AT&T Broadband → D-Link dcm 200 modem

dlinker, I posted some more about ARP over in the new "INSANELY frequent" thread, since it might apply to an issue there. All this must be tough for you particularly since you don't know if any issues might be related to maintenance in your area.

I just swapped out my RCA and registered the DCM-200 (F/W 05), and I know I have always had steady service here after my first problem-plagued week of service last year, and except for the rare occasion where there's an actual outage for many people, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm using it in conjunction with the Di-704.

It was literally just running the browser and filling out a few things on the "sas" site, which comes up automatically. In case anyone's wondering what your "Registration Code" is, it's the last 9 digits of your 16-digit Account Number. Of course.

continuing my daily updates: good news - it looks like the local service problems are over for now and I haven't had a connection problem since last night (when they were still working on something - i was calling every time i had an outage yesterday, and they always said it was a problem on their end). So no modem problems since then.

Update:

Since i returned my 704p router im running a straight connection to my Nic and im still having problems with the dcm 200. My connection locked up twice today and once Wed. My conclusion is the d-link dcm 200 is crap and im definately going to return it.

Is it possible that certain modems are just not going to work well in certain areas under certain conditions? Maybe some are more sensitive than others? It's hard to say with such a small sampling.

If you haven't already, you might point to 192.168.100.1 (making sure you're on the same subnet and directly plugged to the modem) to look at the several pages of information there. I just looked at mine here and was surprised at the level of information, including a log that's as detailed as the log on any home router I've seen. You could see if anything interesting shows up at times coincident with your problems. Note that the timestamps are West Coast plus 14 hours.

Well, it has been 48 hours since I replaced my DCM-200 with the Motorola 4100 - and I have not had any problems. I'm pretty sure there was a problem with the modem, or at least its compatibility with the system.

Since getting the Motorola I have, on occasion, noted a few times when I seem to lose a connection for a few moments. However, it always seems to come back on its own without any intervention on my part. My theory is that the same thing was happening with the DCM-200. However, the Motorola seems to recover on its own while the DCM locked up completely and could not seem to do so without a power cycle.

Incidentally, when I had the DCM I checked its internal log on many occasions and never saw anything that looked unusual. This was confirmed by the pane (status) l light that indicated I had a connection. However, under these conditions I still could not ping my own IP from a dial-up connection.

By the way. Instead of exchanging the Motorola for the DCM(at Best Buy), I went ahead and purchased it outright, fully intending to return it if the problem turned out to be my connection. This evening, I returned the DCM for a full refund - no hassle at all.

One final note. I sent two emails to D-link trying to resolve this problem. They did not respond to either one (nor do they appear to provide a hot line for tech support).

Skepptik, nice report. Since this was BB, can we assume it was F/W 05?

During these incidents, did you notice anything interesting on the Startup or Signal pages once the Log page didn't reveal anything?

I found D-Link's Support # toward the back of the PDF, in case anyone needs it:
949-790-5290
M-F 6a-6p Pacific

well, my DCM 200 has been going 2 days now without a problem (2 days since the line maintenance in my area was completed)

interesting theory. it seems to make sense.

>
My theory is that the same thing was happening with the DCM-200. However, the Motorola seems to recover on its own while the DCM locked up completely and could not seem to do so without a power cycle.

3 days and no probs

Looking good here too since I hooked it up, about three days now.

My modem has been working now for over a week without a problem. It seems to have settled down. I'm beginning to be happy with my DCM-200.....cautiously.

going on 5 days now without a problem

well, day 6...it just locked up, while I was surfing (with nothing else in the background). I pulled the power, plugged it back in and was back on immediately.

Regarding the Link light (defined below), for me at least, it also seems to serve as a secondary activity light. It's lit all the time, but flashes when there's Internet activity, which is pretty much all the time. It'll blink very frequently when downloading something. Anyone else see this?

"The Link light should become solid for Ethernet port connections. For USB port connections, the Link LED will not light."

"This LED is lit green to indicate that a valid connection exists between the Ethernet port on the Cable
Modem and your PC. If it is unlit, there is no valid connection."

Something I noticed on Dlink's site indicates that the Dlink modems are incompatible with ATT's Web registration process for modems. I don't know what prompted them to say that, since I didn't have any problem, and have not read of anyone else having a problem like it.
»support.dlink.com/faq/vi ··· d_id=860

Yeah =- I have a similar lock-up problem with a DCM-100. I've tried 2 modems now = same result. My old Mot Surfboard rental did not have any issues (I never had to reboot). I think I'm going to try another brand to see if that fixes it.

Yep - same problem in CA with two DCM-100 modems. I'm going to try a Motorola next week. CompUSA has it for $99 in this Sunday's paper.

just locked up again after 4 days without problems. came right back after power cycle

Circuit City also has the Sufboard 4100 for $99 after $30 MIR this week. Very tempting. I may call Outpost tomorrow and see about an RMA...

Well, I shipped back the DCM-200 today and picked up a Motorola SB4100 at Best Buy (for $99). The thing that convinced me was that someone mentioned that the Motorola seems to be able automatically restore lost connections. We'll see...

I'm hoping it's as good as everyone says. If I end up losing connections again like the RCA 235 and the D-Link did, I can be sure it's an upstream line problem. Either way it's going to take me twice as long to pay this baby off. I hope she's worth it.

Well, I just witness my first dropped connection on the Motorola. According to the lights, it completely lost sync, but...IT DID AUTO-RECOVER.

The problem for me is that my Router (D-Link 704) did not recover. I went into the Router control panel and it was "reconfiguring" endlessly, until I rebooted the router in the cp. Usually, when the D-Link modem locked up, I power-cycled it (but didn't touch the router) and the connection would come back.

I'm not 100% that this means if I directly plug the modem into my PC (or get a different router), that the connection will come back automatically, but it seems very likely.

That's getting pretty confusing. So you're saying that neither Dlink product autorecovers for you, and that with the Motorola now, you're at least half way there? Before you were saying that just rebooting the DCM-200 would make everything right again, somehow allowing the 704 to resync again too (if it had the same problem then as it does now), so when the Motorola loses sync, does rebooting it clear the router too (as rebooting the DCM-200 apparently did for the 704)? Confusing, as I said.

For the record, I've never had to reboot my 704 unless it was for a setting change. Even on the morning of Dec 1, when ATT transitioned to ATTBI and everything was down for about the three hours, the router autonegotiated the new IP information for me while I was asleep. Fortunately, I've not seen your problem with the DCM-200 either.

Well, so far, I've only witnessed that one loss of connection and AUTO-recovery on the Motorola. I have not even tried to reboot/power cycle the Motorola, because it hasn't been neccessary.

At that time, I happened to be on the computer and looked into the D-Link DI-704 diags, and that's what I saw. Possibly it would have recovered if I left it alone a bit longer. I'll see what happens next time (if there is one).

(And yes, when I had the D-Link modem, I would usually just power cycle the modem and be back up and running. However, I did reboot the DI-704 router quite a number of times, when a power cycle of the modem didn't reconnect me immediately. Usually, these were cases of actually external outtages in my area. I never looked in the DI-704 before and after power cycling the D-Link modem, but I don't think it had the endless "Reconfiguring" problem before.)

The Motorola is doing fine. I just hope I can pay it off and still get some use out of it a year from now (without being forced into DOCSIS 2.0).

Just for the record, the Motorola SB4100 greatly improved my intermittent flaky connection problems I had with both the D-Link DCM200 and two leased RCA DCM 235s. Other than the one case where I witnessed a loss of sync, and the Motorola automatically re-established the connection, I haven't had a single reset or disconnect problem since I installed the SB4100 (almost a month). The SB4100 has definitely made a difference for me (and there is a $30 rebate on them right now).

said by pplchamp1:

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Yes...

I have an RCA DCM 245...

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He's talking about the D-Links. Sorry if someone already pointed that you. HTH (it at least helped my post count )!

Can anyone with the DCM-200 confirm the status of their Link light for me? I've noticed that unlike most Link lights I've ever seen, this one flashes consistently, even more than the Activity light. The manual doesn't say anything about flashing. It's not a cable problem, and it does work fine, I'm just curious. Thanks.

I jumped the outpost deal last month. It has been working well for 1 month. In this week, it lost connection after ten minutes or so. I had to do power cycle again and again. Sometimes the power cycle could not bring it up. I called att and their tech came to my home. He tested my signal was fine. He said my DCM-200 was a garbage and ATT would not support it. He replaced my modem with a new leased modem RCA DCM-245. After 5 hours, it works great. No problem at all.

But how to handle this modem? I had cut the UPC for rebate and return date is overdue (longer than 1 month) for outpost. I contacted with DLink and they said they can give me a new DCM-200 but not money back. The problem is if the new one can work properly? From the reading on this thread, it is definitely no. I lost my $80.

$50. But after 1 month fine, you had one outage and are now ready to dump it? How do you know it wasn't a ten-minute outage (or whatever) on the cable? Those things do happen. You can't necessarily go by what ATT techs say; anything they're unfamiliar with they'll likely call junk, just like when you call them and ask about problems on their end, they'll never admit to it and always suspect your PC (or other local issue) is the problem.

One outage in a month isn't bad. I had much more frequent problems, with 2 RCA DCM 235s AND the D-Link.

I have the feeling my real problem is a line problem or a switch or node problem somewhere (or something like that). I've had the serviceman out to check things, but they found nothing.

Anyway, if it is a line problem, both the RCAs and D-Link modems were much more sensitive to the problem, whereas the Motorola seems to be able to keep the connection. It's been a big difference for me.

I had the D-Link DCM-200 and it locked up on average of 15 times a day. Then it started getting REALLY bad. I had to power cycle every 30 minutes.
So i returned it, got the Toshiba PCX1100U and haven't had ANY problems.

I have not had any problems with mine.
I bought the $50 one from Outpost.
I have tried every single brand on my Cable, and the DLink has worked the best.
The outages I have had, were the Cable Company, no the modem.
Good old suck ass ATTBI...
The Cable Techs always call any modem they dont lilke, garbage.
Don't ASSUME what ever they tell you is Gospel.
Most of them can't find their ass in a SNOWSTORM!!
Facts count, bullshit walks.

It depends on your location if D-Link DCM-200 can works well with your cable. Anyway, the tech guy just replaced my modem and works great so far. So I am sure it is the modem's problem. Not my computer.