Re: VM on Watchdog
 

BT's timeout is specifically designed to not hang on even during a fast resync. There is no SRA.

With your own router and a properly adjusted timeout it will survive both a full modem reboot just fine. Never seen the DSLAM reboot so can't comment there...

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

I've been with NTL/VM for about 12 years now might even be longer...honestly I haven't had any real problems...Had a couple of things happen nothing major and they were quick the other month when Joy riders wiped the green box out...I had all my services back on in less than 3 days.

Even my BB 99% of the time I get anything from 80-100meg mostly 100meg all the time I can't really complain even had tivo about a year now again not had any problems.

I can't really say I had any problems when I was with sky...BT BB 6 year ago was utter crap they've deffo come a long way since them days.

PPl moan about the price of VM BB now go back to the days when it first came out I was paying £50 for the 1mb service....funny thing was I had AOL dialup at the time I contacted them to cancel my account and the guy on the other end of the phone said to me I will keep your account open for free for another month incase you want to come back because to be honest he said BroadBand is just a fad it wont last lol a bit in your face now eh lol

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

Whether they are designed to or not, they do hang on, others have witnessed the same. SRA is used and is what makes the on the fly resyncs so fast meaning the router can hang on. You can always tell a SRA event from a full reboot because the stats aren't reset and more often than not the PPPoE session is maintained, as a result the IPProfile doesn't update.

In the early days BT Retail used to force a resync in the early hours every day. All CPs can automate this, it's detailed in the SIN's, they stopped doing that though, I suppose too many people were complaining it didn't stay connected for more than a day.

I agree a long enough timout will survive a full modem reboot.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

and the connection, and openreach's DLM.

eg. if DLM decides the errors are too low (too good) it will force a resync on more agressive settings, there is flip flop instances posted on the net. Your line seems to have settled perfectly in the DLM neither too bad or too good threshold. Given when I had adsl I have a history of noise I am very concerned DLM is going to cause me serious issues. The backup plan is if DLM does keep discconecting me I will switch to the 40/10 product and hope that the buffer that gives keeps things stable. Since the line is rated at 65/20 then 40/10 should have a decent noise margin so interleaving etc. isnt needed.

So I think your post could be misleading, it changes ip every time the pppoe session drops. Other residential isp's arent this agressive but considering BT retail are extorniate on static ip charges I think they are been agressive to make the residential service hard to use as a substitute. eg. sky have sticky ip's like VM as posted by craig and many xDSL isp's allow static ip's on residential accounts. But I have ordered it after deciding I will put up with the ip's if it happens although it may stop me graphing the connection.

Interesting on the timeout workaround tho, so that may be a way round it if my line isnt stable.

---------- Post added at 03:59 ---------- Previous post was at 03:56 ----------

There is SRA (and now also RRA) in the vdsl2 spec.

http://www.embedded.com/design/connectivity/4007197/Minimizing-impacts-of-noise-for-Always-On-services-over-VDSL2-Networks?page=3

As to why openreach dont use it I dont know, it is far superior to DLM, DLM been some kind of scripted hack, whilst SRA part of the xDSL specsheet and changes the line settings without a connection drop.

My adsl experience was completely transformed with SRA.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

Haha AOL, they mistakenly under charged me for several months, then one day the broadband went dead, they said because I was paying less they thought I was on dialup so disconnected the broadband. Might of contacted me first to check! Then said reconnection would take 2 weeks, I grumbled and was then told I should be happy with that seen as I had been getting a discount. Hardly the point. Anyway I told them to forget it, the arogance was imense from the lady on the phone, she also insisted they would send a courier round to collect the modem, suprise suprise, they never did. Went with BT who provided 3.5Mb from the 0.5Mb Aol managed to give me so it worked out better in the end.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

I was talking about bandwidth reservation as well.

In the openreach doc's, they state 15meg reservation for 40/10 and 30mbit reservation for 80/20.

Obviously its still possible for congestion elsewhere like on the retail isp's network and peering. So I know its far from gurantueed, but on the openreach side of things the capacity per end user is far higher.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

Ermm I don't think you understand how SRA works.

SRA does not do any resyncs, ever. You can never tell an SRA event from anything. It's seamless. Of course the PPPoE is always maintained, it's seamless and has no effect on anything. Nothing other than the modem itself can tell anything ever happened.

No major ISP in the UK uses SRA.

---------- Post added at 05:42 ---------- Previous post was at 05:41 ----------

Ermm, isn't that exactly what I said? (P.S. It does not change every time the PPPoE session drops. You can, in certain rare circumstances reconnect the PPPoE session and get the same IP)

---------- Post added at 05:55 ---------- Previous post was at 05:42 ----------

Eh? £5 a month for 5 (well actually 8) IPs is extortionate? Or do you mean the business service is extortionate? (Because to be fair, £48 a month for a completely unlimited, 80Mbps service is actually ridiculously cheap compared to the rest of business the market - WT charge £82 for a not-completely-unlimited 40Mbps and IDNet charge £120 for an unlimited 80Mbps.)

Or just that they have 20 DHCP pools to serve 11 million customers... TBF most residential customers probably wouldn't even care if they got given RFC1918 addresses.

Mine's set to 60 seconds. That tends to be enough to survive both fast resyncs (~10-15 seconds), full resyncs (~20-30 seconds) and a modem reboot (~40-50 seconds).

As I've unfortunately learnt, it's not quite enough to survive me moving the modem to the next room *and* rebooting it in the process... That ruined my last 40-day uptime on my TBB monitor :(

SRA has its disadvantages though. It copes well with slow to medium fluctuations in signal quality, it can't cope with fast and severe swings. DLM can, but only by permanently capping your line to below the worst case scenario. But again, stability over speed is BT's mantra...

In comparison VM has to drop an entire segment down to 64QAM to cope with signal fluctuations... :-P

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

qas they extorniote that you have to go from a £26 inc vat package to £40 exc vat to be able to get the £5 addon. Plus £5 per month for an ip is also expensive.

Also DLM doesnt cope with anything, it reacts after the event. It can over react, it can under react. Not to mention DLM requires a resync to work which in itself causes an outage to the user.

I think to say SRA cant cope with large swings you talking to the wrong guy, you talking to someone who had severe swings of noise bursts to the point its the largest tbb had ever seen on a connection, eg. BT's DLM would put my line on its most conservative profile of 15db and interleaving and the noise still took out my connection, plus for the rest of the day when the noise wasnt there my line was severely capped.

SRA will throttle your connection live with 'no' drop, then immediatly when the noise stops the throttle is gone again with no outage. DLM doesnt even come close to SRA. DLM I see as just a cost cutting measure, to reduce man hours by the isp in manually configuring connections. BE and ukonline got alot of their business from people just wanting to escape DLM. This is why I am so dissapointed it still exists as its just a messy hack.

SRA can stick to a target noise margin or work based on error count. Remember the idea of SRA is to stop interruptions to the connection, DLM cannot work without an interruption. I went from 10+ disconnections a week to having over a year uptime in my adsl days with SRA.

The downside of SRA is its apparently hard to get working right, BE attempted it twice and aborted both times. Even on ukonline it only worked with a small set of routers. But when it works DLM doesnt even get close.

Hopefully tho my line wont have issues and DLM will stay quiet without flip flopping.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

I will be with VM over christmas, 7 week wait for installation :(

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

My condolences :Yikes:

Seems a long time still. Less than 3 weeks for a new Sky install here.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

Yeah I waited 17 days for my Sky install.

Ordered on 16th Nov. Coming on the 3rd Dec.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

yeah its shocking.

preparing email now to BT ceo, to see if can get something more sane.

I asked they sold out already or what and no I am the first order on cabinet, so what are the engineers doing for 7 weeks in between.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

I've seen quite a few people citing longer wait times now, maybe just a sign of the popularity and demand...

On the other hand every VM install I've ever had included at least a 4-week wait time, even reactivation of existing lines.

Though one person I know who ordered the day the cab went live got a 3-day lead time :-/ Took one week for mine, but then it had been available for a year in my area at the time so I suppose any pent-up/early rush demand had already been served.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

Exactly, and if you have access to the modem, as I do, you can see them.

Re: VM on Watchdog
 

I have access to the modem, I can't see them, because they don't exist.