Internet doing Weird Things

[xBrynx]

I am posting this in the hopes of someone else experiencing the same issues I am and being able to perhaps help me solve them. I have been in several discussions of the past week already with the ever-helpful and assisting Charl from Telkom, via private message here.

The issues started about a week before the upgrades were done, so the beginning of the month.

At times my browsing just went dead, the router would remain connected, but all traffic would die. And all my chat applications (skype, mIRC) would disconnect, sometimes every 10-15 minutes.

This has continued for the past 3 weeks and I am still suffering with browsing dying at least 4 times an hour, for 3-5 minute periods. I have monitored the traffic and when it dies, it slows down first - it drops from about 70kb/s down to about 800 bytes a second, and crawls - then a minute or two later drops down to 0. In many cases a download will stop, but then resume when I pause and resume it.

What is very interesting, or rather very odd is that while my laptop (both wired or wireless) seems to suffer from the lack of traffic more so than my desktop pc. While they both often time out and traffic dies on both, there are times when it dies on the laptop but the PC is still running fine.

It is worth noting that despite now being on a 4mb line, I haven't seen download speeds exceed 230kb/s, the same as I had on 2mb basically. And that if I run a speed test, it tends to range anywhere from 0.60mb to 3.24mb depending on how the line is feeling at that time.

With my discussions with Telkom they have said:

- No signs of issues on the line.
- Good router stats for current speed
- DSLAM not overloaded but traffic is active


Router Stats:

Attenuation DOWN: 43db
SNR DOWN: 11db

Attenuation UP: 23db
SNR DOWN: 22db

Things I have tried:

• Using a different ISP (no change)
• Trying a different router (the other router seems to actually reset itself completely at intervals, which is very strange... Could be faulty, but was working fine before)
• Connecting as a bridged broadband connection with ethernet cable (no change)
• Pinging a DNS server with -t ; to force communication (just starts timing out when the line hiccups)

I'm sure there is probably a few things I may have forgotten, but will provide any information that is needed. I am beginning to pull my hair out over this and I have no faith in Telkom techs due to the past. Charl was able to resolve a previous 3 month long issue in a few minutes (where as 3 techs came out and weren't able to assist).

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated

 

[Grant]

What is very interesting, or rather very odd is that while my laptop (both wired or wireless) seems to suffer from the lack of traffic more so than my desktop pc. While they both often time out and traffic dies on both, there are times when it dies on the laptop but the PC is still running fine.

The fact that 2 different devices behave differently on the same adsl line makes me feel the problem is somewhere on your side - ie between where the line enters your property & your computers.
I was having odd slowdowns & it turned out to be a physical problem with telkom's cable coming into my property - cable was hanging on by a strand or 2 of copper cable as it entered the house.
Sometimes it was fine - sometimes not. Good or bad weather had no effect on the damaged cable oddly !
The router never lost / dropped the connection, but every now and then it would seem I was disconnected even though the correct lights were lit on the router.

 

[agentrfr]

Buy this doohicky and report back. If it works, then yay. If not, its only a couple hundred bucks, and you'll have a spare router

http://www.rebeltech.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=45_47&products_id=2893

Justification: This model router has one of the best dsl modems I've ever used. If you have ADSL issues with this router, issue is definitely not your side.

 

[lilggg]

Wow, I have/had the exact same issue. I would get 0 throughput for a few mins yet all tje lights stayed on in the router, also random packet loss mainly at night and worse when it rains.restarting the router resolved it everytime. Charl also managed to speed things up and I had 2 technicians come last week and found no issues, my noise margin is also around 11db. Today since 5pm my line dropped and syncs now and then for a few seconds. Evem bought a dlink router as I thought it might have been that. My noise margin is now -19db and all lights off on the router. So yea major issues that telkom can't find.

 

[xBrynx]

Thanks for the comments.

lilggg, I am 'glad' to hear that I'm not the only one who has suffered with this. I had previous similar problem a few months ago, where I too bought a new router after 2 of Telkom support staff told me over the phone that my line was fine and thus it had to be my router. So my router is only 3 months old, a TP-Link. I am skeptical of it being a router issue. Especially since it sometimes tends to relate to the time of the day. Early mornings, my line seems to be fastest.

This morning I am seeing 250kb/s (which is still below where 4mb should be, but it's a huge difference from the 5-15kb/s I've been getting). No browsing problems for 30 minutes this morning, which is also a change. Though I highly suspect that will change as the traffic load picks up. Will just have to see..

Perhaps, ask for your DSLAM port to be changed lilggg, if that hasn't been tried. It's a long shot, but it's what fixed my similar previous problem.

Probably Unrelated: Well that's interesting... I have an http download going, nothing big - 100mb or so. And as soon as the clock hit 08:00 my download dropped from 240kb/s to 30-40kb/s. I am with Openweb who say they do not throttle, but I'm also on a Gold account for better speeds. It is probably unrelated, but that seems like a huge amount of shaping, if it's just shaping - for an http download.