Connection Dropping - Help Please (long)

[sheppy99]

Hi,
I have been having intermittent connection dropping problems for several weeks now and have tried in vain to get a fix from NTL. So far my Surfboard has been swapped for a NTL 100, the engineer has adjusted the gain in the cabinet and confirmed the received signal is good, in desperation I've plugged a TV into the cable outlet and the TV picture is good with no interference or co-channel interference. My received signal levels are 7.2dBmV with SNR of 31.0dB, upstream power is 37.50dBmV and the modem has the firmware update with the NTL logo. I have Microsoft ISA 2004 as a firewall and have allowed DHCP packets through as well as ping's. ISA attempts to contact specified hosts on the internet every couple of minutes and sends me an email when they are down, I get several of these per day and can't get on the net / MSN drops often.
Any clues how I can persuade tech support that something isn't working or do I just have to give up and move to ADSL?

[Chris W]

:welcome:

When the connection drops, check the power levels and SNR then, do they change?

Does the cable modem lose the sync and rdy lights when the connection drops?

[sheppy99]

:welcome:

When the connection drops, check the power levels and SNR then, do they change?

Does the cable modem lose the sync and rdy lights when the connection drops?

Sync and ready lights stay on, it just dropped out several times and I had to restart the modem each time to restore service. Signal levels were S/N 31dBmV, Rx Power 6.0dB, Transmit Power 34dBmV.

Earlier I did a traceroute from elsewhere on the internet and when the system was down I couldn't ping anything from my end including what I think is my UBR.

Any idea how I can make the nice people in Bangalore or whereever they are send me an engineer who knows what he is doing???

[carlingman]

Sync and ready lights stay on, it just dropped out several times and I had to restart the modem each time to restore service. Signal levels were S/N 31dBmV, Rx Power 6.0dB, Transmit Power 34dBmV.

Earlier I did a traceroute from elsewhere on the internet and when the system was down I couldn't ping anything from my end including what I think is my UBR.

Any idea how I can make the nice people in Bangalore or whereever they are send me an engineer who knows what he is doing???


HI sheppy,

SNR of 31 is fine.

Also downstream of of 6 is within the range.

The upstream although within the range at 34 seems a little low would expect to see it in the 40s and above.

Any other errors from the config tab on the diagnostics ???

:D

[sheppy99]

HI sheppy,

SNR of 31 is fine.

Also downstream of of 6 is within the range.

The upstream although within the range at 34 seems a little low would expect to see it in the 40s and above.

Any other errors from the config tab on the diagnostics ???

:D

No errors at all, in fact after a record of working for 1 1/2 hours yesterday after my last call to them it packed up and refused to work overnight, I had to change my MAC Address this morning before it would work again. Thats a first. Wonder if I have 2 faults now :confused:

[sheppy99]

No errors at all, in fact after a record of working for 1 1/2 hours yesterday after my last call to them it packed up and refused to work overnight, I had to change my MAC Address this morning before it would work again. Thats a first. Wonder if I have 2 faults now :confused:

Update, it packed up again, usual thing lights fine but no data transfer, noticed the odd rubbish packet was still arriving in the firewall logs but no connectvity, rebooted modem and it worked for about 5 minutes before packing up again. Surely this is a cabinet problem???? Oh yes wasted another 30 minutes or so on the phone to india but apparently I'm getting a call from a level 2 tech, I'll not hold my breath.

[Saneboy13]

Hi Sheppy,

Can you PM me your modem MAC address, I will try and have a look on the system to see what's happening for you

[sheppy99]

Hi Sheppy,

Can you PM me your modem MAC address, I will try and have a look on the system to see what's happening for you

Done, thanks for taking a look, this really is an odd one!! My money goes on a piece of kit dieing in the heat as it always packs up when its hot. The last engineer who arrived told me someone else around the corner had the same problem...

[Saneboy13]

SheppyCan you just confirm the last 2 digits of your MAC address for me please? In your PM it came out with an emoticon for the last but one digit

[sheppy99]

SheppyCan you just confirm the last 2 digits of your MAC address for me please? In your PM it came out with an emoticon for the last but one digit
D6

[Saneboy13]

Sheppy,

Thank's for that. The trace went through fine, but I will pm you over something I have spotted. It's a little concerning, and I don't want it broadcast here.

Don't worry, it's nothing that can not be sorted out *fingers crossed*

[Saneboy13]

Sheppy,

I have just pm'd you because I have spotted something I need clarifacation with

[sheppy99]

Cheers for that, was eating lunch, off out briefly now but will try and log in from elsewhere.

[sheppy99]

Saneboy13 has very kindly taken a look at my modem and can't see anything wrong. As its an intermittent problem I have, can anyone suggest how I can get an engineer over here when it fails again? Its been working flawlessly since 13:00, something of a record recently.

[Saneboy13]

Hi Sheppy,

I have just sent you some other suggestions to look at and try. If you fail with those, can you tell me what area you live in and when I get in to work tomorrow I will see if I can contact an engineer myself and get his views and a bit more info. on what they have tried/done themselves

[sheppy99]

Hi Sheppy,

I have just sent you some other suggestions to look at and try. If you fail with those, can you tell me what area you live in and when I get in to work tomorrow I will see if I can contact an engineer myself and get his views and a bit more info. on what they have tried/done themselves
Ta v much, you've got mail :cool:

[Saneboy13]

Top Bananna;),

Forgot to mention in my reply to you, have you tried doing a tracert? that would give an indication of where there might be a problem. The other option is to ping a web site, but do something like BBC, then pick something State side as it will give a better indication of what we are looking at

[sheppy99]

Top Bananna;),

Forgot to mention in my reply to you, have you tried doing a tracert? that would give an indication of where there might be a problem. The other option is to ping a web site, but do something like BBC, then pick something State side as it will give a better indication of what we are looking at
When it fails I only get a reply from my firewall, and thats using an ip address, if I use a hostname its usually host not found. Will try this again next time it fails when I'm sat here.

[darrencftse]

Hi

Im having the same problem with my NTL broadband, i have been losing connecting for about 2 months or so now, when the connection drops, the rdy light would be flashing and then disappear, after a while it comes back, sometimes the sync light would go with it but not as often.

I've had 4 engineers out to try to sort this problem out, each visit they would test the signal and they say it was fine and they can't do anything because the problem isn't happening right now, and i have to call them again when it drops.

Please help, i don't want to have another engineer out just to say my signal is fine when it isn't.

[Saneboy13]

Hi

Im having the same problem with my NTL broadband, i have been losing connecting for about 2 months or so now, when the connection drops, the rdy light would be flashing and then disappear, after a while it comes back, sometimes the sync light would go with it but not as often.

I've had 4 engineers out to try to sort this problem out, each visit they would test the signal and they say it was fine and they can't do anything because the problem isn't happening right now, and i have to call them again when it drops.

Please help, i don't want to have another engineer out just to say my signal is fine when it isn't.

What levels are they saying are alright? downstream? because the problem that you have there looks like an upstream issue. Sync light is for down stream, Rdy light is for upstream! you need to get them back out and check the return path I say

[darrencftse]

What levels are they saying are alright? downstream? because the problem that you have there looks like an upstream issue. Sync light is for down stream, Rdy light is for upstream! you need to get them back out and check the return path I say

I can't remember what they said what levels were alright, i know they just checked the statue through the browser and through their machine and all 4 engineers said the information they were seeing was very good.

Currently the status im recieving are

Upstream Transmit Power Level : 47.0 dBmVUpstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/secUpstream Frequency : 28800000 HzUpstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

Downstream Lock : LockedDownstream Frequency : 402750000 HzDownstream Modulation : QAM64Downstream Interleave Depth : 32Downstream Receive Power Level : -2.4 dBmVDownstream SNR : 29.9 dB

Im experiencing this problem when im playing online games, surfing the net, or downloading stuff, but if im lucky it won't drop, but i have seen it drop when im not even doing anything mentioned above, so if i do call another engineer out what do i say to make him see that there is a problem with my connection, because so far each engineer that has come out, the connection hasn't dropped infront of them.

[Saneboy13]

That shouldn't make any difference at all. Just because it doesn't happen when they are there, doesn't mean it's not happening at all.

We use a system down here called Cheetah! I believe most areas should have it in place. When we got to a customers house we send back carries to a guy monitoring the system and he tells us what levels he is seeing them at. Then it's a case of breaking things down and sending the carriers back from different points of the cable run. That way it tells us where the fault lies, be it internally, at the ETB (fromt of the house) the cab or further back into the system

[jaycee]

sheppy99 - are you losing sync or rdy lights when your connection dies ? How are you connecting the modem?

[sheppy99]

sheppy99 - are you losing sync or rdy lights when your connection dies ? How are you connecting the modem?
The lights stay on, and I still get incoming data packets. The modem is directly connected to the incoming co-ax with nothing else on the line.

[sheppy99]

Further update, it very much looks like I have level problems on the U/S, in the last 5 minutes I've seen various levels between 36.5 & 48dbmv together with a few dropouts!!!

[None^]

Hi all,

I am also getting connection dropouts.

This has been happening the last two weeks or so, and lasts for about 5-10 seconds. I do not lose any lights on the modem and i do not use a router. I thought it was initially routing to gameservers... but i lose connection to any gameserver i play on. When it goes i lose MSN Messenger, IRC, everything.

I phoned tech support (UK) two weeks ago, the chap was most helpful and suggested that i wait until the following Tuesday when "NTL's configs are usually updated". This did not resolve the issue.

I phoned tech support yesterday and got through to India. It was kind of hard getting it through to the guy that i had a problem, as he kept telling me that everything is ok. I kept telling him "it is intermittent"... He just told me to phone back again as soon as i get the dropout :rolleyes:

I also quoted the diagnostics page and asked him about my Downstream Receive Power Level : -8.79 dBmv and that i had been reading the info on this forum.

He told me that the modem configuration site is "not an NTL site" and that "i should not be able to access it" :confused:


Anyways my problem remains, dropouts still with no apparent fix as yet :dozey:

[SNAKEKIL]

If you look at forums, there is a lot of posts about connections etc lag and poor up and down, iam in the bn area and ive had alot of proms connecting to the usa. It would be nice to know what the hell is going on:mad:

[sheppy99]

Interesting that as i was at a customers who was with Plusnet ADSL yesterday and that was v slow to the US. As in 8k/s on an unused 2 meg connection. Wonder whether the hurricane has anything to do with it?

[None^]

Had another dropout and duly phoned tech support as requested.

Spoke to a very helpful tech support guy from India... Max... Said my modem is rebooting itself more than it should (should it reboot itself??), engineer coming out Monday PM.

Hopefully something will be found, i'll post as soon as the engineer has done his stuff :)

[SNAKEKIL]

See post on....Network problems Tonight .... its getting good.

[Saneboy13]

I have to say that I am getting a little concerned about so many people having connection problems:dozey:. Are you all in the same area or not? If you are all pretty much local then that's a good thing as it narrows down the possible cause, if you are not, then I think I better quit the company;). NOT:p:.

Aside from Sheppy's problem and a customer I spent an hour with yesterday, only to be told by them "Oh I forgot to mention, I have a Trojan on my PC", there is no other job I would really want to do.

Sheppy's problem is that of one that he just hasn't had the right person call round. But I have my fingers crossed that the guys in his area will call me first to discuss what I believe is the problem. Fingers crossed they will call me first, but I am sure Sheppy will insist they ring me when they arrive

[SNAKEKIL]

It looks like it is all over the place, iam in the BN area.:confused:

[Saneboy13]

It looks like it is all over the place, iam in the BN area.:confused:

BN area? could you elaborate a little for me please..

[None^]

CH64 here :dunce:

I note you are in Swansea Saneboy13... I take it there is still tech support in the UK or was Manchester CS right in telling me there is none at all in the UK now :confused:

[SNAKEKIL]

BN64 area, What i been is if you look in some of the fourm posts ie..

Network problems Tonight ?

[Saneboy13]

CH64 here :dunce:

I note you are in Swansea Saneboy13... I take it there is still tech support in the UK or was Manchester CS right in telling me there is none at all in the UK now :confused:

There is still support in Swansea. But getting through to them, you will have more chance of finding hen's teeth

[jvn]

now that saneboy13 sounds like a very nice man, will start giving NTL a bad name if he carries on being so helpful like that!

[None^]

NTL are the best internet provider i have had.

The only thing that pushes me away a little at the mo is the non-UK tech support. I understand it is necessary in terms of cost etc, but at the end of the day, i wonder if this element does them any good at all in the popularity stakes :dozey:

[theman]

Hi Sheppy,

I have just sent you some other suggestions to look at and try. If you fail with those, can you tell me what area you live in and when I get in to work tomorrow I will see if I can contact an engineer myself and get his views and a bit more info. on what they have tried/done themselves
__________________

i find a certain time of day my connection drops and i cant get e.mail.

[sheppy99]

Its been several days since I started this thread so I thought I'd update it on progress.
The v helpful Saneboy13 has diagnosed a network fault and a non network eng has been out for a chat last monday. He then passed the fault on to network support who to my knowledge haven't done anything. I still get many dropouts per day and there's no end in sight. :-( Anybody know how I can move things forward? Its been going on for months....

[tweetiepooh]

I seem to be suffering a similar problem in SO22 though I connect via Samsung STB on 3Mb service.

Tests from ntl techies show some odd things on the STB including a problem with Popular Values SNMP Poll. Spent long time on support line to India went through the mill trying to explain that the PC is dual boot and I am not always in XP so it's not likely to be a virus/trojan. Also that most service is OK most of the time. These problems only started about 2 weeks ago. That I was advised to tell them .... and can this be passed to 2nd/3rd line please. CS tell me that they can ping things fine, that there is no packet loss and the problem is because games servers squeeze their packets. More likely is that games use UDP (connectionless) and a constant stream of data and so loss in bits of it are noticeable. TCP will retry and other streamed stuff like radio is buffered and maybe you get a click or short pause. Annoying but not critical.

Symptoms:
Games drop out eg Halo.
Downloads can be a tad slow.
Browsing can be a little jerky - delay in starting to receive page.

Setup
= wire - wireless

PC===switch===bridge-----router====STB
wireless is about 6m line of site with a thin partition wall between.

long term ping test to router - 0% loss (various packet sizes).
wireless is Belkin and router is PreN MIMO device. WAP on etc.
also tried with wire from switch to router and dropping switch.

Occassionally when I see internet problems I will also see sync light on STB flashing. Don't seem to totally loose all service though.

Eventually had an engineer out who "turned down power" on STB/network (I wasn't there). This has not helped.

Elwell's BB speed tool shows pings mostly OK, sometimes on some servers slow but not a problem. Download speeds vary from 512k to 2.8M. Packet loss between 0 and 62% depending on servers. Usually between 0 and 4% but any packet loss is a problem.

Nuria shows downloads 1.5-2.8M, upload 240-280k, gaming 0.000 to 0.350, can't remember browsing speed but there is some variation there.

I did a ping to the gateway address, shown in router, and saw some packet loss with larger packets (ping -s 1472).

Also getting help from Belkin as I upped the firmware on both bridge and router but that doesn't seem to be the issue.

Unwilling to bypass router entirely as not want to expose PC to net and I can't see how that would help as it has been fine with it in place so far and nothing has changed. No new phones, microwaves etc.

[sheppy99]

Yeehaa, just spoke to an ntl tech on the phone from the UK, he could see my modem wasn't communicating properly with the UBR and a network tech is booked for tomorrow morning - RESULT!!!!!!!

[SNAKEKIL]

Iam still haveing the same thing in the BN64area.. whould be nice to know way we are all getting the same fault.. or is it a network fault :rolleyes:

[daviopolo]

Its the same problem as me did it work well over the recent bank holiday ? I'm convinced they are sharing connections out somehow. Where I work we use palmtops on a network with a web-based comms screen, we have to give each device its id and if you accidently give 2 devices the same id they work but compete against each other, when one is on the other is off and vice versa. Also if you send a message to one it can go to both but mostly they take it in turns to be online. The devices work pretty much the same way as assigning ip addresses.
Its an ntl issue not your modem.

[None^]

Just an update to my connection dropouts....


Engineer called Monday.. Ran a test on the modem and found the power level fluctuating. He upped it to the maximum it could be. He said after doing that there was nothing he could physically do, he said it seems LOTS of people are having these dropout issues at the mo, particularly gamers... I was thinking that this could be my problem.

But...

Still getting the same 5 second dropouts :erm:

Phoned Tech Support and got through to Swansea ( Yayyy they DO exist :cool: ) who looked in-depth at my PC side.... Nothing found. Another engineer is booked for Friday PM.

I'll post again if anything is found ;)

[sheppy99]

Anybody know what a Rav Palsh or something like that module is? Apparently one of those has been replaced that feeds my modem according to a note that was put through my letterbox.

[Saneboy13]

Anybody know what a Rav Palsh or something like that module is? Apparently one of those has been replaced that feeds my modem according to a note that was put through my letterbox.

:p: I think it might translate to a "Reverse Path Amplifier"

[sheppy99]

:p: I think it might translate to a "Reverse Path Amplifier"
Yes that'd screw it :)

[Saneboy13]

Yes that'd screw it :)

Hey, if you can not understand a fellow Englishman's wording you would have no chance with a good old Welsh word like:- llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch;)

[None^]

Engineer due between 2pm and 4pm - didn't turn up, jobs took longer than anticipated apparently....

Another booking on Tuesday PM, let's see if they make it this time.....

:dozey:

[sheppy99]

Hey, if you can not understand a fellow Englishman's wording you would have no chance with a good old Welsh word like:- llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch;)
A good point well made :p:

[Shaun]

Hey, if you can not understand a fellow Englishman's wording you would have no chance with a good old Welsh word like:- llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch;)

You mean "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave":D

[tweetiepooh]

But a real taff would say LLanfairPG wouldn't they.

Pronouncing that name is (or used to be) a prerequiset for election to president of the union of students at UCW Aberystwyth.