Forum Discussion

jford's avatar
jford
New Contributor
7 years ago

Secure Shell using PuTTY unstable

When I use PuTTY to log into my home computer (Linux) from a cox.net connection at my mother's house, it disconnects with no warning.

I connect to the internet through the built-in WIFI connection of my cable modem.

I have found that at the time it disconnects, my PC is also no longer able to ping yahoo.com or google.com. This inability to ping well known URLs indicates that the problem is at the network connection from my mother's house (cox), not the destination address for my ssh connection. Also, when I try to reconnect via ssh it will give a connection error. This error will persist until the ability to successfully ping resumes, which is sometimes immediate, sometimes taking a couple of minutes.

I'm using an ARRIS SBG6700-AC cable modem

  • Trikein's avatar
    Trikein
    Contributor III

    From a security standpoint, opening RDC to all IP's is crazy. It's one of the main ports worms scan for. I would start with Pingplotter on both sides to see when/where your having the issue and look at the gateway logs at that time. 

  • jford's avatar
    jford
    New Contributor

    Thanks for the info. Makes sense, given the intermittent nature of the disconnects. I think I can set up another wifi access point on the same router using 5Ghz. I'll check it out.

    BTW, I've already got sort of a work-around; access to my home Windows box directly without relying on PuTTY. It still disconnects, but reconnects and picks up where it left off much faster. (Set up another port-forwarding through my home router to the default RDC port). Hope it doesn't come back to byte me.

  • ChrisL's avatar
    ChrisL
    Former Moderator
    @jijawm

    Looking from this end the modem seem to be staying online OK but the logs show that all 2.4Ghz wifi channels are saturated with noise interference. If you're PuTTY connection is using the 2.4Ghz wifi to get to the desired machine I'd say that is likely the issue.

  • Trikein's avatar
    Trikein
    Contributor III

    What port are you using SSH? I think gateways block SSH because they use it for internal remote support., Buy a stand alone modem and router instead.