I'm looking for a little assistance with my Ultra TV internet service. I have an Arris-D321 gateway as well as a couple of media players (however they shouldn't enter into this issue as they're working just fine).
Situation:
I left on vacation for about 9 days and powered down my TV / xbox / computers and cable equipment before I left. Upon my return I powered everything back on and seemingly it was all gravy...until the internet started dropping and ends up being down about 90% of the time.
I eliminated any possibility of it being a wireless issue as I have wired devices (wired directly into the Arris) that detect the same problem. I've also confirmed by pinging from offsite that the WAN connection is dropping. I've pinged from offsite during an 'up' period to confirm the gateway does in fact respond to the ICMP request. During the 'down' periods it goes dark.
I called WOW and they did some remote troubleshooting. The signal levels look fine and they pushed out a firmware update to my Arris. However, the problem is persistent. I've tried restarting the router multiple times, "refreshing" it via the WOW account portal and disabling and re-enabling DHCP. (that is another thing to note, my public IP address had changed while I was away, no doubt due to the lease expiring. )
They're rolling a truck on Saturday, but I work from home and would much rather find a solution quick if at all possible. I highly doubt this is a physical issue.
If you've run into this problem or have any pointers I'm all ears!
People frequently mention squirrels. Our neighborhood (not far from you BTW) is overrun with squirrels. They don't chew on wires, certainly not that I have ever observed in 25+ years. Why would they chew on wires when there's my grass, trees, bushes (they've shredded several arbovitae, using the leaves for their nests) etc.?
You don't know squirrels then. I have 2 pecan trees and you would think that would keep them happy, but no. Christmas is the worst. They chew on the light strings. I had one completely eat the bulb & socket off a string a couple of years ago. They are notorious here for shorting across the power switches and transformers causing blackouts. They chew on the wires and expose them to leaking from water and such.
I think they use peanut oil as an ingredient in cable insulation... I had occasional problems with wires with Comcast over the years - none in the shorter time I've had WoW. But, we did just have a real internet/phone outage yesterday that customer service said affected the ultra tv users in the area - but tv continued to work and it was all back this morning.
I have 2 pecan trees and you would think that would keep them happy, but no. Christmas is the worst. They chew on the light strings. I had one completely eat the bulb & socket off a string a couple of years ago. They are notorious here for shorting across the power switches and transformers causing blackouts. They chew on the wires and expose them to leaking from water and such.