Apartment complex internet has problems after new tenants setup their hardware

[HighlandValley]

Twice in the past month my internet has had issues where it isn't necessarily slow, but it doesn't load consistently (nor are my speed tests consistent) and online games lag horribly.

 

The first time it happened the ISP sent someone out who spoke to my girlfriend who doesn't know a lot about networking, but from what I gather something about the way new tenants are setting up their stuff is causing disruption for me. The tech "went outside and flipped a switch" and the problem was solved. She also thought he said something about them directly porting into something.

Infrastructure - complex with 5 buildings, 12 units per. Whole thing connects to fiber at the street and each building has a switch that connects ethernet to a wall jack in each unit. Normally I get 100Mbps download, and nearly as much up. My router is a Linksys 3200ACM. Weirdly, when I connect my router to the wall I'm assigned XXX.100 IP address and no matter how many times I restart or use release/renew on the router I get that same IP. But if I connect my laptop to the wall I get XXX.206.

 

Long story short, the ISP has no evening/weekend support. The tech made it sound super easy - I know where the switch is in my building, just not what he did with it. Any ideas?

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, HighlandValley said:

wall I'm assigned XXX.100 IP address and no matter how many times I restart or use release/renew on the router I get that same IP. But if I connect my laptop to the wall I get XXX.206.

Some ISP's assign IP addresses based on the Mac address of the device. Your router's mac address is setup with the one ending in 100 while your Laptop that has a different mac address gets the other address. Its hard to say what the issue is. Ive seen internet setup many ways in complexes. Also each type of internet (aDSL, vDSL, Cable, Fiber, LTE, etc) is setup differently. 

[HighlandValley]

On 7/12/2019 at 8:31 PM, Donut417 said:

Your router's mac address is setup with the one ending in 100 while your Laptop that has a different mac address gets the other address.

This helped ...temporarily. I cloned my laptop's MAC address to the router and was able to get a new IP and things seemed to resolve for a bit. After a few hours with that setup though, the internet connection was last altogether. Windows simply told me the connection did not have a valid ip configuration.

 

Fed up, I investigated the switch. It's unmanaged, so I wasn't too worried about power-cycling it. I did so, and got back to my apartment and found the internet working. Speed tests netted 40 down and 80 up - way less than my normal 100/100. Within 5 minutes though the internet connection dropped again and now I'm back to where I started.

 

The switch is a TL-SG1016. I hate to power-cycle it again and interrupt anything my neighbors might be doing, but so far that's the only thing that works.

[Donut417]

24 minutes ago, HighlandValley said:

This helped ...temporarily. I cloned my laptop's MAC address to the router and was able to get a new IP and things seemed to resolve for a bit. After a few hours with that setup though, the internet connection was last altogether. Windows simply told me the connection did not have a valid ip configuration.

 

Fed up, I investigated the switch. It's unmanaged, so I wasn't too worried about power-cycling it. I did so, and got back to my apartment and found the internet working. Speed tests netted 40 down and 80 up - way less than my normal 100/100. Within 5 minutes though the internet connection dropped again and now I'm back to where I started.

 

The switch is a TL-SG1016. I hate to power-cycle it again and interrupt anything my neighbors might be doing, but so far that's the only thing that works.

Id call the ISP. They are the only ones that can help. As it sounds like some kind of configuration issue or maybe some equipment thats about to bite the dust. Your setup is unusual, at least from other installs I have heard about. 

[HighlandValley]

16 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Id call the ISP

So it turns out one of my new neighbors keeps plugging in a modem to the wall (i.e. the switch) which causes the switch to have an aneurysm. They're sending someone out today and will update me on what is required to fix it in case it's something I can do in the future.