RE: [PLUG] Cable Modem Goes Out?

["Adam Van Antwerp" <avanantwerp@princetelecom.com>]

I had similar outage problems, so I got an X10 firecracker (which was like
5$ through some deal on freshmeat) kit with the serial port adapter, then
wrote a bash script to ping a DNS server and if it did not get a response I
would have it cycle the power of the cable modem through the X10. I even
added a log function, let me know if u want the script or more info.  This
worked great for my outages with Comcast@home, although I did have to play
with the timing of the pings and on/off commands.

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-admin@lists.phillylinux.org
[mailto:plug-admin@lists.phillylinux.org]On Behalf Of Bill Jonas
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 10:36 PM
To: 'plug@lists.phillylinux.org '
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Cable Modem Goes Out?


On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 08:54:19AM -0500, William Shank wrote:
>  Thanks for the response. My system goes down between 11am - 3pm on
average,
> but friday it was down until 2pm then again from about 3to5pm. It's very
> annoying. Unfortunately, I'm not at home with the box when this occurs -
i'm
> trying to connect into it remotely, so I have no idea what the modem is
> doing. But next time I'm home during that part of the day, i'm going to
> check it.

I've had some annoyances with my cable modem where the service will just
stop for several minutes to longer.  All the lights are in their normal
display.  Finally, I broke down and called tech support.  The tech told
me to unplug the power to the cable modem for about one minute and then
plug it back in.  That worked.  Since then, I do that whenever I have an
unexplained outage, and I believe it's worked every (or nearly every)
time for me.  It got to the point where I considered making a little
powerbox with a push-button switch on it to cut the power for sixty
seconds and then restore it.  I've just come off a long stretch (couple
of months, maybe?) where I didn't have that problem.  A couple days ago,
though, the problem resurfaced, but I haven't seen it since then.

Cable has its advantages.  In my experience, reliability is not one of
them.

--
Bill Jonas    *    bill@billjonas.com    *    http://www.billjonas.com/

Developer/SysAdmin for hire!   See http://www.billjonas.com/resume.html


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