Thread: Hathway Modem PC LED Indicator

I have a Hathway 256 kbps connection using cable Modem. The modem is Scientific Atlanta. There is PC LED indicator on the MODEM which is supposed to blink continuously when you are connected to the Internet (atleast thats what the engineer told me at the time of installation. He told that only if this LED keeps on blinking it means that you are utilising the full bandwidth capacity)
When installation was done, the light was not blinking. So the Engineer switched off the Windows firewall and the light started blinking again.
After that, when I restarted the system the light was not blinking and i observed that the speeds are quite low as compared to the previous instance when lights were blinking.

I am using Kaspersky Anti Virus. Not sure whether this is blocking. But please let me know is there any truth in this PC LED thing?

That LED will blink if there is any Internet traffic communication(if you do surfing). Sometimes your LED keeps glowing even when you dont do any surfing, at that situation your system softwares, say Antivirus or other, might be contacting their remote server to download patches or so.

So what your engineer told is false (i dont kno whether you communicated it properly to us). You should not assume that you are utilising Full bandwidth just by seeing LED blink.

LED blink shows that there is some internet traffic flow in the modem thats all nothing else.

If you want to make sure how much speed you are using, enable some 3/4 big file size downloads and parellely go to speedtest.net and check for bandwidth.

What you are referring is the Data Send/Receive LED.
They blink continuously when surfing or downloading or even when a system software is downloading patches.
I am asking about the PC LED, this sometimes does not blink at all even while surfing

I didnt read it properly, thanks for pinpointing it

In general, PC LED implies that your modem is able to communicate with your PC. It doesnt mean anything w.r.t bandwidth.

You can check your bandwidth speed in Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

Can you specify your modem model?

I will sincerely advise to move away from Hathway - they are quite unreliable. Switch to BSNL or Airtel, if possible.