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Phil-101
If anyone could help me I've had all these problems.. If you want this ------->
If you can really help me thank you, thank you for reading.
[image edited for privacy]
Hiya everyone.
My internet for the past month has been a fluffy, cornball, piece of poo. 
When downloading something, sometimes it will reach speeds of like 100 bytes per second.
YouTube videos stop after 3 seconds.
I have to constantly refresh web pages.
Basically, nothing is really working like it used to before.
I've even completely reformatted my Windows XP.
Any help or ideas?
Cheers! 
ekkenny wrote:cb6614
I not trying to be smat about the power, but the power supply/transformer for the 2710 does not event have a ground lead on the plug.
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Well, my 2701 has the hoped-for ground-lead plug...
I know what you mean, though--the idea that a power strip might be negatively affecting the operation of the modem seems as wacky as they come...
I had a somewhat different problem, though. I installed the 2701 about four months ago--first time with DSL--had been on cable for ~12 years--we moved and had to switch as there is no cable here. Although the DSL modem would rarely drop its connection for just a few seconds, what most often bothered me were two things:
1) The modem was constantly dropping connection speeds on a regular basis, prompting me to do a diagnostic reset of the modem as the quickest way to set it back to normal (I have a 6mbs down line that was regularly dropping to 3mbps, or so.)
2) Under Network devices in the modem's setup, two phantom devices showed up--two more devices than should have been there, with phantom hardware mac addresses to boot. The modem had been assigning IP addresses to those two phantom devices from the first time I plugged it in. I even tried to clear the modem's bios by resetting the network device configuration, but from the place in the configuration software for the modem that I had been using to clear this portion of the bios--the fix only worked temporarily and within minutes the phantom devices would be back.
Almost comically, my Google/Bing searches led me to exactly one post written by another person who'd had a 2701 and had also gotten two phantom devices with their own phantom hardware mac addresses and sequential IP addresses. No one could help him, and even 2-Wire concluded that what he needed was a new modem as apparently the appearance of phantom devices in the network is a harbinger of impending electronic death for the 2701...
Eventually my searching led me here, and precisely to this thread, wherein I discovered another way to get into the modem's bios than the one I had been using. The mdc access provided me with options a bit more advanced than the standard method of bios config access afforded, and the reset button under Network Devices worked the first time--and the phantom devices have not come back. That was the good news.
Bad news is that the modem is still dropping from 6mbps to 3mbps regularly. I only rarely actually lose connection--the modem simply drops down to 3mbps. I was hoping that if I ever resolved the phantom device problem that it would also resolve the DSL speed shifting. Such is not the case, apparently.
Here's a cut & paste of my diagnostics, should that prove helpful to someone in trying to armchair this thing:
Troubleshooting – DSL Diagnostics
General Information DSL Line (Wire Pair): Line 1 (inner pair) Downstream Rate Cap: 7040 kbps Downstream Atten. at 300kHz: 38.0 dB Uncancelled Echo: -18.6 dB Ok VCXO Frequency Offset: -16.7 ppm Ok Final Rx Gain: 18.4 dB Ok Impulse Noise Comp. Tones: 0 Ok Excessive Impulse Noise: 0 Ok Impulse noise protection: 0.00 Delay of latency path: 0.25 ms
Training History
Downstream Upstream Time Line Rate Max1 Max2 Max3 Mgn1 Mgn2 Attn Pwr CRCs FECs INP DLY Rate Max Mgn Attn Pwr CRCs FECs Mode Vendor State Exit Code Echo VCXO Rx Gain INC Tones 2012/04/22 14:56:26 PDT 1 6752 6932 7016 7016 9.6 9.0 41.7 19.7 0 0 0.00 0.25 512 912 15.0 26.0 5.4 0 0 G.DMT Annex A Alcatel 230/105 IDLE_REQUEST -18.1 -8.3 18.4 0 2012/04/22 15:36:18 PDT 1 6976 7144 7088 7088 9.6 2.0 41.7 19.7 717 0 0.00 0.25 512 900 15.0 26.0 5.8 34 37 G.DMT Annex A Alcatel 230/105 ERR_LOS_LIMIT -17.2 -8.7 18.4 0 2012/04/22 16:01:24 PDT 1 3264 3488 7152 7152 10.1 24.0 41.7 19.6 0 0 0.00 0.25 512 736 15.0 26.0 10.5 0 0 G.DMT Annex A Alcatel 229/103 N/A -18.6 -16.7 18.4 0
Notes: Time Time of last update Max1 Max. rate at start of connection Max2 Current or final estimated max. rate Max3 Current or final estimated max. rate without INC Mgn1 Noise margin at start of connection Mgn2 Current or final noise margin DLY Delay of latency path
Wanted to add...I've disabled wireless operation and am only using the 2701 in wired configuration.
DSL Down Up Current Rate: 3264 kbs 512 kbs Max Rate: 7168 kbs 736 kbs Current Connection: Current Noise Margin: 24.0 dB 15.0 dB Current Attenuation: 41.7 dB 26.0 dB Current Output Power: 19.6 dBm 10.5 dBm ATM Cells Errors % Transmit: 158331 0 0 Receive: 1674973 0 0 IP Bytes Packets Errors % Transmit: 6430619 34961 0 0 Receive: 79011222 58144 0 0
Wanted to chime in on the phantom device phenomena--did a lot more digging into that yesterday, and it seems as if what actually might be causing those is some funky network-active software Microsoft is running in its server versions and in Windows 7. And I was relieved to see that many more people were also getting these as I discovered once I Binged the actual hardware mac addresses that had been popping up--all *kinds* of routers and gateways were reporting the identical mac addresses as appearing from phantom devices, too! Hallelujah--at least I made some progress and discovered that the 2Wire modems were not unique in this regard and that this is actually a fairly common occurrence. Of course, it would have to be, since Windows software is also a fairly common occurrence.
What seemed to be the general consensus from all side after lots of head scratching and investigation, is that some of the network-aware services in Microsoft's server platforms and Windows 7 were creating "fake devices with fake mac addresses" for internal reasons known only to the geniuses responsible for this software (and I mean "geniuses" in the most complimentary of sort of way.) The phenomenon occurs in versions of Server 2003 (where the entries used to show up as "detective e1:6c:d6:ae:52:90", etc)., and occurs when certain services are running in a network situation under Win 7 (x64 in my case.)
Of course--there is *no* clear-cut documentation from anywhere telling us which services do what--that would be far too easy. So what I had to do yesterday is laboriously examine every service from A-Z on an individual basis. If I had a service running that wasn't absolutely necessary--by that I mean no other services were dependent on it and I could stop it without ill effect or a warning that many other services would be shut down, too--then I'd stop the service and set it to manual.
I'm not running wireless--so I also stopped any and all WLAN and other wireless-related services. I wish I could tell you which one of them had been creating the fake network devices--but I can't. But in researching the issue yesterday, no one else could tell you, either... We are all agreed, however, on the problem being caused by a particular Microsoft service.
And that's just it--we don't even know if this *is* a bonafide problem, but if you are like me and you would prefer it if your network did not report phantom devices with fake hardware mac addresses, then Microsoft--AT&T--somebody--needs to get very, very clear about what's going on here. Can you imagine the amount of customer frustration and help desk angst that this single issue has probably caused? Billions of $ in lost productivity, I'd wager. Just Bing/Google "e1:6c:d6:ae:52:90" Without the quotes and you'll begin to get an inkling as to how big this problem is.
Anyway...after shutting all Win7 x64 services that were no -essential to my network down (set them to manual--if they are needed they will come on in that case, usually), and doing one more reset on my modem's network device list, my phantom devices are *G_O_N_E!* They've been gone for two days now, through several reboots and several 2701 power cycles--so at this point it *appears* they are not coming back. I just wish I knew which service(s) it was responsible for this needless waste of time.
Still on problem remains, however: my 2701 is still shifting speeds and I have to manually do a diagnostic reset of the modem to get back into 6mbps down territory--it still wants to donwshift into 3mbps mode onm a regular basis. I always check this and if necessary correct it before I do a download of a sizable file because what's the point of having 6mbps down other than that?
Hope this helps someone...and I wish someone could help me with the constant speed-shifting between 3 & 6 mbps that I've been getting since the service was installed.
Thanks,
WaltC
(Spell check hint here: After typing the body of your post in rich text, select the HTML tab and click the cursor anywhere inside the body of text. If your browser spell checks (like Firefox or IE with add-ons) then you'll see the misspelled words underlined as usual and you may right-click them for a list of suggestions--of course, ignore the HTML tagging. When you are done, select "rich text" once again and you'll see corrected spelling. Beats the heck out of using this ancient spell checker--I think so, anyway...)
I'm still hoping someone will help me with my initial post.
The results I got from http://www.speedtest.net/ are 0.67 Mb/s for Download, 0.26 for Upload, and 70 ms for Ping.
My internet seems to stall every few seconds which makes websites time out and for downloads to end all together.
I can perform and post any additional tests that could give you more info on this trouble of mine.
Cheers.
Glad to say it looks like my problems have pretty much straightened out over the past weeks. I cleared the 2701 bios once again and this time the "phantom devices" it had been registering are gone for good.
I also began accessing my gateway through this link:
instead of through this one
I know that it seems like a case of pure semantics, but I know that my 2701 gateway performs better and most closely to its intended specifications when I use the first link instead of the second one... There is some logic to this, though. The MDC link requires my password for the modem whereas the standard bios link does not. Through the MDC access I've been able to more precisely reset selected portions of the bios as needed. Problem solved. My sync to 6mbs down is much more stable than it had been, and now most often always stays where it should be as opposed to changing speeds constantly forcing me to reset the gateway. Things are definitely improving as of late!
