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Forum Discussion
Network issue - some pages won't load
I have had my Orbi for over two years now, without any real problems until now. I recently started to have an issue with some web sites resolving. I scratched my head for some time, until I came acro...
aarondyck wrote:
I have had my Orbi for over two years now, without any real problems until now. I recently started to have an issue with some web sites resolving. I scratched my head for some time, until I came across a forum post suggesting that changing the MAC Address on my Orbi may resolve the issue. Sure enough, I changed my MAC Address and the pages came back. For a week. Then I was back to where I started. I've had to change the MAC twice now to get pages to load for me.
The Technicolor TC4300 is a "modem only", i.e. no router, no WiFi. That means the Orbi connects and requests an IP address using DHCP, which also returns the IP's for internet gateway and DNS servers. If things work again when you change the Orbi MAC address, it could be that (a) the cable network has forgotten Orbi's IP or (b) there is something wrong with their DNS or gateway. Either way, it sounds like the trouble is at the ISP.
One thing to try is to manually set the DNS entries to your own choice, perhaps Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Another is to do a trace route to see how Orbi gets to the internet. (i.e. which routers it goes through.) I don't think tracert depends on DNS.
Good Luck!
CrimpOn, thanks for the suggestion.
I have already ruled out a DNS issue. I have specified DNS, and in some cases have even tried to use IP only (when accessing a site known to be a single Internet-facing server).
My suspicion is that there is an issue with the ARP tables on the modem, which I have no way to clear. I am also looking into this aspect of things and carefully examining the modem's logs. Unfortunately there isn't a lot to do on these modems and I'm not able to perform any maintenance commands.
Well, you are more advanced than I am. Sorry not to have anything to suggest.
I tried to Google whether dropping power on the modem would clear the ARP cache. Did find one interesting thread sort of similar to your situation: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1371907
Good Luck!