Minute by minute sync loss/gain

[jacobstone]

Some guy called me from Telkom's "Testing Centre" today. Thought it was weird that they work on Sundays. He said he tested my line remotely and nothing's wrong so they'll be sending out a technician. Every time they remind me of the call-out charge if no fault is found despite my reminding them that the fault is intermittent.

I think I'll print out my router log and show it to the techie just so she can see it is actually happening. I'm going to try and convince him to just replace my old 3 prong wallboxes cos I really think that is causing it.

Hamstah - Not sure how to get your router to sync at a lower speed, that's done pretty automatically. Netgear DG834's run Linux and you can telnet into them (if debug mode is on) to make advanced configuration changes but I wouldn't recommend it, you could render your router useless

Perhaps someone that was experiencing sync losses but has since been able to rectify the problem could comment in this thread? What was causing it, how was it resolved, etc?

 

[pronutro]

No joy

hi again,

my saga continues, and I await Telkom's call tomorrow morning.
the router (Billion BiPac 7300G) has not reconnected during the weekend, so I am guessing that Telkom are still clueless on this one.

By the way, does anyone know if any of the following settings on the ADSL router may cause connection dropouts...?:

- wrong MTU setting
- "PPPoE Relay" setting - what is that anyway?
- auto sending of email on WAN IP change - could possibly cause the exchange to hiccup because it sends a mail as soon as the ISP gives it a new IP...? maybe??

Stabbing in the dark here guys - really I am going insane and grey at the same time.
If i get a resolution you will all hear of it!!!

Thanks for all the advice thus far.

 

[Hamstah]

"Thank you for holding. All our service consultants are still busy. Your call will be answered as soon as a service consultant is available"

 

[pip]

"Thank you for holding. All our service consultants are still busy. Your call will be answered as soon as a service consultant is available"

When you end up in therapy and are trying to explain it all to your shrink, you might take this MP3 to said shrink on your iPod:
http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=55993

 

[jacobstone]

hi again,

By the way, does anyone know if any of the following settings on the ADSL router may cause connection dropouts...?:

- wrong MTU setting
- "PPPoE Relay" setting - what is that anyway?
- auto sending of email on WAN IP change - could possibly cause the exchange to hiccup because it sends a mail as soon as the ISP gives it a new IP...? maybe??

I'm not sure about pppoe relay and I strongly doubt the sending of email could cause it, but yes having the wrong MTU setting can definitely cause sync losses. For PPPoE (what we use in SA) it should be on 1492, and your router probably is. Apparently one can try lowering the MTU until you find stability but only in extreme cases, I don't think it should be necessary, Telkom should be able to sort your problem out. 1500 is the largest value for MTU to function properly on an ethernet network.

As far as I understand it, MTU is your Maximum Transmission Unit, which is the maximum amount of data that your router can safely send in a frame before waiting for acknowledgement from the other end. Lowering it simply causes more acknowledgements. But there are specific values you have to lower it to if doing so which you should be able to google. I say forget it, if it's 1492 then it's correct and Telkom must sort out your sync losses.

 

[booswig]

I am trying to get hold of telkom technicians to try and get cable so that I can replace my cable myself ...

 

[jacobstone]

Well Telkom were just here and they replaced both the wallboxes in my house with the newer RJ-11 types. I had the medieval 3-prong boxes with RJ-11 converters.

Someone from the call-centre called afterwards to ask what had been done and if they can close the call so I told them to keep it open until Friday cos I'm sure if the problem is not sorted out I will have another sync loss by then.

Will see how it goes, my line stats at the moment are:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 384 kbps 128 kbps
Line Attenuation 15 db 3.5 db
Noise Margin 31 db 27 db

 

[pronutro]

Continued..

Hope that sorts it out Jacobstone...!

Not so lucky here.

Thought I had a breakthru today, figured out that when the modem is set to "always on connection" and i unplugged the phoneline to simulate a sync loss, the device would freeze up - no ping replies and could not get into it via a web browser.
it also would not attempt to re-sync when i plugged the cable back in.

i had this same behaviour with a different router, different brand (Microcom) on the same line before i decided to change to Billion.

so i got clever and set it to "connect on demand" with a 999 minute timeout -set this way the modem would not freeze up if i unplugged the cable and it re-synced & connected ok when the phoneline was plugged back in.

thought i had it sorted... now i see that its offline again, since about 20:50. hoping in desperation that there is a power outage or something else causing the modem to have disconnected... i really was hopeful on this.

anbody ever seen a router freeze up like this?
just to be sure, i changed it onto a different UPS today, changed the phone cable, even ran it off the red "clean power" plugs in case spikes were getting thru the UPS. put in a brand new microfilter too.

telkom have loaned me a test unit (5102 - which is based on Billion anyway)... i have set that up with all the same settings so i will plug it in tomorrow and watch with baited breath.

oy vey i am going grey.

 

[Hamstah]

Celebrate with me! It's my one week anniversary of telkom sitting on their behinds doing stuff all about my problem! Hooray!!

 

[jacobstone]

Ah sorry to hear you guys are still having hassles. I think mine is sorted now after replacing my two wallboxes. I mean it might be to early to say - it's only had about 20 hours uptime, but what I've noticed to be different is that my line stats do not fluctuate at all. The attenuation and noise margin values used to change from time to time by a couple of db. Ever since replacing the wallboxes they've kept the same values. So it basically just seems as if the line is much more stable.

If it holds till Friday I'll let Telkom close the call.

 

[pronutro]

Progress..?

Hi again all,

Some hopeful news here...

Since my last post I have not changed anything onsite - somehow when the ADSL modem is set to "connect on demand" with a 999 minute timeout, it manages to re-sync successfully when the IP's are refreshed.

ADSL Modem uptime (without a power cycle) is 1 day, 21 hours and 2 minutes.

Weird how the "always on" connection can have sync issues - I have never seen this before on an ADSL connection... unless Telkom secretly did something on the exchange and did not tell me...!

Will keep u all posted.

 

[jacobstone]

pronutro - what kind of router are you using? Perhaps you need a firmware update?

 

[pronutro]

router

Billion BiPac 7300G - got the latest firmware I can find on their site...

 

[Hamstah]

Telkom finally came around yesterday (day 8) and at first, without coming to my house, I was assured that my problem was fixed, despite the fact that it was not. So I told the guy to come to my house to see the problem for himself, which he did. He first (as all trusting telkom technicians do) accused me of having an incorrect setup and demanded to check that all my phones had microfilters and that my router did not have one. Once he had found this to be the case, he went down to my exchange, swapped me to a different port, and now I have ADSL again

 

[jacobstone]

he went down to my exchange, swapped me to a different port, and now I have ADSL again

Haha, man, what a joke!

Cool though, glad you're sorted out. My router hasn't had a sync loss now for 66 hours so definitely fixed up this side. Just cos of a couple of stupid wallboxes!

So for the rest of you forumites - ADSL sync losses CAN be sorted out, don't just accept that your router disconnects intermittently, give Telkom HELL about it!