OK so i've been having problems on and off for a while but this is now getting a regular occurrence and the degree of repetition is beyond annoying. It impacts my ability to work from home and this is pretty much a last hope someone has experienced, and fixed, the same problem
I have a vodafone router which is currently configured as full fibre, but this problem occurred before that upgrade when the wire into my home was an ADSL phone line, so the fibre / adsl bit is obviously irrelevant.
And before i go into details, I'm an IT consultant of thirty years standing who back in 1990 helped put INMARSAT's satcomms based data service into operation round the planet so I know a BIT about TCP/IP, and i've written network drivers for Linux but that was a LONG time ago.
So here's the problem. I have a couple of Windows PC's here which repeatedly have problems connecting directly to the vodafone router wifi. The problem is intermittent, but getting worse. The issue manifests as the Wifi saying "Connected - No Internet". At any one time the network here will have, in addition to those windows PC's, any of one android smart TV, two Amazon Fire Sticks, two android tablets and any number of Android phones and Iphones of various family members plus two internet CCTV cameras and a Linux / Chromebook connected and whenever this issue hits the windows PC's **NONE** of those other devices are impacted.
As technical people will hopefully already know, the main way Microsoft's systems determine if there is a network connection beyond the router is an unsecured connection attempt to http://msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt is expected to return an http response message "Microsoft Connect Test". Failure to achieve this and the machine assumes network failure. I've recently been told that an additional requirement is that the tracert hop count to that server should exceed 8
When this "Connected, No Internet" issue arises, a Windows command prompt at the impacted PC will either show a DNS failure in finding that server (and maybe other more common ones) or simply show the machine's Dynamic IP from the router's DHCP service has not been renewed, and the IP address in use by the machine is now one of the dreaded 169.x.y.z range
Sometimes, if the machine still has the 192.168.x.y address allocated, a ping to 192.168.1.1 followed by a ping to 8.8.8.8 and then news.bbc.co.uk will cause the router to get its act together, but sometimes it won't. Sometimes restarting the impacted PC or using the ipconfig/renew trick at the command prompt will sort the problem, sometimes it won't, and sometimes a full reboot of the router, with, or sometimes without, a power cycling will provide a temporary respite, BUT SOMETIMES IT DOES NOT.
I've gone as far as commanding a restore to factory options and a power cycle. I did that yesterday, and this PC on which I am now typing this was connected at 8pm last night. I woke this morning to find it had clearly lost the dynamic IP Address lease as it was back to using 169.something
But here's the thing. Through this chaos my smart TV, my work "Iphone" and my personal android phone are all working witha direct donnection to the wifi router without any issue. In adition a "Mercusys" mains power based IP range extender connected to one of the four "wired" connections seems to stay up as does an additional extender leeching off the wifi at the far end of that Mercusys system, so it seems that SOME of the router circuitry works.
Right now for example i am typing this on the PC whose "direct" wifi connection is reporting No Internet Connectivity and cannot obtain an IP address, but which connects without grumbling through the extenders leading back to that wired connection
Has ANYONE had anything like this degree of frustratuon and was there a fix.
I spent hours on the phone to some really lovely people at Vodafone last week who tried a number of things with me and for me to fix this, but the fact it's still throwing up a problem shows they've failed.
How can i persuade them this router is intermittently masquerading as a house brick and perhaps they should send me another ?
Any advice that might sort this would be most welcome
