Failing RV016 or ISP?

[Guest]

I have a rv016 thats been in 24x7 operation since I bought it a few years back.  It is out of warranty.  It is connected to three cable modems on WANs 1-3.  Behind it are a bunch of PCs getting IPs via DHCP.  There is a gateway to gateway vpn tunnel setup on wan3 to a rv082 at another site.  There is a forwarding entry for http to an internal http server.  Everything else is pretty much default. The router is primarily used to aggregate bandwidth for uploading large numbers of photos.  The systems behind the router initiate the uploads and the router automatically load balances the outgoing bandwidth. This was all working fine until just recently.  The ISP is Knology who is upgrading each of the 8m/768k cable modems to 25m/5m.  They are also moving from DOCSIS 1 to DOCSIS 3.  They are currently in the middle of this upgrade and have upgraded the modems to DOCSIS 3 as well as the speeds to 12m/2m.  The problem is that the rv016 Network Service Detection, which is set to "Default Gateway" indicates that the modems fail randomly.  Usually only one will be failed, but up to two will fail the Network Service Detection simultaneously. Knology insists that there is nothing wrong with their modems.  I have removed a modem from the rv016 when Network Service Detection indicates it is in a failed state and connected it directly to a computer.  It will work, but it has a different IP address and default gateway.  As soon as I connect it back to the rv016, it works there too, but on the original IP address and gateway.  Ive only tried this test this twice so far, so it is a bit inconclusive. Speed tests behind the rv016 are the same as directly connected to one of the cable modems.  The router works normally as it has for years.  Nothing else is acting funny. So my question is, is the rv016 failing or is the ISP having problems?  What other tests can be done to help isolate what is truly going on?  Any assistance appreciated.

[Guest]

I would make sure that the firmware is up to date from the start, so you can rule out that. Since the only thing thats changing is that the cable company is upgrading there system, there modem could be going down a certain times without them knowing about it. I would make sure that you do have the latest firmware for the RV018, remember after firmware upgrade its best practice to factory default the router and rebuild your config. You need a way to test the modem individually, You could plug a pc directly into the modem and run a multiple pings(continuous), to see though out the day if you get gateway not responding. This would tie up one modem though out the day for this test! You also could set up SNMP on the RV016, this is a network managment protocol, set up snmp software on a local pc, to capture the traps. This would just give you more information, it wouldnt tell you why its going down. Jason

[Guest]

Thank you for the reply.  Im a little wary of a firmware update.  I don want to end up making things worse, which firmware updates can do.  And to be frank, with all the firmware bugs Ive discovered while setting up my VPN, I really don have much faith in the firmware. Ive thought about connecting a PC and doing the exact same ping test youve mentioned.  But I don think it would prove anything because I believe that this may be a routing issue on the ISPs side, and an individual PC gets a completely different IP and subnet.  Theres a chance that it would work fine and then when reconnected to the router, the same issues would emerge. What additional information would SNMP reveal?  Also, is there a open source/free snmp client?  Ive never played with SNMP, but have always wanted to. Any other suggestions to just test the base operation of the router without firmware updates?  Ive thought about bringing my rv082 to this location and testing the modems that way, but Id run into the same problem of different IP address/subnet.

[Guest]

If you look under the system management, and click the more tab, and you will see that there is a active running firmware and a backup firmware. So if you update your firmware and it makes it worse you can just role to the backup firmware. Now it depends on the snmp software that you have, it will give you ports speeds, mac address, few other things. You just need to look into a certain software and see what it may give you to benefit you. You also could run the rv082 and that would give you a good result , weather it your isp or router. Jason

[Guest]

Thank you again for the reply.  I didn realize there was a backup firmware capability.  The current version I have is 2.0.6.  Whats the curent version?  Are there release notes with the new firmware?  Will I be able to use the import/export settings feature?  And if not, what is the format of the stored settings file?  Is it text that can be read to figure out what the settings were or is it something cryptic? I don have any SNMP management software.  Where can I get a package? One thing I forgot is that the cable modems have a built-in status screen at 192.168.100.1.  Ill need to check this the next time I connect a failed modem to a computer to see if theres something else I can find. If my diagnosis points to the rv016, what are my repair options?