Anyone having issues connecting to DVR via Comcast Business?

[groovyman 0]

I'm not necessarily looking for help here. Just reporting something that's been happening recently and wondering if it's happening to anyone else.

 

Comcast is the cable company by me. Starting last week I've been having problems connecting to DVRs in 3 locations. The 3 locations form a 50 mile radius, so it's not localized to one specific area. The commonality between the 3 locations is that they are all recent Comcast installations with the same Business Class Modem/Router.

 

Everything was working fine for months, but one day last week I couldn't remotely connect to the DVR at location 1. Couple days later location 2 experienced the same issue, then the next day location 3. The only thing that resolves the issue is rebooting the cable modem/router, but this is temporary.

 

It's very weird and I've never seen anything like this before:

- The cable modem/router does not lose Internet connectivity, but the ports for the DVR somehow disable.

- When the DVR is "down" I'll perform a port scan on the WAN IP address. All ports for the DVR appear closed, but ports configured for other network devices remain open.

- I'll call and ask someone to reboot the cable modem, then all the DVR ports appear open and I can remotely logon to the DVR.

- If the DVR is idle for a period of time, the ports are disabled again, although remain configured and are set as active in the Comcast modem/router.

- The DVR can be logged on to locally no matter what.

Bottom line: Reboot cable modem, can access DVR remotely. DVR sits idle, remote connectivity is lost until cable modem is rebooted, but local connectivity works fine.

 

In each location I have at least one PC on the network that I can communicate with - no problem. These PCs are setup with specific ports forwarding to them. The difference between the DVR and the PCs is that the PCs are always on and are used frequently throughout the day. The DVR sits there and doesn't send any information out until a request comes in from the WAN.

 

I made the mistake of calling Comcast tech support (what a joke). They are no help at all. Waste of 1/2 hour trying to explain networking 101 to teir 1 support. And stupid me, I called twice thinking the next person would understand Where do they get these people?

 

Anyway, I have a solution to the problem, but was just wondering if anyone else with Comcast Business Class Internet service was experiencing the same issue. I'll get the modem/router make, model & firmware version when I go on-site if anyone wants to compare notes.

 

I personally think it was a pushed firware update that happened last week. Wouldn't be the first time Comcast did this and messed things up. I have 20+ other locations with Comcast Internet service and they're working fine, but they have a different modem/router than these 3 locations.

[nDAlk90 0]

I made the mistake of calling Comcast tech support (what a joke). They are no help at all. Waste of 1/2 hour trying to explain networking 101 to teir 1 support. And stupid me, I called twice thinking the next person would understand Where do they get these people?

 

Is you cable modem plugged in?

Can you tell me what lights are on the modem?

 

 

They read from a script... No networking knowledge required.

 

Oh... You want to know how to fix the problem...

Let me create a trouble ticket and transfer you to tier 2

[groovyman 0]

I made the mistake of calling Comcast tech support (what a joke). They are no help at all. Waste of 1/2 hour trying to explain networking 101 to teir 1 support. And stupid me, I called twice thinking the next person would understand Where do they get these people?

 

Is you cable modem plugged in?

Can you tell me what lights are on the modem?

 

 

They read from a script... No networking knowledge required.

 

Oh... You want to know how to fix the problem...

Let me create a trouble ticket and transfer you to tier 2

Oh, I can see you've worked there

Either that or you've called the cable company once or twice yourself

[ak357 0]

Here what I can do for you

( trying new monitoring system )

 

1. sent PM with IP and which ports u wanna monitor

 

2. I will monitor specific port every so many sec or min

and give you report later

 

Actually I can probably arrange e-mail sent to you when port get closed

[norcaldad 0]

I spoke to two level 1's on different days recently. I know what you went through - the one guy made me feel like a genius... But I was able to get to level 2 on my second attempt. The guy I spoke with was very helpful and took the time to explain a few things I did not understand. He was glad to help. BTW - they don't call it level 2, they call it Xfinity Signature Support or something similar. I think the key is to ask level 1 questions they don't understand. I started asking about various ports and that got me there. Of course I did not know what I was talking about, but I did not know it at the time and neither did the level 1 tech...

[groovyman 0]

Here what I can do for you

( trying new monitoring system )

 

1. sent PM with IP and which ports u wanna monitor

 

2. I will monitor specific port every so many sec or min

and give you report later

 

Actually I can probably arrange e-mail sent to you when port get closed

Thanks for the offer, but I'm going to decline. I know what's happening and I have a simple solution - going to stick another router on the network.

Cable Modem/Router ---> New Router ---> DVR & other network devices

I just need to reconfigure port forwarding & device IP addressing. I typically don't like doing things this way, but this whole thing should take 10 minutes, solve everything and I'll be done with it.

 

I could also configure the DVR for DHCP, then set the IP address statically in the DVR and reconfigure port forwarding, but if the Cable Modem should lose power I'll need to do it again. I'm in FL, we're entering the rainy season and extended power/cable/dsl outages are common.