Crystal Web ADSL performance feedback thread Part 3...

[rph72]

Second hop is usually the exchange areas. Who is the line management with?

CW Support advised as follows:

I have picked up a lost carrier error you will need to contact telkom and ask them to do a port reset. After receiving confirmation that the port reset is complete you will need to power cycle the router.

Line is with Telkom.

 

[Bryn]

I ordered both of those on Thursday. Expecting it by next Friday

Geez. From where? Kazakhstan?

 

[Sinbad]

Geez. From where? Kazakhstan?

Latvia.
Supplier out of stock, expecting consignment on Monday. Then 4 day courier...

 

[Anakha56]

So I have an interesting problem that had the tech support guy at CW confused and quite frankly has me confused as well. So what better way to get to the bottom of the issue than ask on the forum and see what other people think .

Last night while streaming some entertainment everything slowed down to a halt and the buffering kicked in. Now this has been going on for a few days and I was finally curious enough to investigate. I switched on my PC and started testing with testmy.net and lo and behold, I was getting half my line speed of 2mbps. So I scheduled the test to run every 5 minutes 5 times and except for the last interval it was all pretty much 2mbps every run. I should mention that on the second run I switched off the Wifi to eliminate phones and tablets and on the third run disconnected all lan cables so just my PC was accessing the Internet. The results did not improve until the 5th run.

So I contacted support who, after running WinMTR tests, could not find an issue. My line is syncing at 5mbps and all tests from their end shows everything working, and sure enough, from about 19:30 to 19:50 I had full line speed again and then at about 19:55 it halved itself. I tried doing a standard http download from Nvidia and I was seeing the same result, download speeds of ~150-200 kbps. I tried an HTTPS download with the same result. I mentioned this to the support tech who replied that downloads are not an effective measure of line speed because of various reasons. I pointed out that while I agree it is not reliable my speed should get close to the full line speed which it is not, it is consistently on average about half my line speed. I then went one step further to eliminate international traffic issues and did a 16mb download from here: http://www.saix.net/cgi-bin/speed_test_servers.pl and I saw the same results, half my line speed on download. At this point the tech said it would need to be escalated because the problem is not making sense, from CW side no shaping is being applied and the line tests were perfect.

This morning? Full line speed as if the issue did not happen. Does anyone have any ideas? My only thought is that the Exchange was actively shaping my line but how or why eludes me...

 

[Bryn]

So I have an interesting problem that had the tech support guy at CW confused and quite frankly has me confused as well. So what better way to get to the bottom of the issue than ask on the forum and see what other people think .

Last night while streaming some entertainment everything slowed down to a halt and the buffering kicked in. Now this has been going on for a few days and I was finally curious enough to investigate. I switched on my PC and started testing with testmy.net and lo and behold, I was getting half my line speed of 2mbps. So I scheduled the test to run every 5 minutes 5 times and except for the last interval it was all pretty much 2mbps every run. I should mention that on the second run I switched off the Wifi to eliminate phones and tablets and on the third run disconnected all lan cables so just my PC was accessing the Internet. The results did not improve until the 5th run.

So I contacted support who, after running WinMTR tests, could not find an issue. My line is syncing at 5mbps and all tests from their end shows everything working, and sure enough, from about 19:30 to 19:50 I had full line speed again and then at about 19:55 it halved itself. I tried doing a standard http download from Nvidia and I was seeing the same result, download speeds of ~150-200 kbps. I tried an HTTPS download with the same result. I mentioned this to the support tech who replied that downloads are not an effective measure of line speed because of various reasons. I pointed out that while I agree it is not reliable my speed should get close to the full line speed which it is not, it is consistently on average about half my line speed. I then went one step further to eliminate international traffic issues and did a 16mb download from here: http://www.saix.net/cgi-bin/speed_test_servers.pl and I saw the same results, half my line speed on download. At this point the tech said it would need to be escalated because the problem is not making sense, from CW side no shaping is being applied and the line tests were perfect.

This morning? Full line speed as if the issue did not happen. Does anyone have any ideas? My only thought is that the Exchange was actively shaping my line but how or why eludes me...

If you're uncapped, have you checked if someone else is using your connection? Concurrent connections on uncapped should halve the speed. And CW users just had all their passwords leaked.

 

[new_in_za2]

My only thought is that the Exchange was actively shaping my line but how or why eludes me...

Telkom are piss poor at managing their exchanges, and once one becomes congested, Telkom will deny the fact for as long as possible before finally maybe fixing it, if you're lucky.

However, if it is an exchange issue, it would show up on your traceroute tests, as exchange congestion also causes higher latency and/or packet loss.

I lived with a congested exchange for about a year, so I hope for you that that is not the problem.

 

[Anakha56]

How would I check if someone else is using my connection? And yes uncapped. This morning I updated my router details so it will be interesting to see if the issue happens again tonight.

 

[Anakha56]

Telkom are piss poor at managing their exchanges, and once one becomes congested, Telkom will deny the fact for as long as possible before finally maybe fixing it, if you're lucky.

However, if it is an exchange issue, it would show up on your traceroute tests, as exchange congestion also causes higher latency and/or packet loss.

I lived with a congested exchange for about a year, so I hope for you that that is not the problem.

Our Exchange was upgraded a couple years ago due to congestion so I really don't think it is that. And as you mentioned it would have shown up on the other tests. I like the concurrent usage idea...

 

[Sinbad]

Our Exchange was upgraded a couple years ago due to congestion so I really don't think it is that. And as you mentioned it would have shown up on the other tests. I like the concurrent usage idea...

Support can tell you what numbers your account was used from.

 

[Rohan]

Having some speed and high latency problems today as well, never had any problems till after I did the password today.
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms Tenda.Home [10.0.0.2]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 236 ms 98 ms 208 ms cdsl2-rba-vl2766-ipc.ip.isnet.net [196.38.73.86]
4 * * 93 ms 196.38.73.85
5 * * 96 ms cdsl2-rba-vl150.ip.isnet.net [196.38.73.9]
6 104 ms 95 ms 97 ms core1-pkl-tg0-7-0-0.ip.isnet.net [168.209.1.162]
7 105 ms 90 ms 98 ms pr2-pkl-xe-2-2-0.ip.isnet.net [168.209.1.179]
8 98 ms 97 ms 98 ms 72.14.205.16
9 96 ms 103 ms 89 ms 72.14.239.129
10 94 ms 100 ms 86 ms jnb01s08-in-f3.1e100.net [216.58.223.35]

 

[maxum]

Please post your bank account details then. I will gladly set up debit orders to empty it out.

Banks offer debit order protection. New debit orders don't go off accounts unless the user allows it. You'd succeed at annoying me, but nothing more.

With regards to banking details, I wouldn't be surprised if mine, yours and millions of other South Africans have already had that data stolen from us. Our major banks and retailers have been targets since forever.
If they have been compromised, they wouldn't come clean about it.

I'm annoyed that CW has been compromised and that I need to change my adsl account details.
But, I'm also grateful for their transparency. It's a stance not taken by pretty much anyone.

 

[Mephisto_Helix]

Still no new deets ...... guess it's support time

 

[wingnut771]

How would I check if someone else is using my connection? And yes uncapped. This morning I updated my router details so it will be interesting to see if the issue happens again tonight.

Check here, you'll see the phone number connecting:

http://users.isdsl.net/

 

[wingnut771]

Support can tell you what numbers your account was used from.

and yet support were stumped as to the cause of the slowness, surely they would have picked up this during their investigation.

 

[Anakha56]

Thank you wingnut771 for the link. If it happens again that will be my first checkpoint.

 

[wingnut771]

Thank you wingnut771 for the link. If it happens again that will be my first checkpoint.

You're welcome

 

[requiem]

International on CV Vuma fibre has just died.

 

[Bryn]

Thank you wingnut771 for the link. If it happens again that will be my first checkpoint.

No need to wait. If there's a problem you want it dealt with soon as possible. Just check your usage stats for the day in question. You'll see if an extra line was ever in use.

 

[Grumpy Old Man]

Anyone else struggling to get connected? Using the new password that I got yesterday and suddenly it does not work anymore.

 

[crackersa]

If it's the exchange, why all the other hops normal?

Cause something at that hop is bad. Probably congestion.

First hop is your router

Second hop is either an exchange or dslam