General discussion related to Cable Modems, DSL, Wireless, Fiber, Mobile Networks, Wireless ISPs, Satellite, or any other type of high-speed Internet connection, general issues and questions here. Review and discuss ISPs as well (AT&T / SBC, BellSouth, Bright House, CableOne, Charter, Comcast, Covad, Cox, Cablevision / Optimum Online, TMobile, Verizon FIOS, Shaw, Telus, Starlink, etc.)
EDIT: I just realized I posted about this particular issue back in 2021. It's still happening.
Hello; my cable modem is a Motorola MB8600, which I purchased new a couple of years ago.
When calling ISP tech support, however, they always tell me they don't "see" the modem online, although I can access the internet just fine, albeit at much lower speeds than what I'm supposed to get with my plan (even with "up to" considered). What might cause that? One would assume that if the ISP can't detect the modem that the user wouldn't have an internet connection.
Also, is nearly a BILLION corrected errors on this channel...normal? For reference, this screenshot was taken a couple of hours after being powercycled this evening.
Well, I spent the afternoon messing about with things.
When I connect to my PC via ethernet directly from the modem to the PC, I get the proper speeds. When I connect to my PC via ethernet from my router, speeds are reduced by a factor of 10. The IP addresses reported by SpeedTest are different; when directly connected, it is a 160.x.x.x address. When using the router, the IP address is 173.x.x.x. The former IP address gives me the proper speeds; the latter gives me the speeds 10% of what I should be getting.
The reduced speed might indicate that either the port is operating at 100 or that the cable is bad. I can confirm the cable is good.
My router is the TP-Link Archer AX50 (latest firmware), which has four gigabit LAN ports. I have used both the auto setting and manually set all ports to gigabit. I have done a factory reset of the router as well.
I plan to just leave the PC connected directly for the time being and let the router handle the wifi. But I am curious as to what would cause this behavior. I might buy a newer model router and see if that changes anything. This might be a simple fix, but most of the search results recommend to check for bad cables, which I do not have.
Welp. I feel like an idiot. Turns out the modem and routers are both working properly. The CAT-6 cables I bought a long time ago -- that are clearly labeled CAT-6 -- apparently aren't CAT-6 at all. The cable in question was the one going from my modem to the router. I tried several replacement cables, all CAT-6, until I found one that actually worked at the correct speeds. Now I have gigabit as I'm supposed to.
TLDR: Computer user of 30 years didn't perform a basic troubleshooting step and became unnecessarily frustrated and angry over something that could have been fixed a long time ago.
