B.J.
If you are losing lock on WB even when it is merely foggy, I would say that your dish is not aligned to peak signal. ...
While that's possibly part of it, I don't think it's the major issue. First, there is fog, and then there is FOG. We get some pretty nasty FOG here.
It's real variable. Often the WB continues to work in a driving rainstorm, but will go out during a heavy fog. And 99% of the time it's not so much that we're losing lock either which really has me confused. It's sort of like the thing will work fine, then a rain-storm comes in from the south-west, and we'll lose it. I'll go up and check, and the modem will say we have a lock, but we can't ping anywhere. I'll blame the router, and connect directly to one of my computers, but I still can't get out. If I power cycle the modem, I'll get reception back, but only for about 10-15 minutes, and it will go out again, even if the rain storm has passed by here.... modem still says lock. I usually don't get it back to normal for hours after the storm has passed, even if the sun is shining.
I really think the issue is more related to overloading of the Wild Blue downlink site when a storm comes through. What I'm *guessing* is that when rain comes through an area, it will disturb the reception of lots of users at the same time, and you get thousands of modems trying to reconnect or request resending lost packets, etc, meaning that there will be a much heavier load on the system when rain comes through the area. Actually, if I do a ping, I get time outs, but if I put a very long delay on the pings, they often come back after long delays, like 5-10 seconds, instead of the normal 1 second, so this shows that I'm getting out, but it's just taking a long time for WB to get the responses back to me. Two other issues are the proxy and name server. I went for a year without using the WB proxy, but eventually was forced to use it because several of the internet sites I use have apparently blacklisted some WB IP# groups. Re the nameserver, sometimes I see different response to my pings depending on if I'm using the name or the IP#. I'm guessing that how this affects any particular area depends upon which downlink center you're using, as some are more maxed out than others. I've read that some people get better performance if they switch nameservers or proxies. Just a guess on my part though, but it is pretty clear that it's not just a situation of me losing lock with the satellite.
I use a Linksys WRT54G connected to my WB modem. If I lose lock and it comes back later, after a storm passes, it automatically reconnects. Takes a few minutes, but it eventually does.
Yeah, if I wait long enough, the comes back to life too, but it might take HOURS, probably until the netgear reboots on it's own, which happens ever few hours. Until then, both the router and modem seem to think that everything is working, they can talk to each other fine, but I just can't get out through the sat for some reason. I bought a Lynksys modem to replace the netgear a while back, but I've been too busy to do the switch. We have a major roof job coming up (everything down to the 4' on center rafter beams is going), which will mean we'll have open sky up above where the modem/router is installed, possibly for a couple days.... we're just hoping that it doesn't rain/snow or more than just the WB will get messed up.
I also think that the USB drive is the best and safest method to load the AZBox firmware. Better to play it safe and avoid any headaches. This is also the procedure (using the USB drive) that is recommended for emergency recovery if the AZBox locks up. ...
I was about to say this, but having never used the ethernet method, I wasn't sure if it would work for emergency recovery or not. I know that with my Coolsats, the default emergency recovery is via the RS232 serial, and even though you can use USB for routine firmware changes, you need RS232 for emergency recovery. I thought that it could be that the Azbox uses the USB as the default emergency recovery method, and that ethernet/internet might not work in those cases. I always think it's best to learn the emergency recovery method, whatever that is, because eventually you're going to need it.
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