ADSL frequent disconnects

Hi guys

We have received numerous complaints about frequent ADSL disconnects (network side). We are looking into this and it will be great if you can indicate if you experienced this problem over the last few weeks.

If you did and it was fixed, please give details…

Regards,

RPM

Our connection started dropping after we upgraded from 384kbps to 4mbps a few months ago.

Since then its been bumpy, and usually at night between 19:00 and 21:00 (when most ppl come online to browse maybe?) we get insane disconnects on the modem side. We use PPoE so it's not any particular ISP, we use many different ones.

Basically Telkom technicians have been out to our premises at least three times, telling us our line is perfect. We have 100% speed during the day and on weekends. The Telkom guy tried to fix us by slowing our connection to 2mbps, but this didn't work.

Nowadays we just expect the disconnects and try to do other things when they occur. We have lost faith in Telkom fixing this problem and anxiously await a new provider who care more about their customers.

I have a problem, it's not so much that my connection "drops", but it becomes completely unusable, site fail to load, I can't get email, the connection is as good as dead, but I do have a PPPoE connection and my line does sync.

I have realised when this happens, I just briefly for the rest of the day, or for an hour or two switch to WebAfrica prepaid.

TelkomSA is my primary ISP and this is the connection is which is used for most of the most of the month, so this means my problem is related to Telkom Internet in particular.

Also, the old problem of being on SAIX and sites "forget" me is stilll there, the only fix is using cache.saix.net port:8080 for sites to remember me

I just upgraded to 4Mb from 384k a few weeks ago and I lose sync almost every night.

Cloud said:

Since then its been bumpy, and usually at night between 19:00 and 21:00 (when most ppl come online to browse maybe?) we get insane disconnects on the modem side.

Click to expand...

Might not be related, but worth checking out: I had something similar and it was driving me nuts, usually in the mornings 8:00-9:00 and at night 18:00-22:00 the modem would constantly lose sync and disconnect. Eventually traced it to other appliances drawing heavy current, such as the stove, kettle, heaters, etc. Modem would sync fine, turn on the heater, sync lost, turn off the heater, sync fine. I tried some of the advice from fellow forum members, but could never solve the problem. Eventually I just bought another modem, problem solved. Haven't had sync issues since then.

qinglung said:

Might not be related, but worth checking out: I had something similar and it was driving me nuts, usually in the mornings 8:00-9:00 and at night 18:00-22:00 the modem would constantly lose sync and disconnect. Eventually traced it to other appliances drawing heavy current, such as the stove, kettle, heaters, etc. Modem would sync fine, turn on the heater, sync lost, turn off the heater, sync fine. I tried some of the advice from fellow forum members, but could never solve the problem. Eventually I just bought another modem, problem solved. Haven't had sync issues since then.

Click to expand...

Have had the same problem for a couple of months.
Telkom techie came out and said the the line is 100%.

What modem did you get,qinglung?

Yesterday 08/05/2008:
Had Constant disconnects on my Telkom account about the whole day (from about 4AM till 3PM to be safe). According to my routesentry log (that I did not save ) it happened every 30 minutes on the dot - not a second too late/early!

When I got back home at about 3PM and started using the account, Everything worked like normal except for my International on my Sainet SAIX account that was a bit slow. Can't remember if I was disconnected again - will try and look for a log or something when I get back home later today.

I can pull the logs from my smoothie and filter everything out so that only the disconnects/reconnects show up.

Will be quite a lot - will do work on it this weekend.

Yesterday :


Logs for today only :


Regards

Libs

Rubberpigg said:

What modem did you get,qinglung?

Click to expand...

I see from a previous post about your modem synching problem that you a purchased a Billion.

An interesting read.

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?p=1631787#post1631787

Same here. Up and down although atm it is steady...

Problem has been with me for a while now...

This is also happening to us and it's irritating to say the least.

qinglung said:

Might not be related, but worth checking out: I had something similar and it was driving me nuts, usually in the mornings 8:00-9:00 and at night 18:00-22:00 the modem would constantly lose sync and disconnect. Eventually traced it to other appliances drawing heavy current, such as the stove, kettle, heaters, etc. Modem would sync fine, turn on the heater, sync lost, turn off the heater, sync fine. I tried some of the advice from fellow forum members, but could never solve the problem. Eventually I just bought another modem, problem solved. Haven't had sync issues since then.

Click to expand...

Thanx, I will have a look at some of the appliances in the house and maybe try and borrow a router from someone to test. We are using a Netgear 834DG atm.

I have just never heard of a router that "breaks" certain times of the day? But perhaps it has become more sensitive to fluctuations in electricity, which might be whats happening as people in the surrounding area start using more electricity?

Rubberpigg said:

I see from a previous post about your modem synching problem that you a purchased a Billion.

An interesting read.

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?p=1627787#post1627787

Click to expand...

Yeah, haven't had problems with the Billion so far. I still don't know if the other modem was just really sensitive or was damaged somehow, maybe lightning, which is probably more likely cause it worked fine for more than a year.

Over the past month, I have had many periods where ADSL synch becomes unstable or is lost for annoyingly lengthy periods.

Unfortunately, Telkom seems to be unable to deal with the situation because the fault is intermittant. So I report the problem, get a new case number. Within a day or so, they phone back when the connection is stable, and say it is resolved. And I say, no it is not resolved. The case should be kept open for a week or two to confirm that it is fixed. No, they can't do that. So they close the case. So the next time the connection becomes unstable, I have to phone in and go through the same rigmarole, all over again.

I've tried explaining the ridiculousness of this situation to the operator, only to be told, "I can't leave your case open if your line is working. If it keeps happening, eventually someone will look at the number of faults on your line, and realise something is wrong."

The main problems that there is with the frequent disconnects is as follows.

1. CRC errors
2. Line Attenuation and SNR margin

1. If you check in your router's config page there is a counter that measures the CRC errors that is coming into the router. Most routers can only handle a certain amount of these errors and will then "drop" the ADSL connection and then try to synch again in the attempt for a better connection. This can vary anything from 1 minute to 20 minutes to a day or more. TELKOM must come and fix the line.

This could be a result of interference from an external source like electric fencing close to the telephone pole. (We have had a few issues of these before where the pole and/or Electrical box in the street is not earthed properly.) Also faulty/old cabling can be a culprit of these errors. (One client's wires melted in his roof, dnt ask how, the router was still working but the errors was piling up. He got the cabling sorted out and then no more disconnects)

2. The lower the attenuation is the better (lower than 55dBi's)
The higher the SNR margin the better (higher than 10dBi's)

If the attenuation and SNR margin is not in spec then you will have synch loss. This could be either damaged cables/exchange, faulty ports on the exchange, to far from the exchange, exchanges getteing wet(pole and street), faulty/no filters/splitters on telephone line and the list goes on.

Hope this helps a little bit.

I had the same problem now for about 2 months. It would sometimes disconnect every 10 min.
I reported it again yesterday, they say they can see the diconnects and says the line is faulty. A tech will come out.

Let's hope it will be fixed.

I get dc all the time, it is very intermittent and i reported the problem a few times, but each time it works, then it does not. So telkom says the line is fine?

I checked the CRC errors on the status page of my router (telkom mega 105 wr) but i could not see anything.

Here are some logs i got from my router:

System Log:

2008:5:11:17:12 Packets Unchanged = 0
2008:5:11:17:12 Non-IP Packets Marked = 17
2008:5:11:17:12 Unclassified IP Packets Marked = 26
2008:5:11:17:12 Unclassified Non-IP Packets Marked= 293
2008:5:11:17:12 Unclassified Layer 2 Packets = 0
2008:5:11:17:13 PPPoE Exit Status = 1
2008:5:11:17:13 del_iptable_rules : ppp_name not intact
2008:5:11:17:13 PPPoE Send a Interface Delete Event Below
2008:5:11:17:13 System Call Error
2008:5:11:17:13 Couldn't get channel number: Transport endpoint is not connected
2008:5:11:17:13 Doing disconnect
2008:5:11:17:13 pppd 2.4.1 started by root, uid 0
2008:5:11:17:13 PPPoE Exit Status = 1
2008:5:11:17:13 del_iptable_rules : ppp_name not intact
2008:5:11:17:13 PPPoE Send a Interface Delete Event Below
2008:5:11:17:13 System Call Error
2008:5:11:17:13 Couldn't get channel number: Transport endpoint is not connected
2008:5:11:17:13 Doing disconnect
2008:5:11:17:13 pppd 2.4.1 started by root, uid 0
2008:5:11:17:14 PPPoE Exit Status = 1
2008:5:11:17:14 del_iptable_rules : ppp_name not intact
2008:5:11:17:14 PPPoE Send a Interface Delete Event Below
2008:5:11:17:14 System Call Error
2008:5:11:17:14 Couldn't get channel number: Transport endpoint is not connected
2008:5:11:17:14 Doing disconnect
2008:5:11:17:14 pppd 2.4.1 started by root, uid 0
2008:5:11:17:14 PPPoE Exit Status = 1
2008:5:11:17:14 del_iptable_rules : ppp_name not intact
2008:5:11:17:14 PPPoE Send a Interface Delete Event Below
2008:5:11:17:14 System Call Error
2008:5:11:17:14 Couldn't get channel number: Transport endpoint is not connected
2008:5:11:17:14 Doing disconnect

Network Statistics:

Transmit

Tx PDUs 47344
Tx Total Bytes 12294327
Tx Total Error Counts 0
Receive

Rx PDUs 51901
Rx Total Bytes 50040718
Rx Total Error Counts 208

Modem Status:


Connection Status Connected
Us Rate (Kbps) 128
Ds Rate (Kbps) 384
US Margin 13
DS Margin 17
Trained Modulation ADSL_G.dmt
LOS Errors 9
DS Line Attenuation 48
US Line Attenuation 24
Peak Cell Rate 301 cells per sec
CRC Rx Fast 90
CRC Tx Fast 34
CRC Rx Interleaved 0
CRC Tx Interleaved 0
Path Mode Fast Path
DSL Statistics

Near End F4 Loop Back Count 0
Near End F5 Loop Back Count 0

I hope that means something, thanks for any help

Having the same problem, didn't realise it was happening to others until I read this thread.

I use route sentry and thus have dial up connections running. Every now and then I would arrive at my PC to see a little popup window in my task bar telling me that 'X' dial up account is now connected. This meant that it had to have been disconnected to have been reconnected and display that popup.

I recently had my upload speed upgraded to 512 kbps (I have a 4meg line) and I thought that it might be a bit too much for my line to handle (especially since it was meant to snyc at 640 but i was just too far from the exchange for that) and thus it was causing my modem to reset all the time. I had not yet had the chance to see it happen in front of me though, I only saw the after affects/messages.

Just before this weekend I did catch it happening though (more than once in a short period of time as well). My modem stays synced (i.e. all the green lights are happy) but one of my dial up connections just drops (network side like RPM said). It then reconnects and everything works again.

About my setup:

- Netgear DG834G v2
- 2 Telkom SAIX Accounts running simultaneously on Route Sentry (one 3 gig international and a 1 gig international that I use as a local account as it has the 10gigs of local "promotion"

An interesting note is that both accounts don't necessarily go down at the exact same time, one may stay up while the other disconnects and Visa-Versa.

2 days ago everything crawled (<5KB/s). Speeds recovered, but since then I've had downstream errors. About 0.01% of all data coming in appears to be screwed. Router reports "Superframe errors" and "HEC errors".

Also router used to rate attainable speed at >9mbps. Now its down to 2.4mbps.

yesterday my ADSL and phone line completely dropped, today its back, and seems 100%, only im not syncing at 4 meg, rather at 640kbps, and constant de-syncs...

this is BS, and its obviously on telkoms side...