# Problems with Internet Service



## jakenwood (Aug 20, 2017)

The casa we are renting for 3 months in Ajijic has 5g internet ( not TelCel) but works sporadically and randomly .. it will (at the same time) be working on all our devices (two Kindles and a laptop), other times only on both Kindles not on laptop, other times only on laptop and one Kindle but not the other Kindle .. sooo confusing and frustrating. The device that it's currently not working on will show exclamation point by wi-fi and say can't connect, sometimes will not connect but say "limited" ... ANY ideas what is going on? Will it help at all to contact the company (with our very limited Spanish) or is this common????


----------



## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

Is it coming in via a wire as in a telephone wire or by an antennae? Does the weather affect it? We have an antennae pointed at a tower about a mile away and if it rains really hard we lose the service. It is odd that it works on one device but not another, depending on where the router is, are the devices in the same room when this happens?


----------



## jakenwood (Aug 20, 2017)

Doesn't matter if the devices are in different rooms or inches away from each other .. there are cables coming into the router/modem ...


----------



## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

jakenwood said:


> Doesn't matter if the devices are in different rooms or inches away from each other .. there are cables coming into the router/modem ...


There are cables coming into my router as well, from my antennae, is there a rectangular dish shaped antennae on the roof? If not you are on a hard wired system which should not suffer for signal loss unless the router/modem is going bad which is common. Have you called the owner or asked the neighbors? It's hard to determine what the problem is unless we know how your internet signal is being brought into the house.

I once had no signal so I rebooted my modem by unplugging it for a minute and that didn't help. I checked all of my settings and did everything I knew to do. Finally I went outside and my horse was leaning on the pole that held up my dish, she had pushed it out of alignment.

I looked into this and did find this...

No Internet, laptop only, Kindle works fine - Laptops - Laptop Tech Support


----------



## NCas (Sep 9, 2013)

If its with Telmex I think you can request to have a technician come by and check the modem out. I had MegaCable and after a couple of visits they just switch out the modem/wifi. However, those usually have very limited range and I've found them not to be the best. What some of us here have done is purchase our own wireless router with a networking cable connected to the modem. That has solve a lot of issue with me when it comes to range, signal loss, and speed.


----------



## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

NCas said:


> If its with Telmex I think you can request to have a technician come by and check the modem out. I had MegaCable and after a couple of visits they just switch out the modem/wifi. However, those usually have very limited range and I've found them not to be the best. What some of us here have done is purchase our own wireless router with a networking cable connected to the modem. That has solve a lot of issue with me when it comes to range, signal loss, and speed.


I have an old adobe house with thick walls. The wifi from the Megacable modem/wifi router only works about one room away. After various failed attempts to get wifi throughout the house, I finally bought one of the new mesh wifi network systems. There are several manufacturers. It was not cheap, but for the past year, I finally have decent wifi in all rooms.

However, the problems the Original Poster is having sound different. It sounds like the wifi produced by the modem/wifi router is flakey. Maybe adding a dedicated wifi router connected to the modem by cable is all that is required. These are not so expensive these days. Another alternative would be to try to get the company to replace the modem/wifi router.

Edit: I just realized that the previous poster made much the same suggestion.


----------



## dwwhiteside (Apr 17, 2013)

I have had internet through Telmex for quite some time. I have one main internet modem from Telmex and have connected an additional wireless router to improve access throughout the house. For several years, although this has never been the fastest internet I have had, it worked reliably and consistently.

Then, about six months ago, Telmex came through the neighborhood replacing the existing modems and cabling into the house with new "fiber optic" cabling and modems. I put "fiber optic" in quotes because all of the new cabling I can see still looks like copper wire to me. But, since that time, I have had to restart the new modem repeatedly. 

Sometimes it works fine for several days at a time. Then, it will just stop working, by that I mean I can no longer access the internet from any attached device. I have to power off the modem, wait a few seconds, power it back on and then wait another five or more minutes until it gets fully back on line. There have been days when I had to do this three times.

I really have no idea what is going on with this. I have the modem placed on a shelf, like in a bookcase. I noticed it was getting quite hot (the modem) so I propped up the back end on a small box. That seems to have helped but, just this morning, I was working on-line when suddenly, no internet access. I powered off and back on and now, it works again, at least until the next time it doesn't.


----------



## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

Maybe it is overheating and would benefit from being placed at a lower, cooler spot, or even having the luxury of its own little fan.


----------



## eastwind (Jun 18, 2016)

dwwhiteside said:


> I have had internet through Telmex for quite some time. I have one main internet modem from Telmex and have connected an additional wireless router to improve access throughout the house. ...


It could be heat, or it could be due to the new telmex modem not playing well with your router, or upstream telmex changes that were introduced as a part of the fiber upgrade. Here's some diagnostic-type stuff to try if you want:

If overheating is the problem, you can probably fix it by taking the cover off and blowing all the dust off the insides of the thing with a can of compressed air. If you can easily get the cover off, that's the easiest thing to try first. If getting the cover off requires special screwdrivers or voids the warranty or something, that's different.

When the problem happens, see if you can connect to your router using a browser following the instructions to get into the router's configuration utility. Something like put "router.login.net" or 192.168.1.1 or something into the browser location bar. Specifics vary by router manufacturer, so you have to read the manual. (if you don't have a hardcopy manual, prepare by reading an online one while you can).

If your router has crashed due to overheat, I'd expect you not to be able to talk to it at all. If you can log into it, you can check the detailed status screens and get an idea of whether your router thinks it's connected or not. Its possible that the internet connection per se is fine, but that the DNS server that you are being connected to that translates domain names to IP addresses has stopped responding. 

For example, it may be that just as a side-effect of the upgrade, you're now using a different DNS server than you were before, and the one you now have is flaky and is causing your problems. You can diagnose this by using a command prompt and 'ping' and 'tracert' (on windows) to see if you can get to internet locations by IP address. 

I used 'ping cnn.com' just now and it translated that to 151.101.1.67. So when things are acting up, you can try to "ping 151.101.1.67" and "ping cnn.com" and see if the first works and the second doesn't - that would implicate your DNS server being the problem.

It could be something like your router not playing well with the DHCP service on telmex's new router/modem. If you can get into your router and everything looks to be working, but it can't talk to the telmex router, then look around for a 'release/renew' button and if you can find that and it fixes the problem temporarily then that's the issue - the problem would be that the IP address that the Telmex router has granted to your modem is expiring, and not getting renewed, and after that you can't get to the internet anymore.


----------



## dwwhiteside (Apr 17, 2013)

Thanks RVG and Eastwind for the advice. I think the last sentence in Eastwind's reply seems most likely, the new router (modem) supplied by Telmex is not playing well with the DHCP setup downstream. The router itself appears to be working fine. All of my devices still connect fine to the router and there are no obvious differences in the status lights on the front when it is working and when it isn't. The only thing that happens is that none of my devices (together my wife and I have a few laptops and two smartphones) can access any internet sites. And generally the error message that appears in the browser references a DHCP issue.

I reported the issues to Telmex and they had someone call on the phone and walk me through a few things with the router they installed. The problem is, the issue is intermittent; it doesn't even happen every day. Sometimes we go days with no issues and then some days, as I mentioned in a previous post, it happens three times within the space of a few hours.

It is an inconvenience more than an actual problem. Cycling the power on the router seems to get things working again. But, I wanted to thank you both for responding and offering your assistance.


----------



## NCas (Sep 9, 2013)

dwwhiteside said:


> The problem is, the issue is intermittent; it doesn't even happen every day. Sometimes we go days with no issues and then some days, as I mentioned in a previous post, it happens three times within the space of a few hours.
> 
> It is an inconvenience more than an actual problem. Cycling the power on the router seems to get things working again. But, I wanted to thank you both for responding and offering your assistance.


This is a similar issue I had with MegaCable, but the internet would slow way down from 20Mbps to 3Mbps intermittently. Took several visits from Mega since they thought I was making it up and of course when the technician came it was working fine. 

I don't use the ISP's DNS servers after having some issues with them after a different issue with them. I use Googles Public DNS, but I heard OpenDNS is pretty good and fast and I just heard that Level 3 offers free/public DNS too.


----------

