On-going Cisco Router Issues In Multiple Buildings On Sundays

Discussions about Internet service providers (ISPs), the Meetinghouse Firewall, wired and wireless networking, usage, management, and support of Meetinghouse Internet
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ccmichaelson
New Member
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2011 1:40 pm

On-going Cisco Router Issues In Multiple Buildings On Sundays

#1

Post by ccmichaelson »

For the past couple of months, the Internet traffic stops (or becomes severely limited) in at least 2 of my stake buildings on Sunday. During the rest of the week I never have an issue (and yes I've check them multiple times throughout the week).

If I remove the Cisco Firewall and direct connect to the high speed broadband line Internet traffic is great. As soon as I route the ISP line into the Cisco Firewall all Internet traffic fails. What I noticed this past Sunday is that I could ping public DNS servers via IP (e.g. 4.2.2.2, 8.8.8.8) but I could not ping a DNS name (e.g. www.lds.org, www.walmart.com) so its as though the church's DNS servers are having issues on Sunday.

Anyone else experiencing something similar? Can't tell you how crazy it is having multiple buildings with no Internet access week after week
drepouille
Senior Member
Posts: 2859
Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2007 6:06 pm
Location: Plattsmouth, NE

Re: On-going Cisco Router Issues In Multiple Buildings On Sundays

#2

Post by drepouille »

We had similar issues in our stake center last Spring when the FM temporarily increased our Cox Internet service to 150 MBps, the highest speed offered. Our firewall kept losing its connection with the provider. We replaced the cablemodem twice and the firewall once. Nothing seemed to work, so we just told the bishoprics in the stake center to reboot the cablemodem when they lost service.
A similar issue exists in one of our rural branches, but that is likely due to poor DSL service in a corn field.
Dana Repouille, Plattsmouth, Nebraska
lryangray
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Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2014 5:03 pm

Re: On-going Cisco Router Issues In Multiple Buildings On Sundays

#3

Post by lryangray »

I had an issue that presented itself with similar symptoms, here's how it went for me. I had a building that almost like clockwork the Internet would go down about noon each Sunday, this went on for weeks. I checked everything I could think of, firewall, cabling, AP's, rebooting everything, etc, with no improvement. I made multiple calls to the GSC and they weren't able to help, they said all they say on their side was the firewall stop responding. I eventually got out ISP involved (Comcast) and got an excellent tech assigned who patiently worked with me over several weeks and came out a couple times on Sunday even to investigate. He was convinced that there was stray voltage getting into the cable modem, either from the coax cable or from an Ethernet cable plugged into the cable modem. He said if the modem detected voltage in a line it would go into protection mode and basically disable itself.

He checked that the coax cable was properly grounded (it was). He was never able to get any logs or "smoking gun" type of evidence from the modem or their system at the head-end that pointed to a voltage issue, but without fail unplugging the 880 firewall resulted in the cable modem working again. Plug it in and the modem would stop working. This was easy to repro and worked every time. Note that if I had a computer plugged directly into the cable modem (it has a 4 port switch built in) along with the 881 firewall it wouldn't work when the issue presented itself, unplug the firewall and all was good on the computer plugged directly into the modem. That made an easy test/repro.

Eventually after much pleading I got him to replace the cable modem and never have had an issue again since. So in the end I'm not sure if the old modem was extremely sensitive and the new one isn't, if the 881's PoE voltage was leaking just enough to trip the cable modem, if the old modem just had a fault that developed, or it was something else entirely (the noonish timeframe is typically the highest user count and load on the firewall). But in any case replacing the modem solved the issue for me.
nelsonfam
Church Employee
Church Employee
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2014 10:43 am

Re: On-going Cisco Router Issues In Multiple Buildings On Sundays

#4

Post by nelsonfam »

ccmichaelson wrote:For the past couple of months, the Internet traffic stops (or becomes severely limited) in at least 2 of my stake buildings on Sunday. During the rest of the week I never have an issue (and yes I've check them multiple times throughout the week).

If I remove the Cisco Firewall and direct connect to the high speed broadband line Internet traffic is great. As soon as I route the ISP line into the Cisco Firewall all Internet traffic fails. What I noticed this past Sunday is that I could ping public DNS servers via IP (e.g. 4.2.2.2, 8.8.8.8) but I could not ping a DNS name (e.g. http://www.lds.org, http://www.walmart.com) so its as though the church's DNS servers are having issues on Sunday.

Anyone else experiencing something similar? Can't tell you how crazy it is having multiple buildings with no Internet access week after week

What are your Stake/Ward building names?
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