PPPoE No Response and Telkom's Response

recre8

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Location
Cape Town, WC
For the last year or so, I've been having problems with my ADSL at work. Line sync is pretty decent and we barely ever drop the connection, but since last year (round about the time Telkom installed the neighbourhood ISAM/MSAN) things started going downhill.

We have a Telkom line with nothing on it but the Billion 7300W router. The Billion connects its own session which is shared with the office. The router is set to PPPoE with passthrough since I occasionally dial my personal Afrihost account if a need a quick direct connection to the internet (I sometimes need need to test mobile devices that communicate with out software in a staging environment) or sometimes I just don't want to waste the office DSL account's bandwidth. For about a year now, I struggle to get PPPoE to connect from my PC or any other PC for that matter. I just get a "Error 651: The modem (or other connecting device) has reported an error" error. Sniffing the traffic with Wireshark revealed that a ton of PADI packets are sent, but no PADO is returned by the DSLAM. My suspicion was that the Billion had some kind of trouble, so I bought a different model Billion. I left the PPPoE connection window open, and it keeps retrying and usually somewhere during the day PPPoE starts working again and I get connected. Its like there are small windows of about 5 minutes throughout the day where PPPoE works. I then noticed something strange: whenever I do a port reset on Webafrica's control panel, the PPPoE magically works without issue for a few minutes.

Now, for the last week, my Billion drops line sync about once a day. It then syncs the DSL and then comes back with "No Response" for its own PPPoE connection. See the picture attached.

Capture.jpg

After anywhere between half and hour and half a day, the Billion finally manages to make a connection again, but it is as if there is no data flow through it. I can't resolve any hostnames, I even tried to do a nslookup using Google DNS as DNS server, but it still fails.

I have tried three different DSL routers, and both WebAfrica and Afrihost accounts, and finally gave up and logged a ticket. The Telkom technician phoned me very early one morning when there was no-one at the office yet, and I mentioned to him that I would suggest he swap out the port at the exchange and then come back. Now I get a call from the call center saying the technician suggest I try replacing my microfilter.
 
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ADSL statistics?

DSP Firmware Version DMT FwVer: 3.10.0.0_A, HwVer:TeF7_7.0
DMT Status Up
Operational Mode ADSL2+
Upstream 1021 kbps
Downstream 10240 kbps
SNR Margin (Upstream) 16.3 db
SNR Margin (Downstream) 27.5 db
Line Attenuation (Upstream) 5.7 db
Line Attenuation (Downstream) 4.6 db
 
The microfilter is only needed when you have a phone/fax/alarm sharing the same line. So whenever I have ADSL line sync issues, I remove all the filters and other telephonic devices (ie. phone/fax/alarm) so that its only the ADSL modem that is (directly) connected.

If the ADSL syncs just fine, but cannot establish a PPPoE connection, then its either an ISP or Telkom infrastructure related issue and not likely to be an ADSL modem/router issue.
Recently (over the past 2-3 months) Afrihost (MTN) has had quite a number of PPPoE authentication issues due to various reasons. WebAfrica (IS) isn't using MTN's infrastructure, so using it as an alternative to Afrihost is a good choice!

What you can try is to force the modem to G.DMT mode, which will lower the sync rate to 8Mbps down/1Mbps up (or perhaps even lower).

It is also critical that the modem is configured to use PPPoE VPI/VCI settings of 8/35 - like you had in the attached screenshot.
 
The microfilter is only needed when you have a phone/fax/alarm sharing the same line. So whenever I have ADSL line sync issues, I remove all the filters and other telephonic devices (ie. phone/fax/alarm) so that its only the ADSL modem that is (directly) connected.

If the ADSL syncs just fine, but cannot establish a PPPoE connection, then its either an ISP or Telkom infrastructure related issue and not likely to be an ADSL modem/router issue.
Recently (over the past 2-3 months) Afrihost (MTN) has had quite a number of PPPoE authentication issues due to various reasons. WebAfrica (IS) isn't using MTN's infrastructure, so using it as an alternative to Afrihost is a good choice!

What you can try is to force the modem to G.DMT mode, which will lower the sync rate to 8Mbps down/1Mbps up (or perhaps even lower).

It is also critical that the modem is configured to use PPPoE VPI/VCI settings of 8/35 - like you had in the attached screenshot.

I really stumped with this one. I'm trying to get Telkom to swap us to a different line port (I really have now tried every possible method I can think of to rule out problems on our side), and their BEST response to all of the evidence above is that a microfilter is not installed or not functional if it has been installed.

I'll be trying another DLink DSL router as soon I can get my hands on it, but the issue is erratic unfortunately. Will keep everyone posted.
 
Telkom technician came today after the fault was escalated to their DTAC department. Luckily the router was in it's "No Response" mode again today when he arrived. He phoned someone at the exchange who swapped out the port on that side and he went to the ISAM and swapped the port there as well and magically everything works perfectly now. PADO responses are being sent for every PADI packet and all PPPoE issues are resolved (for now!).
 
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