Success!The cable technician arrived at about 10:30 am.
He went right to the cable modem box, unhooked it and did a line test. Looked good. Went back to the van and brought back a brand new--new circuit board fresh smell--cable modem 1/3 the size as the original. He said that the older ones were refurb/recycled and they were starting to fail. I can attest that the old one was VERY warm--I made sure it was stood on it's side to get maximum air flow. Plugged it in and connected the connectors. A quick call to HQ to have the MAC address reset on our account and BAM (Emeril quality) the net was back in blazing glory.
I surprised him by doing my system's IP renewal via command-prompt (DOS). That got us chatting about the impressive dual monitor setup my bro. set me up with. That led to malware discussion and shop talk. I ended up giving him some malware-busting pointers for his own pc and pointed him to some open-source apps he likely needed to try on his system.
Once we got done with our "war-stories" he went out and checked all the cable-splitters and such on the outside of the house. It's a real rat's-nest. Each technician has his own standard and it really showed. We traced out them all, and he pulled the dead ones. Then he replaced all our splitters with shiny new ones and put "weather-proof boots" on all the coax connections. That had the effect of boosting the cable (TV) signal strength as well so the (analog) cable quality is much better (ie. clearer)--bonus!
A few last minute tweaks on his network side and we were ripping. Time of entire service? About 30-40min with an extra 20 min of shop-talk tacked onto that.
Results? A new speed test showed my Kpbs rate on the test maxed at over 13344 Kbps. Yes. That is on the home-level TW Road-runner service--no typos. Average rate appears to be around 5000-8000 Kbps consistently. Sweet.
Also, he says that the RoadRunner IP's are indeed "dynamic" and can be reset by leaving your cable modem unplugged for a while and/or that Time Warner itself recycles the modem periodically to force an IP change. Static IP's are available for business class customers. Good to know.
So I reconnected the router and got everything back and was working fine--and then....I lost IP again. Totally. UHGGG!
First place I went was to the router and changed the setting from "static" that it still was set on, to "dynamic" using the little nugget of wisdom I had gained. Yep--that did it. Only how come my router let me though using the (old) static IP of the previous modem for a couple of minutes before? I guess it took it a while to figure out things had changed.
Anyway....back up and Blazing fast.
Just in time too, DannyChoo opened up a new website Figure FM where mecha/anime/figurine fans can post their collection items.
Give Time Warner a Gold Star for their (residential) Road Runner service.
Sweet! At least one more post to come today...got some linkage backlog to clear.
Repairs done, back into the sky,
--Claus
PS. (I''ll post the picture proof of the speed test once Blogger sorts itself out again...)
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