MattW

Second time in a week my NTL modem lights have gone out. Modem continually rebooting itself. No connection Monday evening last week. Nothing after 8pm last night.

Felt like my legs have been cut off.

Waiting for engineer call, is it a knacked modem, can I buy my own?

PiNkEyE69

Check NTL's website for the status of broadband, there might be outages in your area.
I lost Broadband for 3 days the other month, and around X-Mas for some unknown reason they locked out the MAC ID of my network card, so I had to invest in a new netowkr card (their *cough* 'IT' *cough* guy after waiting 50 mins on hold insisted that they haven't blocked my mac id and my network card or PC must be faulty, bulls**t - tried new card, works fine, tried my network card in another pc - works fine)
NTHell have some real muppets working for them

Figment

I had the same problem recently, and problem persisted after swapping the modem for a known good one. After being fobbed off with the usual raft of excuses (including "The modems are designed to do that to renew the IP address each time the IP lease expires" (what, four times in one hour?? yeah right!) a really helpful Tech on NTHellworld.com monitored the line and found that the modem had power-adjusted 63 times in 8 hours, which indicated a bad connection between modem and street cabinet. He then organised an engineers visit for me.

Engineer visited and ran a series of checks working starting at the PC and working towards the street cab and eventually found a bad connection in the cabinet itself. That was a couple of months or more back now and the modem has not reset itself since!

BTW, you can use your own CM if you wish, but you will not save anything, you will have to continue renting the one from them too.

Another thought - which modem do you have? There was an issue with power bricks overheating on one particular model (name escapes me atm)

MattW

Pink eye - 3 days without MOHAA - OMG I'm not going to cope

My connection uses the modem's mac address, bearing in mind this happened briefly last week, doesn't sound like id related.

Figment - Sounds feasible, it's been very hot recently, the modem box is a seperate unit, and felt bloody hot last night. Min is rebooting (as though power is turned off and on) once every two minutes.

PiNkEyE69

MattW - Actually it was kinda 3 days without UT/RTCW
Fig - Is the 'brick' ones the Terajet modems?

I was thinking of getting a cheap cable modem in a few months time, I'm sure NTHell will be able to retrieve the modem and that the £5 a month of the price - afterall, the 12 month initial compulsory period is over.

Figment

The power brick problem was on the Ambit modems.

Pinkeye - by all means try that route with NTL, but be prepared to be disappointed. I tried to do just that as I'd bought myself a Surfboard modem and wanted to return the Terajet and save £5.00/month. Originally this was possible, but the tariffs changed in early 2002, and the price stays the same whether you use their modem or your own (the tariff said something along the lines of free modem rental!)

Also, if you currently get the £5.00 off by using your own modem because you registered before the tariffs changed, and you decide to change your broadband package, they will charge you the increased price to include the "free" modem, but try getting the modem from them!

MattW

Waiting for local engineer call now.

Fig - The modem is a small silver thing, about 5-6 inches wide, maybe 8-9 inches long. Not sure what the make is as at work currently.

PiNkEyE69

Fib - Booo, just looked it up on their oh-so-easy-to-find-info website. So looks like I'm lumped with their modem (which to be honest isn't bad..... I can use the USB connection, plug the Xobx into the PC and use internet connection sharing for both xbox gameing and surfing )
Just a shame their technical help guys are monkeys.

druddle

I have the same modem and have had no problems with it in 8 months since i got it. Previously i had a Motorola Surfboard that lasted just under 3 years.

I would say that the broadband service i get from ntl is excellent and I rarely have any problems. The only problems are when i need to speak to someone on the helpline, its like pulling teeth, so i leave that as a last resort !!!

Dave

Figment

Sounds like an Ambit - Terayon/Terajets are black, while Surfboards that lovely shade of PC beige

Dude!

I have had an Ambit modem for over a year and it has never been offline once. Love my 1 meg connection to bits!

MattW

Mines been ok for 6 months.I'm hoping by this evening it will have mysteriously fixed itself like it did last week.