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Resolved Question

Internet randomly has episodes of 30 second outages

Sep 24, 2018 10:35AM PDT

I've recently moved into an apartment near my campus, and I've had a weird problem with the internet since I arrived a few months ago. I have contacted the ISP a couple months ago, but they're still working on it. I wanted to post here in case anyone has any ideas or would know what's causing the issue.

When I moved here, consistently every day, the internet would go out for about 30 seconds, every hour it felt like. Sometimes there would be a longer period of 3-4 hours with no issue, but more often than not there would be an outage every hour. My roommates and I then realized that it occurred within the first 10 minutes of every hour about 80% of the time. It was rare to see an exception. Sometimes it would be right on the second of the hour, sometimes it would be a random time within 10 minutes of the hour.

A technician came and replaced something in our media box, I don't know what it was, but apparently there was a storm last summer so multiple apartments needed this replaced. This also fixed my ethernet port in my bedroom, which did not work before. Also worth noting I used ethernet only on my main device this entire time, it does not support wifi. With the outages, Wifi would also go down, which I could confirm with roommates before the internet came back after it's 30 seconds to a minute of being down, as always. On a few rare occasions, the ethernet would do it's normal outage, interrupting anything needing a constant connection, but the wifi would still function, which I thought was odd. Beginning of the hour as well.

After a technician replaced some device, I thought the problem was fixed for a few days. But now, I have basically just another flavor of the same issue. It only occurs a couple times a week, separated by 2 or 3 days of no issues, but on specific days the internet will do the normal outage for 30 seconds, and then come back, but it does this every 4-5 minutes for an entire hour. I've seen it happen over 10 times in an hour before functioning properly. That's where I'm at currently, still don't know what the issue is.

When I was uncertain whether it was my device causing the issue, I updated all my networking drivers and other drivers. I have confirmed just a couple days ago that wifi goes out when the ethernet does as well.

During the outages, on the networking symbol on windows at the bottom right, I see a yellow caution sign, not the red X. Although I do remember once or twice on rare occasions a couple weeks ago an X appeared. Maybe before I updated drivers, not sure.

When I run windows troubleshooting during an outage, if the troubleshooter can go through the steps before internet returns, it will say the issue is something along the lines of "cannot resolve default gateway host" or "could not connect to default gateway", I don't remember exactly and lost the screenshot. The troubleshooter then suggests the solution "reset the network adapter", which fixes the connection literally instantly. Again this is on ethernet, and wifi goes down as well when ethernet has outages.

I can achieve the same effect of the troubleshooter by going into device manager and disabling/enabling my network adapter.

Does anyone know what could be causing this? Support is clueless thus far and I was hoping for some guidance on this. Thanks.


Edit: if it's relevant, the provider is elauwit, and below is what I found when running a ping test during one of the recent outage episodes (30 second outages separated by 5 minutes lasting an hour). A couple times, the test would be going fine for many minutes, followed by a single line of request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=119
Request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=119
This single line time out occured 4 times during the 1 hour ping test.

Three times, there was a short outage, which showed

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=119
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=119

There was nothing unique before or after what I copied. A single time, the outage showed this instead:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=119
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 100.64.12.xxx: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=119

I don't know what that means but maybe it helps.
A ping test ran on wifi only with a different device shows something similar:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=120
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 100.64.14.xxx: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 100.64.14.xxx: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 100.64.14.xxx: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=557ms TTL=120

This was later in the day than the previous ping test on ethernet. Wifi also showed the single line time outs.

Post was last edited on September 24, 2018 11:00 AM PDT

Discussion is locked

parsimonymh has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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It does not appear to be your gear.
Sep 24, 2018 10:50AM PDT

The ISP seems to be acknowledging they have issues so about the only thing I can suggest is you try some USB to Ethernet adapter to rule out your PC's network hardware.

-> Do all other machines in the apartment drop out or just this PC?

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All machines are effected, ethernet and wifi
Sep 24, 2018 10:56AM PDT

I've confirmed both by asking roommates and with running a ping test on a separate device, not ethernet, that the outages occur on both ethernet and wifi for everyone, so I'm very confident that it isn't due to my device/hardware.

Post was last edited on September 24, 2018 11:00 AM PDT

- Collapse -
I agree.
Sep 24, 2018 1:59PM PDT

I wish I had a fix for bad ISP issues. So far it's usually not to never your gear when everything fails as in your examples.

- Collapse -
.
Sep 25, 2018 11:30AM PDT

Will just wait out a technician then, thanks