National Broadband Outage

[scurlaruntings]

Originally Posted by Richy99

it doesnt sync like an adsl connection, its a config file that tells it the speed it operates at

O i c.. Right so the only option is to do a broadband speed test..Do you know any software that can monitor throughput?

[Richy99]

i use dumeter which shows the connection speed and the amount downloaded, handy little app

[scurlaruntings]

Cheers for the headsup.Im aware of DUmeter and have used it before in the past.I think its on NTL/Virgins website.

[DonSter87]

Well for the past few weeks my HD Virgin box has had a online flashing light and at the same time my internet goes down aswell as On Demand, Interactive, And even HD.....

It's been happening for a few weeks and that don't bother me much because i'm doing my A Levels 90% of the time but i really need access to the internet lately because of my studying and my dad do because he likes to sell stuff on Ebay...

But ever since Sunday i have only seen my internet on for 30minutes and now it is mid-week.

BTW I live in Oxford.

[deed02392]

Originally Posted by scurlaruntings

Cheers for the headsup.Im aware of DUmeter and have used it before in the past.I think its on NTL/Virgins website.

I use Bandwidth Monitor and have never used anything else. I would try DUMeter but I doubt there can be much of a difference.

[LSainsbury]

Originally Posted by deed02392

Yes, this really is the main idea of this forum surely, that most of the registrars actually use the forum only when they experiecne problems, rather than to stick around and do what? Help others? These people come here to get help, and if they could help others, I'm sure they would be here much longer

Well - with:

Members: 36,571, Threads: 69,318, Posts: 1,098,022

...CF must be doing something right!

This forum is not just for Virgin Media issues, we have covered lots of topics on here!

[ntl.wotcha]

All sounds a bit fishy to me. DHCP leases are generally held for 24 hours at least, and even if all the leases were deleted server side, the clients would not start to renew for 12 hours (assuming 24hour leasetime) and would not expire at all until 24 hours. Unless the DHCP mechanisms are totally different to typical DHCP implementation.

My modem actually lost sync (according to the logs) not DHCP lease.

[BBKing]

All sounds a bit fishy to me. DHCP leases are generally held for 24 hours at least, and even if all the leases were deleted server side, the clients would not start to renew for 12 hours (assuming 24hour leasetime) and would not expire at all until 24 hours. Unless the DHCP mechanisms are totally different to typical DHCP implementation.

Not in the least fishy. DHCP leases are seven days, the DHCP servers were fine, apart from being absolutely hammered, so the load on them had to be carefully nursed until they were back to full health. Once they were eased off a bit, nearly everyone should have got their lease back (I did in three minutes from going offline and never noticed). The slowness of DHCP response was a function of a) the nursing and b) the load.

What happened was that large numbers of modems lost sync nearly simultaneously. Everything else, like DHCP non-response, was a side-effect, not the cause.

[ibz2004]

Problem in derby area here

*My 2meg connection has been running at around 250kbs for around 10days
*If i reboot the modem sometimes it runs at 2meg for 10mins and then goes back down.
*The ethernet, U/S D/S lights are flashing. Sync & Ready are always on
*Its on a wireless network but same thing happens when plugged directly
into pc
*It is an NTL200 modem and iv not had any problems in 3yrs
*I tried reinstalling modem but cancelled set-up because i encountered the
error message:

Failed to ping 62.253.162.237, or 216.142.26.253.
Since your system was able to do a DHCP release/renew, you **DO** have raw connectivity (i.e. all your cables are connected and working), but your system is unable to PING these ip addresses in the outside world.
Error Code :9

im quite a novice on broadband tech help so any advice would be much appreciated.

i have a cousin living 5doors away on the same connection and he is not having any problems with download speed. NTL server status is stating that some customers may be experience a "loss of all Digital & Broadband services". Does the term "loss" almost include low connection speed because i havent totally lost the internet?

any help would be appreciated

[Uncle Peter]

Exactly what happened here. Sync came back pretty quickly so the modem was seeing the cmts ok but the ready light was flashing for a fair few minutes as it was struggling to get an address/lease (as seen in the log entries).

[popper]

Well im also a Network Engineer and have worked for ADSL resellers like Griffin ...

its nice to see all these new Engineers posting, perhaps we can get some more interesting tech threads going soon, if you all keep posting and not just reading....

Originally Posted by scurlaruntings

Because deregulation only dergulated the lines to allow other services over BT.

Agreed VM have there own equipment but im pretty sure they dont have there own exchanges.

You say they promise the speeds but iv dealt with umpteen VM customers including myself who have all complained about the speed.

I am precisely 532 metres from my exchange and my speed is supposed to be 20MB.

I get around 4MB.

Understood it could be dslam profile problem,line rentention,noise,burst interleaving or even as you say the copper wire running to my house that can only support a max of 2mb, but the bottom line is its not the 20MB Vm promised.

Im not saying there the worst ISP in the world by any stretch as there mostly reliable but since virgin have bought them out what was a stready NTL now seems to have more outages than is normal.

Big ISP`s are supposed to have multiple redundancies on there network to prevent this.

If i can do this for multi million pounds business`s why cant there own inhouse support? For the record 21CN if are fibre optic links.

Admittedly i dont think the links between the exchanges and the customers house wont be fibre optic.

Either way a mixture of both allows for far more capacity.Seeing as only the newer NTL modems can only offer 20MB max how is that going to keep up with a fibre link?

i put it down to the fact your from an ADSL background/domain so dont worry about it, but you seem to have placed the VM cable broadband in your DSL domain, if your on the VM 20Mbit/s package that explicitly puts you on a cable modem and so doesnt involve DLSAMS or distance from the exchange or any other DSL references....

funny enough iv never bothered to find out for sure if the whole UK VM cable networks are using fiber all the way to all the steet cabs, can anyone confirm it is or not? (im exC&W baguley ,NW).

that being the case it is , then its possible (not that VM would do it 100%) that they take 4 of the existing unused high grade installed twisted pair phone cable lines (that was newly installed alongside the cable coax around here by nynex) and fit a managed router in the cab, and cheap RJ45 fittings at both the street cab and the end user houses, then that way 100Mbit/s is easy to role out even 1gigbit if the fiber and kit allows.

so, ( i didnt bother to guess costing it up) it could stand up very well against a proposed DSL fiber if VM were to invest (they probably wont but the options there)probably a lot less than BT will need to invest.

OC VM are going Euro-DOCSIS (pre-2,0B)-3.0 from the head ends for now so 160Mbit/s download and 120Mbit/s upload is the MAX speced speeds for now.

"Seeing as only the newer NTL modems can only offer 20MB max ..."
the reason your current DOCSIS1.0 cable broadband modem is currently giving out 20Mbit/s MAX download 768Kbit/s upload is because the config file that gets loaded into it is restricting it to that speed ,its not its MAX limit, that would be 32Mbit/s download and around 8Mbit/s upload best case usable.

[r00t]

Hi popper, long time no speak mate

As you can see from the pic, anything after the node is coax. Hope this helps.

[popper]

Originally Posted by TimIgoe

Speed to Exchange doesn't matter with Virgin Cable.

It does matter with Virgin DSL, but if thats the case, you've signed up to an 'up to 8Mb' package, rather than a 20Mb package.

You can't have multiple redundancy all the way from end to end - short of laying 2 cables to every house, and 2 modems at every house

21CN is currently still using copper from the exchange to the home, its only an improvement of the infrastructure within BT.

well to be fair, you dont need 2 cables and 2 modems for the short distance to the street cab, and it wouldnt be a national outage if a cab line went titsup.

also the fact the current VM are in effect administering 3 seperate systems of old.

then whatever failed was more than likely a result of whatever new kit and controlling/management system software VM management has put in place to combine all these seperate networks, i suspected the shiny new DNS kit they were installing some months ago now....

---------- Post added at 19:00 ---------- Previous post was at 18:27 ----------

top man rOOt

am i reading that right, it looks like theres at most, a maximum 1000 feet length of coax between the fiber node and the street cab?.

if so, that makes it just over 3 times to far for standard generic rj45 networking kit/twisted pair , i suppose you could use a cheap inline repeater circuit to reach the node though for my idea perhaps.

[r00t]

Hence the need and use of amplifiers popper. Not like you to miss that, I'll get you some coffee

[popper]

yep i NEED COFFEE,BBIAB LOL.

---------- Post added at 20:24 ---------- Previous post was at 19:09 ----------

Originally Posted by scurlaruntings

Im aware of that.But the routing from the exchange to the dslam and then from the dslam and beyond is worked "how" on a cabled network..? I know the systems are vastly diffrent between an asynchronous method and cable but cable is still a subscriber line the same as ADSL.It will be interesting to know how the cable connections hop onto the internet and from what point..
.

a daft as it sounds, i just spent 30 minutes looking for an overview of the full DOCSIS cable network system for someone thats tech as you will be coming from a DSL background and i couldnt find one for you .

plenty of cable modem sites such as this one
http://www.cable-modems.org/links/
but nothing for the cable network infrastructure, very strange....