Timeout-tastic

[AxeSlash]

Hey guys. New to the forum, got directed here from thinkbroadband.co.uk. I have a wee problem, I'm hoping someone may be able to sort me out here - this looks like a place full of knowledgable guys.

OK...for a few weeks now I've been getting loadsa timeouts. When left alone, the BB stays connected fine, no problems. If you start downloading anything, after a while it conks out and dies. The only way to get it back is to power on/off the cable modem. I've heard (on forums around t' internet) that it could be either someone else using the same IP (!) or multi-thread applications that do this...but I'm struggling to believe that because I've seen it die while downloading a single file in Firefox.

Below are the results of some investigations I've done based on advice/info I've picked up from around the net. I'm not particularly net-savvy in terms of the technicalities, but I have a basic understand of IPs etc.


Here's some info:

AMD Sempron 2800 PC running Windoze XP
Zonealarm Firewall
Antivir
Firefox

Webstar DPX100 modem
Oldish but reliable Ethernet card

ISP used to be Blueyonder for a few years before the rebranding. Had no problems during that era.
Birmingham area, postcode B23; Perry Barr UBR01 I believe.

Virgin's site says nowt about any maintenance in this area (bar some email maintenance going on tonight) in the past two weeks.

When it's down, I can't get any connection on anything - email, web, IRC, P2P, nowt. Regardless of browser/program used.

Powering the modem off/on seems to restore service for a while.
Unplugging and replugging the coax into the modem seems to restore it as well.

My computer’s IP (82.36.xxx.xx), 127.0.0.1 (loopback), and 192.168.100.1 (the modem itself) respond fine to ping when service is down, yet no web hosts (e.g. google.co.uk) do. Tracert fails at the first hurdle when trying to get to any web hosts.

The modem's info page (http://192.168.100.1/) IS available when service is out.

Disabling/reenabling the ethernet card does nowt.
IP will not renew when service is out.

Modem's info page doesn't seem to report anything out of the ordinary (I'll post the full page info when it next conks out); but the log page shows this during an outage (outage occurred at approx 21:34):

2007-06-07 21:40:21 error BPI FLASH: The Mfg CA certificate not found!
2007-06-07 21:40:15 error BPI FLASH: The Mfg CA certificate not found!
2007-06-07 21:39:43 error BPI FLASH: The Mfg CA certificate not found!
2007-06-07 21:39:11 error BPI FLASH: The Mfg CA certificate not found!
2007-06-07 21:38:48 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:38:48 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:36:10 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:36:10 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:35:51 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:35:51 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:34:21 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:34:21 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:32:55 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms
2007-06-07 21:32:55 information Got a map with the new UCD change count, and changed upstream parms


Can anyone shed any light? I'm thinking it's something upstream of all my gear due to the modem responding fine even when I have no connection.

I just want some opinions to make sure I ain't doing owt wrong before I go charging into VM's customer support with all guns blazing (which I will likely do anyway with some legal-speak about traffic management and all that fiasco). From the sounds of things, VM's customer support leaves something to be desired anyway, which is why I've tried to nail all of these possible "solutions" on the head before they suggest some daft stuff like "it's your firewall".

I'd rather steer clear of the lengthy phone bills as well if I can help it. If it comes to it, I might open the phone call with "are you aware there is a problem with the UBR in my area?" or something to that effect rather than "my int3rnEt doesn't werk!!1!!1112". And if they ain't got a clue what I mean by that I might just hang up and try again. Hopefully after a few rings I might get someone decent. Maybe I'm being overly harsh, but there's some good horror stories about VM's customer service "techies" out there.

If they fail to sort it out within a few weeks I'll be off to Be*; can anyone advise me the most painless way to achieve that?

Cheers in advance guys.

[MovedGoalPosts]

:welcome: to Cable Forum :tu:

The first thing I'd suggest is that you do call Virgin Media. Persistent failures of the connection isn't normal. It could be a result of many things.

Traffic shaping does not totally prevent acces, it just slows the speed down. You should thus be able to continue browsing, email and the like.

I'm assuming you do not have any form of router or multiple computers. If you do, reduce back to one computer only, directly connected to the modem, with nothing else connected to the modem when you call VM. Inevitably you'll get nowhere if you mention the word router or network.

Let the VM support bod do the diagnosis, even if that is a tedious painful process. Just because you have picked up many ideas over the net doesn't mean you have the answer. Only if they decide there is nothing wrong is it worth posing awkward questions. Most are reading from a computer script and can only follow that.

[AxeSlash]

I have no router. Just PC's Ethernet card -> Cable Modem (Webstar DPX100 for info).

Here's some stats from the modem:

Downstream Channel
The data shown in the table below provides information about the signal coming from the network to your cable modem.

Downstream Status
Operational

Channel ID
4

Downstream Frequency
331250000 Hz

Modulation
QAM256

Bit Rate
4096000 bps

Power Level
1.88 dBmV

Signal to Noise Ratio
32 dB

Upstream Channel
The data shown in the table below provides information about the signal being transmitted to the network from your cable modem.

Upstream Status
Operational

Channel ID
4

Upstream Frequency
37500000 Hz

Bit Rate
384000 bps

Power Level
42.50 dBmV


Are these reasonable levels? Anything amiss there?

[r00t]

192.168.100.1/gscan.htm
What is the starting frequency?

[Cytrax]

this is your problem right here

Downstream Frequency
331250000 Hz
click on this http://192.168.100.1/gscan.cgi?freq=0

Once you have clicked it - it should say set sucessful, if it doesnt then pull the power lead out of the modem and try again after it powers up..
this will/should reset your freq to 331000000

the DPX100 have this freq issue

[r00t]

:blush: damn it I missed that :P:

[AxeSlash]

Cytrax, that seems to have sorted out my slow download speeds; just gotta see if it stays stable now (it's doing well so far).

Thanks a lot for your help, it's much appreciated.

People who just come outta the blue with the knowledge and say "this is your problem, try this" and it works are awesome ;)

Cheers.

[AxeSlash]

Update: yeah, totally working now, no timeouts.

Thanks guys.

[wearerayner]

People who just come outta the blue with the knowledge and say "this is your problem, try this" and it works are awesome ;)

Cheers.

Agreed, Bashed my head against a brick wall for a week about modem crashes, engineer comes to replace my VM tv box and he can't tell me what's wrong. VM tell me we'll send you a router, that'll sort it. Turns out that it's my modem drifting off frequency. And the guy who told me what it is told me how to fix it in a 2 line post!!