The Nine-O'clock shutdown
 

For several weeks now I have been seeing my internet connection disappear daily for a few minutes - always happens around 2100-2115.

The link light on the modem goes out and it tries to re-establish the connection. Any thoughts on cause?

Do you have a phone extension which isn't filtered?
Does the wife / child phone someone at that time each night?
Do you have a skybox or a burglar alarm on an unfiltered extension?

Negative to all of those Milo.

I seem to remember having seen a 'lease' time set on one router I had - in fact my Tenda router has " Leased Time (hour)" under DHCP set to 1 day - maybe worth having a peep? I have no idea what this does, mind you!

As I understand it the cause of your problem is indeed the 'lease time' this sets the length of time that the modem 'leases' the IP address, after that time it automatically releases the address at gets a new one and this is what you're seeing. The answer is to do a reset to the router at a time you normally not using the computer.

The above applies to all dynamic ip address systems I believe

.or change the lease time?

That sounds interesting (and new to me). It's a TalkTalk hard wired modem that's been in use for about 4 years without me noticing the interruption until about three weeks ago.

How do I 'get at it'?

It may be you had a power failure around that time? It then restarted and now does it at 9PM instead of a time when you weren't normally on line?

If you can switch the modem off? Leave it for a minute or two and then switch it back on If it no longer does it at 9PM but then does it the next day at the time you switched it back on then we've nailed the cause for certain.

Tried that, still lost it at 9pm.

Any other thoughts?

Have a read of this thread:

Constantly changing IP address - The TalkTalk Members Forums

It does look like you are changing IP address incredibly frequently - you have 1736 IP addresses registered, which appears to be in excess of the number of posts you have made (> 1000).

It actually appears that you have changed IP address more frequently than once per day. :eek:

I'm used to cable service, where my IP address rarely changes - perhaps it's different with ADSL, but it does seem excessive. Perhaps your ISP has set a particularly short lease period.

SD

Thanks for those.

I will investigate further.

Recall reading a story by a network engineer some years ago - similar problem but at about 3 pm.

Days spent checking drivers in entire office network, all cables tested and so on, no joy.

Defeated team retire to conference room for a cuppa in the mid afternoon to discuss the problem; tea trolley comes through the door and the network crashes!

Turned out some lazy sod had laid the cable under the carpet outside the door instead of running it round the door frame. Cable rerouted and problem solved.

A long shot, but does anything physical happen around that time ('er indoors putting the cat out, etc)?

Nope, just me staring at the pooter.

Had a customer who had a similar problem, which was eventually tracked down to a sheep having a good rub against the guy-cable supporting a telegraph pole.
Loose connection on the pole, which came into effect when the pole was vibrated by the sheep.

In this case I'd look at replacing all the ADSL filters for a start, just in case theres interference from something else on the phone system
I'd also get on to the ISP and ask them to look at the history - they should be able to gain some kind of idea whats happening

Or look out the window to see who is having a regular knee trembler against the nearest telegraph pole at that time ........