[H-GEN] Re: intermittent cable connxn outage

[Scott Burns]

Troy Piggins wrote, and Scott edited:
 > [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
 > [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
 >
 > * Scott Burns <sburns at ihug.com.au> :
 >>
 >>A few questions:
 >>
 >>1) How do you connect to the internet?  Cable modem?  What type?  Make
 >>and model?  USB or Ethernet?
 >
 >
 > Cable modem, motorola SB5100, connected via a second NIC on the
 > gateway.
 >
 >

This type of modem has an online interface.  Can you get to it with a
web browser when the link is down?  With the ADSL modem at work I can't
ping it when the link is down but I can connect to it with my browser.



 > 16  64.233.175.13 (64.233.175.13)  163.548 ms  173.257 ms  164.469
 > ms

 > When it is not working, nothing - unknown host telstra.com etc.
 >

When it goes down, try to traceroute to 64.233.175.13 - this helps rule
out DNS problems.


 >
 >>5) What is the output of ifconfig?  Any errors logged there?  Is the TX
 >>and RX byte counts doing anything during outages?
 >
 >
 > eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:04:E2:40:E4:F0
 >           inet addr:147.10.92.105  Bcast:255.255.255.255
 > Mask:255.255.252.0
 >           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
 >           RX packets:104465 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
 >           TX packets:9554 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
 >           collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
 >           RX bytes:18218047 (17.3 Mb)  TX bytes:1018420 (994.5 Kb)
 >           Interrupt:11 Base address:0x8000
 >
 > eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0E:A6:1A:7B:EA
 >           inet addr:192.168.0.1  Bcast:192.168.0.255
 > Mask:255.255.255.0
 >           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
 >           RX packets:25302 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
 >           TX packets:39639 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
 >           collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
 >           RX bytes:2168588 (2.0 Mb)  TX bytes:9078736 (8.6 Mb)
 >           Interrupt:11 Base address:0xec00
 >
 >
 > Define TX/RX counts "doing anything"?  What are they?  Should they
 > be increasing in size?
 >
 >

They are just counts of bytes sent and received.  While the link is down
I'd expect the TX (transmit) to increase but not the RX.


Now, if you can traceroute by numbers as above and get to the machine it
is a DNS problem.  If you can connect to the modem with a browser while
the link is down it's probably a problem with the ISP, and if you can't
connect to the modem it's a local problem.  Each of them have a
different place to go from here.

I can't access the log at the address you gave me.  I'll keep trying.

Scott