PCA Forums

After installing the SMC broadband cable router, I'm occasionally loosing connectivity to the internet only, not between other PCs (now almost every day or so) and I cure it by unplugging/replugging the cable modem (rebooting it). Sometimes I'll just do nothing and it'll be functional later in the day w/o me doing anything. When this occurs, none of my PCs will go online but all still connect with each other so I think it's cable modem or firewall related.

I know better than to try calling RR (telling them about the network, router and firewall) as they've told me in the past that they don't support networked systems (unless they've changed that?) but short of trying to run w/o the router (by-passing it), might anyone else have had a similar problem? Is my cable modem dying or is it more likely related to the router and/or its firewall?

BTW, I seemingly have no known method to just bypass the routers "built in" firewall as I've discussed this once before a while back in another old thread (no program option that lets me disable it for testing purposes).

That sounds like a defective router. I had an SMC that did exactly the same thing.

If you're certain it's not RR itself, try exchanging the router.

There is a way to bypass the firewall. Depending on the brand of router it might be called DMZ or something else in the router's admin menu. But there is essentially a setting that puts a particular computer outside the firewall (you probably have to specify the computer by the IP address).

It's not a firewall on-off switch, just a way to select which computers you want outside the firewall. You usually use this for a computer that will act as a game server for instance.

Thanks FP, I've e-mailed tech support at SMC and DL'd (but not yet installed) the latest firmware for it as I've read elsewhere that some mentioned problems until they upgraded the firmware. At the moment, I'm not sure which firmware version's presently installed and I might already have the latest and greatest?
It's been behaving since yesterday so it's a thing that's not duplicatable (intermittant) thus not so easy to diagnose. Could be a slow process of elimination unless SMCs tech support thinks it's a firmware or router problem too?

Uhhhh I had a similar problem, turned out to be noise in my cable line. That could be the problem.

Well I had a client with an SMC who had to unplug his cable modem one every couple of weeks when the connection would stop responding. We thought it was Comcast@Home but turned out to be the router. Eventually the router just stopped working and I had to RMA it.

The BIOS version of the router should be displayed in the admin menu somewhere.