incessant amber light blinking for ethernet port

[davidderolph]

I have recently switched ISP, transitioning from DSL to cable.  I bought a Netgear CM400 modem and a Netgear N300 Wireless-N Router WNR2000-100NAS.  I just received the modem yesterday and got it and the router set up and connected to my new cable service.  I've run speed tests and am getting what the ISP states as the speed of my service; actually, the speed is a little higher than the ISP-stated speed. 

So, the modem has five LED lights on front. The power, upstream, downstream, and internet lights remain steady green during all my time using the new modem so far. The ethernet light, on the other hand, blinks amber ALL the time, even at night when my computer is off.  I've been searching for some info on this and found some past discussions in this community that say this is normal.  They have also said the color of the ethernet light is either amber or green, depending on the speed of hardware connected to it, as I understand the comments.  I would think the light, whether amber or green, would sometimes settle down and remain steady instead of constantly blinking.  But, apparently, that is not so.

So, from a technical standpoint, this is apparently normal. I just find it a annoying.  For a modem to be designed to behave this way seems odd.  If the light blinked during actual internet activity in my network, that would make sense.  The blinking should have some meaning, it should indicate certain activity.  The endless blinking is meaningless and not what I want to see in a network device.  If I had known about this, I might have bought a different router.

[William10a · Accepted solution]

The orange color makes since the router you have is 10/100mb wired lan port so the fastest speed t can handle is around a 100mb and flashing of the internet light is normal it would be green if a 1gb lan port was used.

[William10a · Accepted solution]

The orange color makes since the router you have is 10/100mb wired lan port so the fastest speed t can handle is around a 100mb and flashing of the internet light is normal it would be green if a 1gb lan port was used.

[davidderolph]

I just looked at the manual for the CM400.  With regard to the status LEDs on the front, specifically the Ethernet LED, it says, "Blinking green or amber. The Ethernet port is processing traffic."  This implies that the LED would stop blinking when the port is not processing traffic.  But, this does happen.  As stated in my original post, it always blinks. 

I've used modems and routers for 20+ years now and I don't recall ever using one that an LED status light would always blink. The purpose of blinking is to indicate activity, to indicate that traffic is being processed.  So, if a computer connected to the modem or router is off and, therefore, not trying to communicate over the internet, then the LED would remain solid.  But, not so with Netgear CM400. 

[davidderolph]

I see I ommitted a word in the first paragraph.  I meant to say, "'But, this does not happen" instead of "But, this does happen."   Again, the blinking of the ethernet port LED never stops, whether I'm using the internet or not.