Intermittent internet problem

[brewerburns]

Hi. My husband and I bought a new iMac in October. It runs on OS 10.4. We have high speed cable internet through Comcast. The computer hooked up to the internet just fine when we brought it home and worked really, really well for the first 6 weeks that we had it. Then last week it stopped working so well. Basically, our internet connection became intermittent. It would be one for a few seconds, then disconnect, the reconnect, then disconnect. We cycled our modem, restarted the computer. That did nothing. Then we called comcast and they tested our modem (by "pinging" it) and nothing seemed to be amiss. They also cycled the modem from their end. Finally, we clicked the button marked "renew dhcp lease" on our network menu, then had comcast re-cycle the modem and the internet was up and running again. Until last night when it started doing the same thing. This time we did the same thing, and the internet connection is still intermittent.

So, has anyone else had this problem? What did you do about it? We also called Apple care and the person that my husband spoke with had never heard of this problem (which is interesting because I found one old article on Apple's website dealing with a similar problem, although it was an old article) but her supervisor had. Apparently, the supervisor had this problem, couldn't fix it, then his modem died so he attributed it to his modem dying.

The modem is connected directly the cable, and the computer is connected directly to the modem via the USB port.

 

[bluekatt]

ever thought about suspecting the modem ?
usb modems are not exactly known for their relaibaility
and why exactly do you need a usb modem to use cable internet ?
a cable modem is usually hooked up to the cable with a cable leading to the computer and jacked in to the ethernet connection

 

[brewerburns]

We did suspect the modem. We replaced the modem on Friday. I also spent an hour on the phone with apple care on Friday night and did not find the problem. The comcast tech came out on Saturday morning and determined that he couldn't get a signal using our cord (that goes from the computer to the modem) so we replaced that. But we still had the same intermittent ethernet problem. So we called apple care again on Sunday. My husband will be taking the computer back to CompUSA today. Apple care thought that maybe our ethernet card was fried.

 

[bluekatt]

hmm that is a distict possibility
maybe apple wil replace the whole machine its cheaper then replacing the fried eithernet card
one of the drawbacks of these all in ones