Wireless works but no internet--bet that's a first..haha

[montana16]

New to forum and glad I found it!
My background is higher than average computer hardware experience but be no means an expert when it comes to full blown networking. Understand enough to get calls from friends and family and usually figure it out. This one has me stumped but like I said I'm no expert.

Arris NVG443b modem router connected to DSL (frontiernet) phone line (ADSL2.) Lights are green except globe (internet) is blue which is supposed to mean connected to internet. Router rebooted many times during troubleshooting.

Wireless works as on a PC(limited.) I can bring up 192.168.254.254 (web interface for modem/router.) Cannot connect to any website

Wireless on Amazon Fire HD 7 connects to wireless but also limited and no internet either.

Wireless on Roku 3 connects to wireless but during network setup  - wireless ok    Internet not ok. Cannott connect to Netflix or Hulu or YouTube.

Makes me think something wrong on DSL side but blue globe light says otherwise.

Modem/router web interface says the WAN is connected and up?

I hooked up an older Netgear D2200D-1FRNAS and the scenario was the same with the lights and web interface. How could 2 modems have full connection status but 3 devices cannot connect to internet. Went back to Arris modem and proceded.

I called frontier support and was on the phone for over an hour and a half. She was able to connect to the modem and she listed all the devices that were showing they were connected to the modem?? She can connect to modem remotely but I cannot get to internet. Now I think a setting in the modem is incorrect not letting devices connect to internet.

These all worked in the morning. Neighbor ( where this problem is) has been wanting to switch to Spectrum cable internet. A Spectrum tech came out and complained because there is no drop to the house so he has to run a drop from across the street. Complained a branch in the way on adjacent neighbor's property. I don't see anything that would prevent a cable drop. He seemed to not want to do the work and he did not. He did come in the house and looked in basement for ground or water pipe. He also looked at current modem setup. I am nervous about that as wifi SSID and password taped to side of modem.Anyway, the problem started right after he was on site. He did put up a ladder on a pole but not sure what he did. I am not saying he purposely did anything nor do I know what he could have done to the line to give this scenario. Any ideas?

[deanwebb]

Connect to the Arris router and look up the IP address it uses for external connections. See if you can ping that from inside.

If yes, then there may be an issue with DNS settings, we'll check those next.

If no, then the Arris router isn't routing.

Given that the other gear had the same issue, my guess is that the DNS servers are wrong. You may want to try using 8.8.8.8 as a hard-coded DNS server to see if that works.

[montana16]

I can ping the WAN IPv4 address. I also tried to ping WAN Default gateway and success. I can also ping the DNS1 server. I do not understand it. I used my laptop which works at home on my wireless network and has never been connected to their network (if I remember correctly.) When connected to their network, I cannot go to any website. Your help is appreciated.

[montana16]

Point is moot now. They have been dealing with this for a week. They called Spectrum and a real tech came out this time, installed drop and setup phone and internet. Frontier crap is in a box.

[deanwebb]

Point is moot now. They have been dealing with this for a week. They called Spectrum and a real tech came out this time, installed drop and setup phone and internet. Frontier crap is in a box.

Yeah, having a competent tech always makes a world of difference.

My next guess would be to try to reach a website via its IP address instead of URL. Always a chance that their DNS server was down or they were killing off traffic because it exceeded the month's allotment.

[Dieselboy]

Whenever I help out anyone where they say that their internet is not working I follow this process:

1. try to ping 1.1.1.1 - if it is successful then go to next step (command is: ping 1.1.1.1)
2. use cmd.exe and then type in this in order:
nslookup
server 1.1.1.1
google.com

That will launch the dns lookup utility, set the dns server to 1.1.1.1 and then try to resolve google.com to an ip address. If this resolves the ip addresses then we can conlude that the internet connection is indeed working but DNS could be not working for the devices.

Usually what happens with ISP-supplied modems/routers is that they announce themselves as the DNS server for the LAN network. So what this means is that DNS queries are taken care of by the modem/router. The modem/router is really just a proxy dns server. Meaning it needs to forward on the DNS request somewhere. Usually to the ISP DNS servers that are maintained by them. I have often seen issues with ISP dns servers which is why I never use them. I use a mixture of 1.1.1.1 , 8.8.8.8 (google) and openDNS instead and I set these up in the DHCP server to issue out to LAN clients.

Now going back to the process above, if the first step does not get a successful ping from 1.1.1.1 then probably the internet connection is down. I don't think this is the case with your connection but I'll explain this anyway. When this ping reply fails, you need to figure out if the connection is broken at your side or if it is further up somewhere within the isp for example. You can do this again with cmd.exe and trace route (or something similar like ping plotter).
command: tracert -d 1.1.1.1

The "-d" will tell it to not resolve the IP addresses with DNS. It will just produce a faster result, especially if DNS is an issue, which it probably would be anyway if the internet is down.

Point is moot now. They have been dealing with this for a week. They called Spectrum and a real tech came out this time, installed drop and setup phone and internet. Frontier crap is in a box.

This statement reminds me when I went to a customer office back in London to set up their only internet connections in a new office ready for them moving in that day / next days. They had 2 x DSL connections. I configured the modems and login was successful, modem got the WAN IP but no active internet connection. I called the ISP who worked with me for a bit until we ended up at a dead end. I knew 100% that the issue was with the ISP based on my troubleshooting process but I didnt know why. I took it as some kind of routing issue there, because trace route showed the traffic getting to the ISP but no further. Long story short, the ISP blamed me for incompetence and informed our customer of this; saying that I didnt know how to set up the modem. Our customer was obviously unhappy and directly contacted my company directors to complain about me, the service and the financial loss of their business due to being unable to trade. The directors, obviously concerned had a talk with me and I explained everything to them especially my certainty about the issue being with the ISP somewhere. Anyway, we invited the ISP out to the site to do the config themselves and of course the issue remained. Turns out that there was some mess up between the ISP and the underlying carriers PPP configuration so, when the modem logged in to the network it was actually obtaining the wrong WAN IP address and therefore had a layer 3 connectivity issue.

I mention this because if you run a trace route (explained above) and the last successful "hop" is not the modem but somewhere upstream then this may be your issue. If the internet is just "down" then your last hop reply would be your modem IP address and this would maybe hint at a config issue there.

Hope this helps and good luck. Let us know how you go?