Internet Disconnect! (1 Viewer)

I get up this past Monday morning and the wifey says no internet. Sure enough wireless and even my ethernet connected iMac don't have a connection. There's a message on my iMac saying "another device is using" my iMac's ip address. Well, we've not installed any new devices or software for quite a while.

Reboot of the ATT router and my iMac don't fix it. I call Apple and we putz around for awhile and Apple says it's the router. I call ATT and on the phone for an hour and no joy. So a tech comes out the next day. This is uVerse btw. He says they've got a new way of hooking up the stuff so I get a new box on the outside, some rewiring, and a new router.

After a while, he gets it working, and then I want to customize the network name and password. We do that and the old problem starts again. There's another device again. This also happened the day before when I was on the phone with ATT. Much more putzing about and the router is reset to factory defaults but still not working right. He replaces the ethernet cable to the iMac and calls the office and has them reset my account.

Now it's working and I'm getting speed faster than I've ever gotten. He does a speed test and it says I'm getting over 50mbps. I did one later it says 20mbps, still more than I've gotten before.

I should point out that the week before, I had called and cancelled my uverse land-line and got them to upgrade me to 18mbps, but at the time it really didn't seem to be much faster. Now it is.

I think what fixed the connection was the reset of my account. The increase in speed might be coming from the new router and rewiring. I don't think the rewiring and new router fixed the problem, though I am happy to have them.

What I think is weird is that message about another device. We had no new devices or software that I know off. Since it was keeping my ethernet wired iMac from hooking up, why did it also disable wifi? BTW, during all this, the router lights indicated all was well.

Strange.

I have Uverse as well for internet (24MB). About 2 months ago, I noticed that I was actually getting consistent speeds (wirelessly) of 27-30MB, I did a little research online (dslreports.com) and I found out that AT&T (and other internet providers) were getting flack from the FCC because customers were complaining they weren't getting their advertised speeds. So, AT&T and other providers have started "over" provisioning their customers modems/routers a few notches about their max advertised speed so that customer actually get the speeds they pay for. The bad part I found was that it screwed up some modems/routers and they had to be reset for the changes to take. Not sure if that's what happened with your but probably accounts for the higher speeds you're seeing.

As an aside, when I first got Uverse I found that their gateway didn't give me good coverage in my 2-story house. Did a little research and actually ended up putting a Linksys router in front of the Uverse modem (basically had to turn off wireless in the Uverse router and make a few other changes, then set-up a new network in the Linksys router to do the DHCP, etc). It basically turned the Uverse gateway into a bridge and lets the Linksys router handle the actual routing functions. Plus, the LInksys router gave me better range and more network customization options (parental controls, port forwarding, etc) than the Uverse gateway offered.

I wish I could get U-Verse. Their website says I can get broadband up to 18Mbps but, checking about 20 other addresses, I am the only house in my entire town which qualifies. I have had service techs out for site surveys and they say I'm too far away to qualify for service. Talking with an AT&T rep, they think my home address is an apartment complex so their database is all screwed up.

Clinton McClure said:

I wish I could get U-Verse. Their website says I can get broadband up to 18Mbps but, checking about 20 other addresses, I am the only house in my entire town which qualifies. I have had service techs out for site surveys and they say I'm too far away to qualify for service. Talking with an AT&T rep, they think my home address is an apartment complex so their database is all screwed up.

Click to expand...

It took awhile for my area to get it. I had AT&T DSL and tried to get Uverse for a year but we were about 1/2 mile too far from node to get it. Then about 2 years ago they just showed up in our neighborhood saying it was available because they'd extended the fiber. Very consistent service, one outage in 2 years.

We've been hearing empty promises of DSL/broadband since "Project Lightspeed" back in 1999-2000. They ran fiber along the interstate but never bothered hooking the city onto it since we have a population under 800. The only two ways to get it here are satellite (ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!) and wireless broadband using line of sight antennae from an ISP about 15 miles away. The latter is the only feasible option, although the speeds are usually only half to 3/4 of what is advertised and it is crazy expensive. I pay $70/mo for a 3Mbps package. The only upside is there is no data cap. I can bump up to 6Mbps if I want to fork over $100/mo. If you are technology driven, never never ever live in a small town.

Clinton, I just noticed you're in central AR too. I'm in Maumelle. Yeah, small towns get the shaft, broadband wise. I wouldn't call AR a leading technology state. Then again, when it comes to speed and price, I wouldn't call the USA a leading technology country.

Johnny - I live in Plumerville, about 15 miles west of Conway. I drive past Maumelle on my way to Little Rock every morning.

I have no issues with Wild Blue. Although once the contract is up, probably change to HughesNet. Gen4 is supposed to clock in at 15 mbps.And that is 24hrs a day. Wild Blue survives cloudy conditions that fry the Directv signal. HN has a more robust signal.But, HN Gen 4(summer pricing) is $120/month for 15. If you can live with 10, $50/60.

Clinton McClure said:

Johnny - I live in Plumerville, about 15 miles west of Conway. I drive past Maumelle on my way to Little Rock every morning.

Click to expand...

Now there's at least two HTFers in AR.

We're everywhere.

Clinton McClure said:

I wish I could get U-Verse. Their website says I can get broadband up to 18Mbps but, checking about 20 other addresses, I am the only house in my entire town which qualifies. I have had service techs out for site surveys and they say I'm too far away to qualify for service. Talking with an AT&T rep, they think my home address is an apartment complex so their database is all screwed up.

Click to expand...

I had U-verse for 4+ years and just dumped them last month to go back to Comcast. I loved the U-verse TV service...Comcast is outright lying when they say they have more HD content than anyone. But I was paying way too much money for what I was getting and they didn't want to offer me a promotional rate that they offer to new subscribers, so I walked.

The pricing was the straw that broke the camel's back, but U-verse had three strikes against it in matters that were important to me. First, it was incompatible with my TiVo, which only supports OTA connections and CableCARD. Second, U-verse refused to carry the NHL Network. Finally, they just couldn't match the speed of Comcast's Internet service. I had a sad 6Mb with U-verse. I could have gone as high as 24Mb connection at a much higher price. With Comcast, I'm back to using my TiVo and I have a 50Mb connection from them. More importantly, working in I.T. support, I needed a much faster upload speed and I get that now, typically well in access of 10Mb (with U-verse, I was lucky to get 1Mb uploads.)

Comcast isn't available here. Their service stops about 10 miles on either side of us. We're just in a hole.I have Dish and don't watch Hockey so those factors don't matter to me. Oh well, maybe one day...

Johnny Angell said:

I get up this past Monday morning and the wifey says no internet. Sure enough wireless and even my ethernet connected iMac don't have a connection. There's a message on my iMac saying "another device is using" my iMac's ip address. Well, we've not installed any new devices or software for quite a while.

Click to expand...

This usually occurs because of a conflict with wi-fi devices vying for the same IP address. Could be anything from your smart phone to your Xbox or even a net-connected Blu-ray player. (Or even a neighbor's device is trying to hop on your network if your wi-fi is open and unprotected) Sometimes a router or modem reboot clears it up - other times not.
What you might want to look into is assigning your iMac a fixed IP address. As I understand it, you use the computer's "mac address" to have the router reserve a specific IP address for that device.

PS. I noticed an increase in our download speeds when I replaced my 10-year old Airport router with a new Airport Express this year. I suspect the old routers probably aren't as compatible with newer broadband protocols... (went from 22-24mbps to 25-28mbps on a 25mbps plan).

It is fixed since the technicians visit. I did find it odd that as soon as we customized the network with a chosen network name and password, the problem came back. Resetting the router to factory defaults fixed it again. That could mean that someone in the neighborhood cracked my password, but it's about 15 upper and lower case and very random characters. I guess if you had a brute-force (generating passwords till you get lucky) you could break it.

Fortunately the router comes with a good, random password.