a similar question .

Sorry for the delay in getting a diagram together - please see below. I suppose it's possible that they may be able to see 19 IP's associated with our radio as we do have the normal family host of electronics ie ipods, blackberries, laptops and wireless gaming consoles however there is rarely more than just the single wired desktop and 2 wireless blackberries in use at any one time as our kids are away at university. Although we haven't crossed our wires - I don't see how we could possibly still get a signal of any kind had we inserted the cat 5e cable from the roof-top radio into an "out" port of the wireless router and then a line back into the radio - essentially causing a loop?? The ISP did ask us what was going on earlier when we called to complain about the quality of service - they said once we stopped backfeeding them our service would improve. Is it possible that all these "19 IP's" are actually all the IP's that have ever been registered on our router - even though they aren't all active? We're really at a loss right now as to how to improve our service....perhaps it has something to do with our router ie Dir-629 running only on B/G (even though we have several N devices) because the ISP told us that N devices cause problems with their radios (and vice versa?). Since switching the router over to a B/G wireless signal we do seem to have improved our service but still don't understand what's going on with the disconnects etc. They gave us a new POE when they replaced the radio several months ago and have just now replaced the POE again...in the hopes that this was causing some of the problems? Will have to monitor our connection for a bit to decide if things have in fact improved at all????

Wired_Wireless Layout.pdf

[mudmanc4]

I'm inclined to confer with ca3le on this one , I would ask them what they mean by back feeding. But you actually can get dhcp to nics requesting ip's even if the lan is connected to the wan , as long as the wan is still connected , but still it shouldn't effect the radio. The only thing i can see that would effect the radio in the receiver might be the frequency that the dir-628 is on ( and shouldn't be anyhow ) if they set this up in the firmware of the radio.

Try changing the frequency on the router.

Do you have any wireless camera's or wireless phones , I've seen them play havoc as well. But again , they should have known this when configuring the receiver radio.

As far as them seeing the IP's of the devices that are and have been connected , they can see the mac addresses if you havent spoofed them , this makes me think two things , either the tech your talking to is inexperienced and thinks that these devices are somehow IP's , or in some other strange way , the receiver radio is got a dhcp server in it and is giving out IP's.

I would take a look in the router and match the IP's leased or mac's leased with devices connected to make sure thats not going on , I know , sounds strange and impossible , just t a thought. I this is the case , you'll have to shut dhcp off on all internal devices. ie: the router.

[kbeaud79]

We do have wireless phones in the house - Panasonic DECT which I understood would cause less to no interference.

We also have a microwave.

They didn't configure the router - we did when we were told to replace our old Linksys WRT54G. (they didn't configure that router either!)

In order to connect to the internet we are required to logon to an ISP webpage before being able to actually connect directly to the internet and have a dynamic IP connection.

[mudmanc4]

I'm trying to understand what they cared about your router. The wrt54g is an awesome router. You could flash dd-wrt on it and get a real nice commercial grade system out of it. But anyhow.

I'm not familiar with DECT , but you van be sure I'm going to read up on it. Interference is one thing , but the same frequency range may be the issue , but I should close thy beak until I know more about DECT lol

I haven't heard of a microwave causing issues , but then again , don't some of these radio's for internet run close to the same frequencies ?

[kbeaud79]

I'm trying to understand what they cared about your router. The wrt54g is an awesome router. You could flash dd-wrt on it and get a real nice commercial grade system out of it. But anyhow.

I'm not familiar with DECT , but you van be sure I'm going to read up on it. Interference is one thing , but the same frequency range may be the issue , but I should close thy beak until I know more about DECT lol

I haven't heard of a microwave causing issues , but then again , don't some of these radio's for internet run close to the same frequencies ?

DECT devices have the advantage of using their own spectrum meaning that there is NO COMPETITION for the use of precious airwaves between computers and Wi-Fi devices. Since the DECT phones are supposed to cause less interference with other electronics - including networking I doubt that is the problem. As for the microwave running in the same frequencies as the ISP radio - well even if that were the case the fact that we lose connection almost every evening (after midnight)as well as randomly during the day would suggest that something else is possibly going on as the microwave is definitely not in use during these times! The ISP supplied us with a new (used) POE power adapter similar to our original one the other day and we seem to be holding a steady connection - at least we haven't had to reboot. I've spoken with others who are using the same technology (but different ISP) who have never had to reboot their radio except following a power outage! My pc is less than 6 months old (i5 processor running Win 7 with 6gb ram and TB HDD) as is the DIR-628 router. The only other thing I can think of is perhaps the cat 5/5E cabling and connectors? So in the meantime, we're continuing to monitor our connection and running regularly scheduled speed tests through this site in order to build some further history on this matter....

BTW...what does the "CURRENT SPEED INDEX" window actually represent on the top right hand side of the TestMy.net page?? The values changes on a regular basis and so wondered what it is actually representing as it doesn't seem to have any bearing on our actual results?

speedindex.bmp

[mudmanc4]

Te score shown in the upper page of testmy.net is the cumulative average of all tests taken , I think ca3le said average is shown every five minutes , I could be wrong about the time.

I think your right about the microwave , if it were messing things up , there would be a lot more trouble out there lol

Is there any aiming of the radio ? could that be a possibility ?

[CA3LE]

DECT devices have the advantage of using their own spectrum meaning that there is NO COMPETITION for the use of precious airwaves between computers and Wi-Fi devices. Since the DECT phones are supposed to cause less interference with other electronics - including networking I doubt that is the problem. As for the microwave running in the same frequencies as the ISP radio - well even if that were the case the fact that we lose connection almost every evening (after midnight)as well as randomly during the day would suggest that something else is possibly going on as the microwave is definitely not in use during these times! The ISP supplied us with a new (used) POE power adapter similar to our original one the other day and we seem to be holding a steady connection - at least we haven't had to reboot. I've spoken with others who are using the same technology (but different ISP) who have never had to reboot their radio except following a power outage! My pc is less than 6 months old (i5 processor running Win 7 with 6gb ram and TB HDD) as is the DIR-628 router. The only other thing I can think of is perhaps the cat 5/5E cabling and connectors? So in the meantime, we're continuing to monitor our connection and running regularly scheduled speed tests through this site in order to build some further history on this matter....

Hopefully that new power adapter does the trick. Switching the cables out is always something good to try. Try the cables on a local network file transfer... check the cables for major kinks or obvious defects of the cable or connectors.

Funny CAT-5e story. I helped someone with their network not too long ago, they were having connection issues. Upon further inspection of the cables I noticed that they were being held to the floor board with thumbtacks...

(the tacks skewered right though the cable... obviously shorting out) --- but I've seen that with 'professional work' too... sometimes 'techs' will use the correct type of tacks but accidentally tack through the line anyways ... or tack it down too tight.

BTW...what does the "CURRENT SPEED INDEX" window actually represent on the top right hand side of the TestMy.net page?? The values changes on a regular basis and so wondered what it is actually representing as it doesn't seem to have any bearing on our actual results?

speedindex.bmp

As mudmanc4 said, that's showing our users the average of the internet as a whole. It's updated every 5 minutes and represents the last 30 minutes to an hour of tests taken here. It's just another number to benchmark yourself against. I hope to break this down by country as well soon.

[kbeaud79]

Hopefully that new power adapter does the trick. Switching the cables out is always something good to try. Try the cables on a local network file transfer... check the cables for major kinks or obvious defects of the cable or connectors.

Funny CAT-5e story. I helped someone with their network not too long ago, they were having connection issues. Upon further inspection of the cables I noticed that they were being held to the floor board with thumbtacks...

(the tacks skewered right though the cable... obviously shorting out) --- but I've seen that with 'professional work' too... sometimes 'techs' will use the correct type of tacks but accidentally tack through the line anyways ... or tack it down too tight.

As mudmanc4 said, that's showing our users the average of the internet as a whole. It's updated every 5 minutes and represents the last 30 minutes to an hour of tests taken here. It's just another number to benchmark yourself against. I hope to break this down by country as well soon.

Things have improved substantially since replacing the POE power adapter and we seem to be holding our signal since it's replacement several days ago. We've not had to re-boot the radio since and are obtaining some decent speeds at the moment.... Haven't tried out SKYPE yet but streaming audio from iTunes seems to be working fine.

many thanks for your assistance!