Shaw Cable Customer Service is most annoying

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
1

In the last few days my Shaw internet has gone down 3 times, twice at 3:30PM on two separate days and once yesterday night at midnight.

Yesterday night I called in to see if it was an area outage or if was just me. The tech guy that answered asked me what is my ID? “what ID” I say. It could be my hearing is going these days or just that the guy was mumbling.

Well go on your wifi and tell me your ID, then it dawned on me that he was asking the SSID. I told him that my Wifi is via my Airport Extreme. I say what does that have to do with anything, the internet is down whether or not I connect via ethernet or wifi.

This spawned a whole new discussion on how I had my shaw router and my other router (Airport Extreme) set up. He says that I cannot have two routers. Pardon me, I say, I had this setup for over two years and it hasn’t caused an internet outage. He says you should put your modem on Bridge. I said that still doesn’t fix my internet outage.

Of course the standard fix was to reboot my modem/router of which he kept correcting me that this is a modem when I said router. I said it is a modem-router and then very patronizingly he says your Airport is your router and ours is a modem. Ok I say…

After the reboot, the internet comes back up and I thank him but not before he tells me that I have to remove one of my routers or put the shaw modem into bridge mode.

Ok. Thank you Mr know it all, youth.

It isn’t that I am insisting that I’m right (well I am) or that I know it all either (well maybe), it is just the way I have my two routers set up, or actually three routers if you want to be technical about it. My first Airport Router is actually in bridge mode and the my other Airport extreme is in Wifi Extension mode. My Shaw modem wifi is turned off and thus only providing my local ethernet services, DHCP, firewall and port forwarding.

If I set my modem to bridge mode, then I will need two wires to my Airport; one cable for WAN and one back to the home as LAN. Currently I only need one ethernet cable to my Wifi Airport to give me Wifi AC and the connecting ethernet is connected to one of the ethernet ports on the Airport extreme rather than the wan port. In the past, I had the ethernet cable connected to the Wan port which then created a split in my home network where parts of my network could not see the other half in browse mode but I could access My Cloud if I specified the IP.

Both Airport devices have their own static IP of 192.168.0.101 and 192.168.0.102 and the shaw modem/router is of the standard 192.168.0.1 variety.

Actually the new shaw modem originally used a gateway of 10.0.0.1 which is really weird and totally clashes with my old home network of the 192.168.0.x variety. Thankfully I was able to change the gateway back to 192.168.0.1 before connecting it back to my home network via a switch.

My network works perfectly until the internet goes down. The guy from shaw says that two modems can cause conflicts which in turn can cause the internet going down.

What say the all knowing customers in this forum? is the guy from Shaw just a youngster spouting all-knowing wisdom or is he just going by the script?

2

Probably going with a script. From what I’ve experienced over
the last few years. It is difficult to find any support that does not
use a script. If your problem is not on the script forget support.
I have yet to get a good response from WD support.

3

I really don’t understand what my SSID has to do with it though, so perplexing.

If I remember correctly, a couple of days ago when I phoned in, another tech support guy told me to see if my iPad could connect to the internet instead of my wired laptop. yeah right…

I’m renaming my SSID to Uranus :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Your Shaw modem should absolutely be in bridge mode if you want to use your Airports. Although I’d recommend a newer router as the Airports are getting a tad dated and have less controls than most of the newer AC routers out there.

Your Shaw modem on one end has an external IP address and issues DHCP to anything internal. Unless you do what you’re doing with static IPs. The problem with this method is your Airport should have be the device with an external address. This is where bridge mode comes in. The modem removes the routing function and passes it to your Airport. This is important as you’re likely familiar with the term firewall and hopefully NAT (network address translation). When devices are daisy chained as you have them they’re BOTH performing NAT and firewall functions. The alternative to this is to place both your Airport devices into the Shaw modems’ DMZ. Depending on the modem they may actually pull external IP addresses but likely will still pull 192.x. Though your setup may work there are multiple issues that can occur as a result of your setup.

Slower speed, latency, connection issues to certain games and or websites are all common issues.

Finally. As a best guess the reason your internet connection could be going down is you’ve got 2 devices designed to be connected directly to the internet running through your Shaw modem and those devices are well … lower grade. That said moving your modem into bridge mode would eliminate the Shaw modems routing and firewall functions and could actually improve performance within your WiFi network - as best as the Airports can keep up these days.

Google ‘double NAT’ ‘Shaw modem bridge mode’ ‘What is bridge mode and why do I need it?’ And you’ll find a great number of articles detailing why.

Shaw is annoying but not for the reasons you explained. He was actually trying to help you and you believe you’re smarter than him since your setup has always worked. I know it’s hard to believe. But your confirmation could actually be the reason the modem keeps crashing.

Good luck :four_leaf_clover: and cheers !

5

Hello Clayinvegas, welcome to the community and thanks for taking the time to type all that up. It is appreciated.

Yes, I know, I have that terrible habit of thinking that I am smarter and it certainly annoys a lot of people especially the help desk of Shaw.

I do have DHCP turned off and firewall turned off on my Airport Routers (actually the Airport routers are in bridge mode) and only the Shaw modem/router provides the DHCPs.

A tech guy did come out to check the cabling and found that by switching to another port at the junction box downstairs everything works solidly for several months until someone decides to do some kind of testing (I’m guessing) and the outages begins again.

Over the years I found that Shaw does have tiny outages that last for about 3 to 5 minutes and they occur usually at 2 to 5AM when nobody notices except night owls like myself. I watch the modem/router go into the slow red blinking light and if I wait without rebooting the modem, everything comes back in a few minutes. Meanwhile I am refraining myself from phoning into shaw to complain.

Anyways all this is moot now and I’ve moved over to Telus Fibre and let me tell you that it is fantastic.

I still have that same configuration of Airport routers operating in Bridge mode connected to a Telus Modem/router and there are absolutely no outages.

Now I know that because you are probably younger than I am, you probably think that I’m doing it all wrong and that is ok because I do what I need to do.

I am using two Airport routers so I can bridge my lutron light switches which is on a 100Mbs box unit, plus my alarm system that also operates on a 100Mbs ethernet. If I plug those units into my gigabit network, everything slows down to a crawl.

Using a Wifi Bridge keeps all my gigabit network healthy.

P.S. I turn off my Telus Router/modem Wifi and only the Airports Extreme, Time Capsule and Airport Express provides all the Wifi in my small apartment. Does it work? yes and it has been working for over six years now.

6

Customer service drones often have several bosses listening in to make sure they are following the script, and not --you know-- actually providing customer service. (because GOD FORBID that somebody gets anything they might not be entitled to!)

If your airport routers are still working well, there’s no real need to replace them. I understand that a new wifi spec is being worked on, but you would need new wired infrastructure for that to be reasonable. Those airports likey have a few years of service left in them before they become antiquated tech.

On a personal note, I wish I could get residential fiber service. The best I can get where I live is hideous century link ADSL. Horrible. Just horrible.

7

It isn’t that I don’t want to change to something better or even just using the default modem/router wifi that comes with my ISP service. I am stuck on using the Airports just for the wifi bridge.

What I mean by wifi bridge is connecting a bunch of ethernet boxes over at the wifi extender side without a hard wired cable running across the room. An alternative is using a power line ethernet that uses the outlets to deliver ethernet to my remote boxes. These were the 100Mbs devices that slowed my whole gigabit network down to crawl. So by using the wifi bridge I managed to isolate them to their own little network.

The limitation isn’t the Airports but my MacBook which is now 4 years old and the same with my iPhone 6s plus. Nothing at my house can use the new gigabit Wifi protocols. In fact all my lutron light switches, iHome Smart plugs and tlink cameras are still on Wifi N.

MacBook can still get 45MB/s via Wifi AC to and from the NAS and 80-100MB/s when wired. Still impressive for Airports.

I might check into the powerline adapters since these days they are only $60 for the D-Link Powerline AV500 and thus I could remove the Airports and just rely on the dafault Telus Modem for all my wifi needs. It is time to simplify.

Well, there isn’t that much need for internet speed anymore. As long as you can get Netflix, Amazon Prime or any streaming service you are pretty much good to go.

but yes… I love imagining all my data being converted into lights much like Wrecking Ralph when they zoom into the internet.

8

Just about any old wifi thing, like a range extender, can be put into bridge mode. (definitely so if it supports openwrt, but that requires a bit of savvy with the config, since it is all conf file configuration over ssh)

Before it started acting all flakey from being old, I had a 100mbit/wireless-G belkin “Gaming adapter”, which was really just a wifi bridge. I used it with my game consoles, because it and a small hub was cheaper than getting the wifi adapters for all of them. Later, I kept it around for any time I needed a bridge device. It came in pretty handy when reloading laptops, since windows usually found the wired NIC, but never knew what the wifi chip was. This let me get internet access right away.

9

yeah that was the reason that I love Airports so much. No need for savvy configs.

Back in the day when I was still skeptical about Apple Airports, I mean these devices were in the hundreds when new, I thought why would anyone buy these things when you can get a perfectly good dlink Wifi AC for $40 but then again my cheap dlink Wifi AC turned out to be a fake, what I thought were gigabit ports in the back turned out to be cheap 100Mbs ethernet.

As with anything that I buy, I buy as a lark ready to disprove my purchase. It was the same with WD Live when I first bought it from Costco and I ended up keeping the WD Live for much the same reason that I became an Airport User; these products just work.

The discovery of the wifi bridge mode without having to fiddle with it was a genuine surprise as all the products at the other end started to work within minutes of selecting it from the menu where-as most other router products I would spend hours tweaking menu selections which don’t work.

I ended up buying all my Airports used, as people were discarding them for more pricey routers. In the end I even ended up buying an Airport Time Capsule with 2TB drive for $80 I believe when Apple were still trying to sell them for $300. I got 40MBs read/write wired from the Time Capsule so it was good enough for my MacBook backup as well as giving me my Wifi AC which gives me my max internet speed of 300mbs on my iPhone.

Bridge two Wifi AC units and I got 45 MBs to a My Cloud attached at the other end; not bad I would say.

Right now I am just bridging to an Airport Express because of Ring doorbell using only N and the express has a lot less lag than my Airport Extreme; still need to be re-test one day. With the Airport Extreme, my doorbell would take about 20 seconds to activate after detecting movement in comparison to the Airport express which takes about 3 seconds.

One day I’ll simplify and by simplify I mean removing all my routers and just using the ISP supplied router for all my needs. Why would I do that? well to reduce all the probable conflicting wifi signals surging through my apartment.