I have been having horrible experiences with my internet provider over the last 14 or 15 months. I originally had company MT, which was great service, and very reliable. The longtime owner and founder passed away, and the kids sold the company. The new provider is company RC. They started out great, and I even upgraded to their cable internet service, and it was screaming fast for a few months. back in approximately March of 2015, they had a power surge at the local switching station a few miles away from my house, and my service has been horrible since then. My cable service went to heck in a hand basket, and I eventually downgraded to the DSL service because they could not get the cable service reliable again.
The DSL service is sporadic at best, and every time I call in tech support, I always go through the same routine, and reboot everything, and they go in and "monitor" the situation, and tell me that there had not been a drop in my service to their modem. This has been going on for the past 14-15 months or so. I even had a local tech support company come out, and they swapped out a very old network switch that I don't think was bad, and they also replaced my Belkin router with a Linksys E1200 router. I am still having the same issues.
I have to reboot my router several times a day, and it is beyond frustrating. Here is my current setup:
Vison Net (I believe) router in from the DSL line, connected to the Linksys E1200 router. I have several cables plugged into this for various devices. The Linksys router also broadcasts wireless, and I have a Belkin range extender on one end of the house also near the kid's rooms. I have tons of devices connected wirelessly. Several smart phones, two printers, one or two smart TV's, any one of four laptops at any given time, etc. I also have my home office hardwired to the router with a few printers, and my plotter.
I used to think I was knowledgeable enough to keep tings running, but this is kicking my backside. I need to get this resolved, because it is way past annoying. I need a stable connection.
Any suggestions or tips is greatly appreciated.
Jimmy
The big question in my mind is this: are your problems caused by the internet service to your building, or are the problems caused by your networking devices inside the building. I have nothing to offer on the internet service, if that is the issue. If the network devices are the problem, I can suggest looking into flashing DD-WRT firmware on your router. DD-WRT is an open source project started by people who were frustrated with the lousy router firmware provided by the manufacturers. I had problems with my home network 7 or 8 years ago, network connections dropping out all the time (both wired and wireless), flashed DD-WRT on my router, and everything has been smooth ever since. The firmware is not available for all devices, you'll have to search the project website to see if your router is supported, and what the recommended flashing method to use is.
TP-Link makes the simplest and best user friendly routers and get some great range for your bucks. Great tech support too, they will walk you thru anything.
My internet was in limbo from 2008 till two months ago when the local rural water system started tearing up every other utility to get their waterlines in place.
I'm sure headquarters of all the utilities have a thick file on me with red flags everywhere cause I've worn their ears out very often.
Complain, when they say they can't help, ask for supervisor and work your way as high up the ladder as possible all times of the day and night and on holidays as much and as often as you can.
When you spot a serviceman pull them to the side and bend an ear, they are not any more happy than you and will give you privy info and ammo to use on your next call............
Hughesnet will work if you have a very good view of the sky, yet they are not the best by far, threshold of 10gb a month during the day.
If you have a great 4G signal, Verizon will hook you up to everything and they charge by the data plan.
It is hard to beat unlimited DSL and that is what I have now thru the phone company.
BTW, make sure you connect any hardwired machines thru backup power unit, a CAT5 and telephone and other hardwired rated surge protector or your printer, fax, router, hdmi, monitor, telephone, computer card, motherboard, etc will send a lightning or other electric surge to everything and jump and zap what it can get to.
goodluck
Finding the issue is tough. I had similar issues and even bought a new high end router (NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band Wi-Fi Gigabit Router (R7000)) to help with all of the devices logging into the network. The router helped a little. But still not satisfactorily. My suggestion is take everything off the network and add one device at a time. I found several issues on my network. One was one of the chrome books would log on and it would nearly shut-down the network. Not sure why. Haven't had time to investigate. But another issue was the provider finally realized that they had too many subscribers on the same tower and was causing huge issues. They are currently working on that issue. Good LUCK!