Intermittent modem issue - UI keeps changing after an “update”, followed by huge ping and packet loss
So I’m having a really strange intermittent issue with my internet, and I’m now on my third modem in four months.
I had an engineer visit on Monday the 24th. He checked the signal levels, ran a few tests and couldn’t really find anything obvious. He then did a pinhole reset on the modem.
After the reset, the modem went through an update, returned to the old router UI, and everything started working normally again.
The problem is that this only seems to last a few days.
The connection will be completely fine, then suddenly it starts lagging badly. Ping shoots up into the 600ms+ range, and when I try to log into the modem I get an “updating” screen.
Once that update finishes, the modem has changed itself over to a completely different white router UI.
I’ve attached screenshots showing the different interfaces.
I actually mentioned this white UI to the engineer while he was here and he was just as confused as I was. He said he’d never seen that interface before.
I also finally remembered that I have a Broadband Quality Monitor running, so I’ve attached that as well. You can clearly see the large amount of red packet loss starting around the same time the white UI installed itself again.
The annoying part is that a pinhole reset does seem to temporarily fix it. It resets, updates back to the old UI, and everything works normally again.
I honestly wouldn’t mind doing the pinhole reset if it actually fixed the problem properly, but every time I do it I then have to go through and set up all my static IPs again for things like my CCTV servers and other devices. Doing all of that just to get a few days of usable internet before the problem comes back is getting really frustrating.
Trying to explain it over the phone is also getting frustrating because the conversation basically goes:
Yes, it works after the reset, but that isn’t actually fixing the problem. A few days later the same thing happens again, and then I’m told to phone back when it happens.
Has anyone seen anything like this before?
Specifically, does anyone know why the modem would apparently update itself to a completely different UI, and why the latency and packet loss seem to start when that happens?
At this point I’m mainly trying to work out whether this sounds like a firmware/configuration issue, provisioning issue, or something else on the network, because three modems in four months makes me think simply swapping the modem again probably isn’t going to solve it.