Think broadband monitor
 

I sometimes see folk posting these when complaining about performance. When I'm Hammering torrents my graph looks poor but when it's idle it's fantastic. How can this be used as a reliable indication of how good someones Internet is if we can't prove someone on there network is torrenting?

---------- Post added at 11:25 ---------- Previous post was at 11:23 ----------

This is my superhub that I'm testing to see if it's any good on 5ghz


https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2012/02/12.png

This is my vmng300 downloading 30gig of torrents


https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2012/07/31.png

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

You can't prove anything but the poster should know. Running torrents or simply downloading something with http, nntp, ftp etc. will make a complete horlix of the chart.

Here's one of mine when I had a period of http downloading - tell me if you can spot when it was...

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...03-01-2012.png

If you have some trouble spotting it I'll dig one out where it's more obvious.

===update===
I see you've added some charts now.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

For my purposes the value of the TBB graph is to see what's happening when I'm doing nothing.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

QoS FTW. Or just moderating your downloading.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...08-01-2012.png
Tell me if you can spot where I downloaded 80GB... And no, it wasn't 4am.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

yip same here man......... this is my graph :erm: :p:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...10-01-2012.png

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

I just kick any downloads off just before I go to bed so I don't give a stuff what it does to my network. I have got a demo webcam and a weathercam both available on the public web and I have to set some pretty draconian QoS rules for them - especially as I'm now on 10Mbps with very restricted upstream limits.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Yeah but then your TB Ping graph becomes meaningless

(To be fair I don't use QoS either, but my downloads are barely noticeable on my chart for some reason)

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

I use QoS to cap the upload to 90% and download to 97% for a single machine, and have HTTP and DNS prioritized.

That stops my connection from being unusable when steam ramps up its downloads or P2P manages to get full use of the upload.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Seems a silly thread, obviously I know when I am doing something that would mess up my graph and during that period I discount recorded data as meaningful.

jb 66 do you think I did any downloading/uploading on this graph?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...01-05-2011.png

or this one perhaps?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...10-01-2012.png

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

That's kinda cheating, Chrys. Between May 2011 and Jan 2012 you may have been resegmented or something. Or one's the SH and the other's the Ubee.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Not to me it doesn't as I know when I've done some downloading.

The effects of downloading on mine are very evident doing it my way and presumably evident to anybody else capable of interpreting the chart. Doing it your way and running throttled back downloads for long periods makes your charts meaningless to everybody including you as have no idea what it may look like if you weren't downloading at all and it's only when your connection is idle that the chart throws any light on just the connection.

I suppose I should admit that I don't deliberately download the way I do for any other reason than it requires least effort.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

heh well.

both are vmng300

the first is from may 2011 when I had uplifted upstream capacity but was still on old upload configs, so wasnt over subbed. The connection was idle all day very easy to see.

the second is from yesterday. Connection was idle all day not so easy to see. Exception been small spikes caused by samknows 4am 10 am 4pm then hourly 6pm to midnight.

the 2 major events that degraded it were the upstream uplift rollout in june and when 100mbit was switched on in sept.

by idle I mean light usage, web browsing, bit of youtubing that sort of thing. Stuff that isnt enough to affect graph, no uploading at all.

---------- Post added at 11:05 ---------- Previous post was at 10:59 ----------

this one is interesting.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...09-01-2012.png

The mass of green and blue was me uploading a usb image to a ftp server, the increased jitter after it took me by surprise tho. Rebooting the vmng300 then reduced the jitter noticebly but not all the way.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

This makes no sense at all to me. Did you have the same upstream post the reboot as before it?

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

yes the vmng300 wont ever cycle the upstream channels.

It seems when I did that upload it increased the queue size on the upstream (like the superhub) which increased packet delays. But you can clearly see right after the faint red line (Reboot) jitter dropped sharply.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Shub in modem mode with a ClearOS router hanging off it.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2012/01/91.png://

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

I don't use any QoS or throttling on my downloads. They just don't affect my chart for some reason, allowing my chart to be meaningful since it looks pretty much the same as it would have if my connection was idle.

To be absolutely precise scientifically speaking your connection would be affected simply by the fact that you're pinging it, so you'd never know what it would *actually* look like in truth as the creation of the chart itself modifies the outcome of the chart. The effect might be microscopic, but then again so is the effect of my downloads, even at full speed.

---------- Post added at 13:30 ---------- Previous post was at 13:26 ----------

Ah, now I understand your other post.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

I don't think any CM cycles the upstream channel. The channel is offered in a UCD by the CMTS.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Strange. Even single thread downloads show up obviously on mine. Balls out multi-thread is usually the rule with the big ones and they just obliterate any blank space in the chart for their duration.
Well my area is pretty borked but I doubt that pinging my modem is going to have a significant impact even here. Looking at the chart might :( ....

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

actually scrap what I said, I noticed that reboot was around 5pm when shaping is activated, so was probably coincidence. Sad that even with the shaping the graph was a mess tho.

---------- Post added at 14:39 ---------- Previous post was at 14:35 ----------

Whatever cycles it, it doesnt happen on the vmng300, craig confirmed this as well.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

[QUOTE=Chrysalis;35359366]actually scrap what I said, I noticed that reboot was around 5pm when shaping is activated, so was probably coincidence. Sad that even with the shaping the graph was a mess tho.

---------- Post added at 14:39 ---------- Previous post was at 14:35 ----------



Whatever cycles it, it doesnt happen on the vmng300, craig confirmed this as well.[/QUOTE]

... and I reported in the other thread that my VMNG did swap upstream channels. Several times - as it would if the CMTS is sending UCDs according to whichever upstream channel is least busy at the moment (or something like that).

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

both the VMNG and the superhub 'remeber' the channels and order of channels they were connected to previously, and will not change unless told to by the CMTS, although with the superhub, a factory reset erases the firmware and loses this memory, so by factory resetting you are able to swap channels, by keeping re-setting until it changes

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

The modems are dumb in this respect. The allocation of upstream channels at reboot time depends on load balancing considerations as reported by the CMTS during registration.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Does the VMNG300 have a reset button? If so did you try it?

I'm pretty much 100% certain that I've seen different channels on my VMNG300 but I'm not 100% sure that it wasn't just after some network change or other (I've had a couple of IP changes since I had it). At the time I had no congestion issues so wasn't overly fussed. Now I do so being able to sample the grass on the other side of the fence would be nice.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

The 300 has an on/off switch at the back.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

I'm pretty sure that at least some of the memory in it is non-volatile - e.g. the log survives a power cycle so if it "remembers" which upstream was used it's quite likely it will use that first to see if it can negotiate the same connection.

I can probably take a look to see if there's a pinhole but I've got it behind the settee (where the Superhub had to go to hide the light show)

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

it has no reset button, pinhole etc. there is no way to reset to factory defaults on it, at least no published way.

Also it seems seph had a diff version of the vmng300 to me, as I have no power on/off either. To turn mine off is just removing its power source.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

The upstream is offered by the CMTS on criteria determined by the CMTS. From BradyVolpe:

Once a cable modem is powered on and connected to the RF cable of a CATV network, it will begin a “hunt” for a valid downstream DOCSIS channel. First the cable modem looks for and locks to any 64- or 256-QAM digital channel. Fortunately for the modem, the CMTS is sending out a “Sync” broadcast at least every 200 msec, which is used for system timing. In addition, the CMTS sends out an Upstream Channel Descriptor (UCD) every two seconds, which tells modems the upstream frequency to transmit on, symbol rate, modulation profile, and other parameters necessary to communicate on the network. Finally the CMTS is sending out Media Access Protocol (MAP) messages to allocate “talk time” to each cable modem. You see, since there are many cable modems and only one upstream frequency, the cable modems must “time-share” the upstream channel, which is called Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). Now, when the cable modem successfully locks to a QAM channel, it looks for the Sync, UCD and MAP messages from the CMTS. If it finds these it knows it is on an active DOCSIS channel. If they are not present, the cable modem assumes the DOCSIS channel is offline or it is on a video QAM channel and continues its search.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

EMP?

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

the only way, although when i got mine it has been wiped, it was a refurb unit from the CEO office, but took ages to set up as it had to download the most recent firmware, so there must be a way, probably have to take it apart though to find out

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Only the v3 version :)

---------- Post added at 20:53 ---------- Previous post was at 20:49 ----------

Obviously my area had an issue, both crap last night

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

everyone had that

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

Whys that?

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

dont know, most other ISPs werent affected, someone playing with routing I suspect

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

maybe I can open mine up, find a battery of some sort, remove it, memory lost, put it back in and see what happens. :)

I think any forced way of removing the vmng300's settings is also likely to render it unuseable as well.

Re: Think broadband monitor
 

i doubt it seeing as the firmware can be downloaded