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New VM Business service - 350Mb
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Old 11-01-2018, 22:08   #106
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

The full fix isn't just around the Hitron firmware. While that is part of it, the network end of the GRE tunnel terminates on equipment that also needed firmware updates I gather.

It is a combination of these things that contribute to the fix. As part of testing my GRE endpoint was moved to a trial area within the VMB network and even on the old Hitron firmware this resulted in a great improvement. So this could well be related to the fix and pave the way for the Hitron firmware to go beyond the trial.

Current performance:-


Last edited by ccarmock; 11-01-2018 at 22:13.
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Old 19-01-2018, 22:01   #107
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

The firmware trial has now been closed and next step to proceed with roll out.
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Old 06-03-2018, 17:26   #108
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

I assume there has been updates by now but the service is just as bad now as it was 6 months ago. Still getting sub 30Mb/s on many of our connections
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Old 07-03-2018, 21:51   #109
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

Quote:
Originally Posted by pcfarrar View Post
I assume there has been updates by now but the service is just as bad now as it was 6 months ago. Still getting sub 30Mb/s on many of our connections
The new Firmware is rolling out in batches - what version do you have?
Since the change I've had very good performance.
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Old 09-03-2018, 14:07   #110
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

Quote:
Originally Posted by ccarmock View Post
The new Firmware is rolling out in batches - what version do you have?
Since the change I've had very good performance.
Software version 4.5.10.173-UPC on the hitron.

---------- Post added at 13:07 ---------- Previous post was at 11:21 ----------

Looks like the GRE endpoint is down. None of our Voom connections throughout the North West are working and all saying they can't connect to the GRE endpoint.
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Old 09-03-2018, 14:45   #111
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

That is the correct and latest firmware required for the performance fix.
I assume you have restarted the Hitrons? if so this sounds like an infrastructure fault for VM. I am in Surrey - the GRE tunnel is up and running here, so maybe a regional fault.
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Old 09-03-2018, 15:14   #112
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

Quote:
Originally Posted by ccarmock View Post
That is the correct and latest firmware required for the performance fix.
I assume you have restarted the Hitrons? if so this sounds like an infrastructure fault for VM. I am in Surrey - the GRE tunnel is up and running here, so maybe a regional fault.

Yes most of our sites are around Manchester so it must have been a regional issue. They all just came back online about an hour ago.

Running a speedtest I'm currently getting 170 Mbps, which I guess is an improvement.
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Old 10-03-2018, 15:30   #113
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

in Manchester my self and had really bad connectivity issues so had to have the latest firmware rolled back
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Old 12-03-2018, 14:05   #114
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

We had the same outage on Friday and it looks like a larger network issue than anything to do with the Hitron itself. The connection recovered without intervention from us shortly after lunchtime (after about 2 hours loss of service).

Since we had the new firmware (a few weeks) the speedtests are fast and the Thinkbroadband graphs show only small amounts of packet loss when the connection is loaded.

There are still serieus issues though which seem to be specific to routing issues where we pop out from the tunnel into VM's backbone (which seems to be in Manchester).

What we can see is that certain websites either timeout (and get reset from the remote end) or take forever to respond.

Some of the worst websites I found are VM's own. This seems to be a routing issue in their network. See the traceroutes and ping test below. Anyone else seem this, before I attempt to report this to faults?

---

C:\Users\abc>tracert www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk

Tracing route to ssl.www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk.c.footprint.net [8.247.6.189]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms xx.xx-xx-xx.static.virginmediabusiness.co.uk [xx.xx.xx.xx]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 16 ms 18 ms 56 ms perr-core-2b-ae16-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.138.249]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 28 ms 18 ms 17 ms brnt-ic-1-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.254.42.198]
7 19 ms 24 ms 23 ms m686-mp2.cvx1-b.lis.dial.ntli.net [62.254.42.174]
8 23 ms 18 ms 21 ms 213.46.174.110
9 27 ms 30 ms 28 ms ae-1-51.ear3.london2.level3.net [4.69.143.198]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

C:\Users\abc>ping www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk

Pinging ssl.www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk.c.footprint.net [8.247.6.189] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 8.247.6.189:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Users\abc>ping www.virginmedia.com

Pinging www.virginmedia.com [213.105.9.24] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 213.105.9.24:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Users\abc>
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Old 12-03-2018, 16:24   #115
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

Hi APS, I've run the same traces from our network, which is separate from Virgin Medias... From Level 3 the trace does exactly the same thing, also the Virgin Media web-sites don't respond to pings.

My hunch is that you're experiencing an MTU issue, have you tried lowering this on your computer?

What happens when you run this command from a windows command prompt?
ping -f -l 1472 bbc.co.uk
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Old 12-03-2018, 17:05   #116
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

When I do this it fails as follows:

C:\Temp>ping -f -l 1472 bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.64.81] with 1472 bytes of data:
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Ping statistics for 151.101.64.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

After experimentation I can found that only if I set the packet size to 1272 or less does the ping work, e.g.

C:\Temp>ping -f -l 1272 bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81] with 1272 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=1272 time=27ms TTL=54
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=1272 time=22ms TTL=54
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=1272 time=23ms TTL=54
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=1272 time=26ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 151.101.0.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 24ms

I checked the MTU size on our router, which is set to 1460 and then on my PC, which reports:

C:\Temp>netsh interface ipv4 show subinterface

MTU MediaSenseState Bytes In Bytes Out Interface
------ --------------- --------- --------- -------------
4294967295 1 0 1243690 Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1
1300 1 14060178541 12688986132 Ethernet

So it seems the PC is already set to a relatively low value of 1300 (I am not sure why it may be some CISCO VPN software I run occasionally).

Interestingly since my last post the VirginMediaBusiness website is now accessible (and fast with no changes at our end). The tracert is still lengthy though.

I still cannot access the standard Virginmedia.com website.
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Old 12-03-2018, 17:27   #117
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

Hi Aps, it looks like your maximum MTU is 1300 (1272 + header of 28).

Usually your router would clamp the TCP MSS or fragment the packets (when PMTUD fails to work), however it doesn't look like this is working correctly currently.
Can you edit the MTU within the superhub? That may however cause more issues if the tunnel is before where the MTU is set, but I'd assume it's on the LAN ports?

Alternatively if you alter the MTU on your machines to 1300, you should find the internet starts working again.

Last edited by kev445; 12-03-2018 at 17:30.
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Old 12-03-2018, 18:40   #118
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

I think you missed one detail in my message above and that is my PC is already set to an MTU of 1300 bytes which is why the ping fails until I go below a packet size of 1272. The router is set to a higher level but a value of 1460 I was told (a while ago) should work best for the GRE tunnel. As the PC has a smaller MTU than the router and it is quite small I do not think any changes to it will have much effect.

I also pointed out that 95% or more of websites work quite well with no delays or timeouts. It is only a few and now notably www.virginmedia.com which I cannot connect to. It would seem strange if the MTU setting only affected some websites?
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Old 12-03-2018, 21:02   #119
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

Let’s assume for a moment that the Virgin Media web-sites are working... From your trace route you provided, they look similar to mine.

My best educated guess is that they have an MTU greater than your PC’s interface, thus for example they are sending your MTU packets of for example 1500... Either your PC or router is then responding to send a smaller packet by PMTUD, however as they are set not to respond to ICMP, they aren’t listening, so they send the same packet size again!

Set the MTU either as 1500 on both your router and PC, or the next largest allowable. I have a hunch that could resolve your issue...
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Old 15-03-2018, 08:41   #120
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Re: New VM Business service - 350Mb

I tried those tricks and it made no difference. There are certain websites that take forever to access or timeout (not this one). As I mentioned before many Virginmedia sites are the worst and this one "http://community.virginmedia.com/" never responds via the Hitron/fixed IP connection.

Interestingly I can access the same sites on my home VM connection, but like kev445 I can also see that this is despite the fact that traceroutes to many VM sites go through 60+ hops and never succeed.

I will be doing further tests later today from a laptop to take our own router out of the equation, before I call in with a fault report.
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