Connection dropping / packet loss - 1MB cable through STB in Bournemouth

[o-dog]

Hi, got 1MB connection through STB. Is awfull. Had it for 3 months and get continual packet loss for large amounts of time until i reset the box.

I will post what i have emailed to NTL support, will give an overview of the problem::mad: quote: For the past 3 months i have had an absolutly s*** service from NTL. I thought BT were bad.... NTL make BT look amazing. Quite an amazing feat in my eyes.

Internet will stop working, but lights still flashing on my network card which indicate traffic. SNR on box is 35dB to 43dB, return signal 24dBmv so seemingly nominal.

Run packet capture on the machine and it seems packets get through ok, indeed there are many ARP requests.... to the same ip which is indicative of denial of service attack. I belive they are proxy arp across networks from 81.111.249.1.

Packet dump is below:

No. Time Source Destination Protocol
Info
1891 83.374893 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.137? Tell 80.5.236.1
1892 83.377394 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.149? Tell 80.5.236.1
1893 83.380091 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.139? Tell 80.5.236.1
1894 83.380119 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.152? Tell 80.5.236.1
1895 83.383182 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.153? Tell 80.5.236.1
1896 83.386712 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.143? Tell 80.5.236.1
1897 83.386767 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.147? Tell 80.5.236.1
1898 83.388279 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.144? Tell 80.5.236.1
1899 83.394815 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.161? Tell 80.5.236.1
1900 83.400682 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.166? Tell 80.5.236.1
1901 83.401307 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.156? Tell 80.5.236.1
1902 83.403342 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.159? Tell 80.5.236.1
1903 83.403424 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.158? Tell 80.5.236.1
1904 83.415282 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.165? Tell 80.5.236.1
1905 83.420367 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.140? Tell 80.5.236.1
1906 83.428774 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.168? Tell 80.5.236.1
1907 83.434265 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.169? Tell 80.5.236.1
1908 83.436931 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.171? Tell 80.5.236.1
1909 83.447573 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.170? Tell 80.5.236.1
1910 83.472817 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.180? Tell 80.5.236.1
1911 83.476572 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.182? Tell 80.5.236.1
1912 83.478823 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.184? Tell 80.5.236.1
1913 83.478847 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 81.96.228.157? Tell 81.96.228.254
1914 83.480888 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.179? Tell 80.5.236.1
1915 83.486561 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.189? Tell 80.5.236.1
1916 83.486588 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.188? Tell 80.5.236.1
1917 83.487180 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.178? Tell 80.5.236.1
1918 83.488394 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.191? Tell 80.5.236.1
1919 83.488980 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.185? Tell 80.5.236.1
1920 83.491176 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.186? Tell 80.5.236.1
1921 83.492702 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.183? Tell 80.5.236.1
1922 83.503502 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.192? Tell 80.5.236.1
1923 83.503973 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.190? Tell 80.5.236.1
1924 83.505187 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.193? Tell 80.5.236.1
1925 83.510467 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.196? Tell 80.5.236.1
1926 83.522486 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.199? Tell 80.5.236.1
1927 83.537199 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.201? Tell 80.5.236.1
1928 83.552861 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 81.100.102.97? Tell 81.100.102.1
1929 83.560488 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.243.233? Tell 80.5.243.1
1930 83.575841 81.111.249.1 Broadcast ARP
Who has 80.5.236.204? Tell 80.5.236.1

hostname of 80.5.236.1 is spr1-pool3-3-0-gw.cosh.broadband.ntl.com

Rang technical support around 7 times, had 2 STBs now, still same
symptons. Obviously signal to box is ok (TV is fine), and is a network malconfiguration. Surely you should be sensing rouge packets and stoping them?

I will give 5 working days for this to be resolved before i withdraw
payment for this joke of a service. Problems happen sure, and i understand that, however 3 f****** months is just a plain joke. I will be ringing technical support helpline tonight with words to these effect. NTL make BT look amazing, shame i am out of ADSL range Download Failed (1)

One thing i forgot to mention is if i unplug the STB and plug it back in then the service works again no problems... for anywhere between 5-30mins before stopping.

The last excuse was that some of the cabinets in my area (Bournemouth) have been vandalised. Thing is i do know a little bit about networks yet im getting fobbed off with this BS. if they were honest about stuff i would try to understand... trouble is they treat everyone as stupid. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Will do a trace route when it screws up again... which will probably be in 2 minutes. actually just had to reboot the box whilst writing this. NTL... jeez.

Is there anyone i can take this up with incase i get trouble with refunds? ie ofcom etc?

Any advice much appreciated.

Cheers,

Chris

[o-dog]

also forgot to mention in the STB log there are a lot of CM RANGING FAIL events (3 or 4 per day, every 4 hours or so). im not sure what that means?

[Chris W]

Have you phoned technical support regarding this problem?

[Ignition]

hostname of 80.5.236.1 is spr1-pool3-3-0-gw.cosh.broadband.ntl.com is indeed doing proxy ARP - as you would expect really, it's your default gateway! Nothing untoward about this at all, only very new uBR code doesn't ARP / proxy ARP.
I would suggest your issue is related to poor SNR either on your upstream personally or your local area - please log this with the TSB.

[BBKing]

And if you PM me your STB's mac address I'll take a look myself.

The arp is just the router that connects you to the internet finding out who's got which IP. Nothing to worry about, that's standard on broadcast segments with lots of clients (the router has multiple gateway IPs).

[o-dog]

thanks for all the replies guys. checked out diagnostics on the box:

there is a potential problem on one of the pages, it says IF AGC 71%. From my electronics work i know that is automatic gain control, and it perhaps has something to do with not being in range or near the limits?

It would certaily make sense if my upstream goes down. have done traceroutes when the link goes funny, and cant even get to the first hop!

BBKing: u mentioned my mac address... appreciate the help, what will you be looking at? I will go downstairs in a mo to get it, hopefully by the time i return the link will still be up :P

Well there must be many segments joined becasue there are a lot of arp packets going to the same address. I understand inner workings of ip and the routing process, i was supprised at the amount of chatter tbh, especially the amount to single ip addresses.

Spoke to tech support last night, they are aware of problems, 50% packet loss etc... has been going on for longer that 3 months apparently, that bloke last night was a lot better and more frank and informative than most i have spoken too.

No ETA on fix though which is really frustrating. He did mention cable modems are much better, and when the BH area code is removed from the fault list then he will sort me one out (at the moment they will bounce the request becasue there is a known fault). Bear in mind though even though there was not fault listed (it has been listed and unlisted in the past 3 months) the problem still remains. The bloke said they have had problems in southampton for years... i dont understand why it takes so long to sort it out, if you are a big company surely you should have the tech support and knowledge to sort these problems out???

Cheers

[o-dog]

Have you phoned technical support regarding this problem?lol, yes about 10 times and spent about 5 hours (and im not joking either) listening to that poxy woman telling me about 'broadband medic'... i wont let that **** software anywhere near my pc!

[steve_smith]

Halleluja! Someone else in the Bournemouth/Poole area having the same problems as me for the past 3 months.

Packet loss on small packets (like the Windows default ping size of 32 bytes) isn't too severe, about 3 out of every 100 on a good day (mind you, should be zero). However, send bigger packets (such as 1000 bytes) and it shoots up to somewhere between 30 and 50%

What does this mean? FTP upload is a slow painful experience, as is sending large emails (both prone to total failure, and even when working, slower than dialup by some magnitude).

After much complaining, an NTL engineer (who I think was supposed to be a network specialist) came out last Monday and pulled my config to pieces (checked the cables, tried swapping out the modem), because NTL were not aware of any problems in my area and couldn't understand why I was having trouble... GRRRRRRR! Lo and behold he got a phone call half way through the visit from someone to tell him was he aware that there was a known area problem on our segment of the network.

He said he would go off an help them track it down and would be back in touch. For the next couple of days, the connection went up and down a lot as if someone was working on it. Since then, it settled back down in to the usual poor (but often consistent) level of service, and I haven't heard anything from NTL. So I guess they gave up trying to fix it.

When there is a known problem like this, for the sake of the customers, they should really be in a position to throw more manpower at it to get it fixed. I don't mind waiting a few weeks to get something working properly, but we're talking about problems since May!

Steve.

[o-dog]

Steve, how long have you been with NTL? I get the impression it has been on far longer than 3 months.

What is your postcode? I'm BH12, apparently a number of cabinets are funny... apparently been 'vandalised'. Tech support sat night was best spoken to in a long while, even gave me a direct line to get him on which makes me feel a lot better and perhaps there is some hope.

Internet has been good today... has been really quite useable when it works (ping of 16 in games which is nothing to be snubbed at). Just wish it was like that all the time.

Oh and another thing... noticed the area has been upgraded apparently to 1.5MB. Done a few downloads today and max speed was 125kB/s, before i used to get 118kB/s... bit of a joke in my eyes, i was expecting around ~170kB/s.

Shame im out of adsl range, they do 2MB for 34 squid now :(

Cheers,

Chris

[Chris W]

Oh and another thing... noticed the area has been upgraded apparently to 1.5MB. Done a few downloads today and max speed was 125kB/s, before i used to get 118kB/s... bit of a joke in my eyes, i was expecting around ~170kB/s.



STB users have not yet been upgraded.

[o-dog]

:O when is it likely to be monkey, any ideas?

Also wondering if it is possible if you could give me a bit more info on what is going on in BH12 area at the moment, im desperate to get the net working and really would like an ETA on a fix. If you could give info would be great, have to send you some beers in the post :)

[Chris W]

Well my address is... :p:

The upgrade for STBs will be when everyone (in the area i gather) who is on the 1mb speed has had their pace box swapped for a samsung. I have had rumours that this will be October but nothing i am saying is official ;)

Also, it is worth bearing in mind that the speeds will not be upgraded until the hardware in the area can deal with it.

The problems in the Poole/Bournemouth/Southamptons are fairly major network issues, due to the original network that was installed.

If you send me some account details (pid, serial number from stb smart card or account number etc) I will be able to have a closer look at your connection and see if there are any individual issues that will make the problem worse.

[steve_smith]

Steve, how long have you been with NTL? I get the impression it has been on far longer than 3 months.

What is your postcode? I'm BH12, apparently a number of cabinets are funny... apparently been 'vandalised'. Tech support sat night was best spoken to in a long while, even gave me a direct line to get him on which makes me feel a lot better and perhaps there is some hope.
Chris,

Snap, we're in BH12 too.

The impression I got is that central tech. support often are very helpful, but the local arrangements seem to be a shambles (ie. they asked this specialist engineer to come out and pull my config to pieces when they already knew there was an area problem that was almost certainly causing the problem!). Also, I notice that our problems never appear on the service status page. And, I have lost count the number of times tech support have arranged for an engineer to call, and then nobody ever turned up or phoned.

Been with NTL for a long time now (over a year), and I honestly have to say that I can't remember problems like this when I was first a customer. I'm sure I had no problem uploading things at one time, and certainly never lost the connection altogether. Problems seemed to start this year. In my non-technical opinion, NTL have signed up a lot of new customers on the network in this area during the last 12 months, and the upload can't cope with the traffic being pushed down it. Download has never been a problem for me.

We can apparently get ADSL in our part of BH12, but only the lower speed connection (512k with no guarantee of what the upload speed would be). I'm not willing to go through all the expense and hassle of signing up on that basis, especially since I'd like more than the 750k connection I'm currently on.

I had a direct number to a lady in customer services, who although very sympathetic and helpful, hasn't really moved forward towards resolving the problem.

The guy who came out to see me last week seemed surprised that they were only now out and about "on the street" trying to track down the fault in the local area when it had apparently been ongoing for months. But he did promise he would call again when the issues had been solved.

Steve.

[Graham M]

Hmm Im in the BH14 area and haven't had any major problems recently at all. Sometimes the cable box drops connection or freezes but that's easily remidied albeit a little annoying.

[steve_smith]

Hmm Im in the BH14 area and haven't had any major problems recently at all. Sometimes the cable box drops connection or freezes but that's easily remidied albeit a little annoying.
Hi,

According to the engineer that called at my house last week, only certain segments of the network in each area are affected.

I guess you are in a working segment :-)

Steve,