Network Disconnect Damage Control

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shogun

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For the record, I am officially tired of the disconnects that I experience using my Neotel Prime device. Unfortunately there is only so much that complaining will get me, so I decided to do something about it.

I share the connection (ICS) to a number of other PC's through a mikrotik router. When our Neotel connection dies, the connection itself stays connected, but traffic is non-existent and I can't ping anything. It's like the lights are on but nobody is home.

This means that I can't use the automatic re-dial feature of Windows for Dial up connections... as... well it doesn't actually disconnect. I need to remote into the machine, click disconnect, then click connect again.

So I decided to build a simple app to stop all this unnecessary time wasting. It basically dials the Neotel connection (or any dial up connection that you may be using - I tested it on my vodacom cellular phone today), and then it pings an address at whatever interval you'd like. If the ping fails a number of times in a row, then the connection is disconnected and connected again.

It means that you still loose internet... but it recovers pretty quickly.

Is this something that others would like to use?

I'm going to test it at the office tomorrow with our Neotel connection (using my cell at the moment to test). Seems to work well if I rip the cable out my phone and plug it back in:P If others want to try it, I don't mind putting up a compiled app with the code somewhere... it is written in C#.

I just want to get a feel for whether anyone else would find this useful.
 
Another solution is:
o) Set to automatic redial when lines dropped
o) In ICS settings, allow other computers to make a connection
o) Then set disconnect if idle for so many minutes. I got mine set to 10.

Then so long as you use a program that periodically uses the internet ( say e-mail checker), it should disconnect if the problem arises.
 
Why not just run your netlink straight from the Mikrotik RB and do the routing/sharing using the RB? I'm assuming the connection dialed runs PPPoE?

You can run a small script easily enough on an RB that can kill and re-establish the link if a gateway ping fails... Check out the Scripts section on the Mikrotik Wiki - some things there that might help. Also check out their forum. They're very helpful on there.

But the disconnects suck, still. :(
 
busker said:
Another solution is:
o) Set to automatic redial when lines dropped
Click to expand...

And I said:
This means that I can't use the automatic re-dial feature of Windows for Dial up connections... as... well it doesn't actually disconnect. I need to remote into the machine, click disconnect, then click connect again.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, my disconnects are not disconnects at all. The connection remains open, but there's no data transfer. This means I have to manually disconnect the connection, and then reconnect it again.

krigevr, i'm not sure if it's PPPoE. We're dialing our ADSL account via the Mikrotik... but I don't know if I can do the same for Neotel. To clarify... I have little to no Mikrotik experience. I've got a friend who knows a bit about it, and he's helped us set up the ADSL PPPoE.

Perhaps someone else here that has dialled Neotel via a Mikrotik?

Either way, I am testing my app today. It's working so far... but I haven't had a disconnect this morning yet:P

EDIT: busker, it appears I read your response incorrectly... you mention "disconnect if idle", which I missed. Apologies for that. I tried your suggestion though, but it hasn't worked for me so far. Also, 10 min is too long.
 
Last edited:
Yea, 10 minutes is way too long. I just set it last night. But I got it down at 1 minute now, and its working fine.

Im using Windows Server 2008, perhaps its the way the feature is implemented in this OS. But weird none the less.
 
I wonder how the disconnect when idle works... If there are requests... but no throughput, would that not still be considered active? Is idle when there are no requests or no traffic? Time to google.
 
I have the same problem but on a Neoflex device. And there I need to manually change from a wifi to ethernet connection and restart the router to get the connection back.

VERY frustrating
 
I think I need to start logging the disconnects. I had a large file to download, stuck it on yesterday at around 4:30. It's nearly done. Usually i'd get in and find it paused because of a broken connection. So far so good... but I feel I need a little more proof first (confirmed reconnect). Will let you know.
 
i would love software that can do this , as the suggestion above also doesnt work for me.
 
When i'm done testing, i'll post it up for you to download. So far it's going well.
 
shogun: Did you ever figure out how the 'disconnect when idle' works with your version of windows?

I'm running Server 2008, and I have been using 'disconnect when idle', to disconnect when idle for 1 minute. I have a while(1){ ping -n 1 196.25.1.1; sleep 30s } running in power shell (temporary solution until I have time for a better one). And I have noticed that my internet would automatically reconnect when it stops receiving data.
 
Busker... they're essentially the same solution. You are letting windows do the disconnect and then it would reconnect on further network activity (ping). In my app, I have code that does the disconnect/reconnect. The subtle difference is that in your code, you use the ping to keep the connection open / trigger the redial. I use it to test whether the connection is still open.

Seems like a decent approach either way. I might try your method too, although I don't know powershell... so i'll leave the ping coming from the app. The only issue is the one minute delay. I'd prefer to have it at around 5 seconds so that it's less noticeable for those browsing the web.

Have you had no issues with your approach? Seems tempting to try. I am running Windows server 2008 as well.

If it's working fine with you... then the only thing that would be useful for those without powershell would be an app that keeps a ping running to an IP address... or even one that pings several ip addresses so that you don't hit one too much, or get a false negative in case that site goes down for a bit.
 
The reason for running ping was that I don't have any program guaranteeing that data is coming in in less then a minute, so its really just a backup, in case my connection is idle for more then a minute, which in most cases isn't the case (Control signals from IM should happen about once a minute I'd guess. But yea, multiple IPs would be better.

The problem with going down below a minute is that sometimes the latency on Neotel fluctuates heavy, I've seen over 20seconds on a ping reply! but on the other hand, it is rare, and most the time it doesn't go above 10 seconds, so you could probably get away with 15 or 20 seconds.

If final year wasnt overloading me with work, I'd dig to do some experiments on solutions, finding best times and better solutions!
But since I started using this disconnect on idle, the problem hasnt been too much of a frustration.
 
well ill be trying the dovado router to see if i can keep my stuff going until neotel fixes it.
The router pings sites and if it finds no reply it will redail neotel ... can also reboot itself after 3 failed dail attempts.

will report back.
 
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