Red Light on brand new DG834G with AOL

Hi there. I do have a user on these forums but cant remember the password and no longer have access to the registered email address so had to create a new account.

I run an IT Support company for home and small business users. I was called out to a home user that was compaining that she couldn't get connected to the internet on a regular bases. I completely rewired all her phonelines and installed a brand new DG834G router which seemed to solve the problem and she was over the moon with it.

Anyway, She emailed me a few days ago to say that recently her internet connection keeps dropping and there is a red internet light on her router. When I arrived back at her house i found the router (and computer) to be switched off at the wall. When I switched it on, the Netgear DG834G automatically connected to the internet as normal. I checked her internet connection remotely the next day and it was connected for 14+hrs. (system up time was also 14+hrs, so everything seemed normal)

I have done the following to try and fix the connection:
Completely rewired all phonelines.
Reduced MTU size to 1400

I thought that the red netgear light meant that the internet settings were correct however a internet connection could not be establisiled. Can someone confirm this?

Her ISP is AOL (uk) and her ADSL username is [phonenumber]@dialbb.com (or.co.uk, cant remember) This username and password were provided by AOL on the day that I installed the router.

Someone has sugested that I need to spoof the MAC address of the old router however i have never had this problem before on other AOL clients.

I can't remember which version the DG834G is. Her ADSL phoneline is sync'ing at around 6000 kbps

I'm not 100% sure what to do next so i'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction.

Thanks for reading

P.S. . Just tried to log on to the router and it timed out.... not good!

Edited by FraserA2010 (Tue 22-Sep-09 00:19:16)

So how much are you charging her to ask this question on here?

Presume you are referring to the i LED.

What you need to do is not rely on the LED's but show her how to log into the router, and get to the status page, then you will get a clearer idea.

AOL (my mother) has been having some issues of late apparently.

MAC spoofing, someone is telling you porkies.

Mine does that - it's part of an ongoing issue I'm trying to get resolved (I'm not with AOL but with BT).

I've been running RouterStats and have phoned that my connection goes through phases (not predictable) of wildly fluctuating noise margins, from say 20db right down to 0.4db. When this happens the router may re-sync, or it may stay apparently synced at some kind of reasonable speed while the noise margin is very low. When this happens the internet light turns red and there is no internet connection. I don't know what the solution is, I'm still going through the hoops trying to get it resolved.

Is it orange by any chance? If so, its the router being unable to get an IP address etc. from the ISP but it is still connected to the exchange. This is usually a username/password issue or an issue with the ISP.

No it's defo red.

Heres an update anyway....

It turns out that the i light has only gone red once and it's been fine since then.

The actual problem is with the AOL software not being able to connect. It seems to fail to connect reporting there to be no internet connectivity. Internet Explorer still works perfectly fine however some pages refuse to load up. For example one of AOL's own help pages. I managed to Remote onto my machine at home and copy and pasted the link and it worked fine on my machine. I changed DNS to OpenDNS incase AOL were having problems with there DNS not being resolved but this did not fix the problem.

I have completely reinstalled AOL 9.1 VR and the router's FW is completely upto date.

When you try to connect using AOL it usually fails on the first attempt but connects on the second. If things don't get better then I'm going to rebuild the machine as the computer was infected with a virus so i have a funny feeling that there still might be some malicious code on the code which is being undetected by virus scans.

p.s. current internet connection has been connected for almost 2 hours

thanks for all your replies

F

I had a client with a simliar problem (AOL), and sorted this with a quick phone call for the username and password. So I could put them into the router modem (a new Thomson ST546 v6). But before putting in the details for the router/modem, I uninstalled all the AOL software, and went through the registry to remove more of the AOL files. So my client never needed to use the dial up software. And he has had no problems since. That was about 2 months ago.

There is a trick that works with Netgear router/modems, that may well clear up the problem.
As you know the router/modem has a small hole on the back which is used to reset the unit. But it is always suggested to do this for about 5 seconds. Instead keep it pressed in for 30 seconds. This should clear all the users info and set the unit back to factory settings. This is done for the Netgear units, as they have a habit of not resetting correctly with the 5 second push.
That may clear up that problem your client is having. Also this happens to solve a lot of problems with all Netgear units, whether they are wired or wireless.

Edited by silvryn (Wed 30-Sep-09 02:17:45)

You're going over the top!

Red Internet light on router with ADSL light green simply means that it senses the BB signal (as you would see from the router stats) but fails to connect/login to the ISP. This is usually due a wrong username/password.

I had this trouble with a new AOL supplied router. AOL has the habit of changing the password for your [phonenumber]@dialbb.com login. Turns out, in this case they changed the user's password, from the one previously used for her modem, without telling her. A phone call to AOL resolved the problem.

Some IT consultant LOL! That'll be £20!