What's up with the connection?
 

Hi there

Bit of a vague title but for a few months now my cable has been playing up, big ping spikes every so often (i think that's the fault of my router though, Linksys BRSF41 or something) but I get a LOT of time outs etc as if the connection has just died, yet the lights are flashing merrily. I have come to the conclusion that it can't be my pc as it happens on other pcs in the house at the exact same time, directly into my pc it happens on usb or ethernet. If it helps I am using windows xp, a terayon TJ210 and on the 1mb service.

I have a couple of trace routes to show that the problem, I think is the modem:

E:\Documents and Settings\Bob>tracert 213.228.215.3

Tracing route to 213-228-215-3.efrag.mer.tsn.uk.com [213.228.215.3]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * 10 ms 10.139.207.254
2 22 ms 16 ms 44 ms lutn-t2cam1-a-ge911.inet.ntl.com [80.4.118.17]
3 12 ms 11 ms 15 ms lutn-t2core-a-ge-wan64.inet.ntl.com [213.107.47.
89]
4 12 ms 15 ms 22 ms pop-bb-a-so-300-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.185]

5 30 ms 22 ms 14 ms tele-ic-2-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.86]

6 14 ms 22 ms 21 ms ntl-gw.telecomplete.net [213.160.97.41]
7 16 ms 21 ms 23 ms gige-gw.london.tsn.uk.com [213.160.97.74]
8 14 ms 13 ms 27 ms 213-228-215-3.efrag.mer.tsn.uk.com [213.228.215.
3]

Trace complete.

E:\Documents and Settings\Bob>tracert 212.42.16.19

Tracing route to mordor.multiplay.co.uk [212.42.16.19]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 20 ms 24 ms 19 ms lutn-t2cam1-b-ge911.inet.ntl.com [80.4.118.145]

3 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms lutn-t2core-b-ge-wan64.inet.ntl.com [213.107.47.
213]
4 12 ms 10 ms 36 ms nth-bb-b-so-220-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.189]

5 23 ms 13 ms 29 ms nth-bb-a-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.117]
6 19 ms 24 ms 15 ms gfd-bb-b-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.98]
7 24 ms 27 ms 23 ms tele-ic-2-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.74]

8 17 ms 29 ms 19 ms linx-2.as8838.net [195.66.226.171]
9 16 ms 15 ms 16 ms mordor.multiplay.co.uk [212.42.16.19]

Trace complete.


This can happen frequently, or not very frequently, but it happens every time I use the internet, in games (including xbox live) or just browsing the web. If any other information is needed I shall happily find it for you.

Thanks in advance

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

whichever piece of your kit has the address of 10.139.207.254 is the problem

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

Arg there be a problems with BGP at the moment, causing mass packet loss. Like what your seeing. Should be getting better.....

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

The ip address 10.139.207.254 is my local UBR located in Flitwick, but I don't think it can be a problem with that as my friends in 2 different streets from me don't experience this. When we first got a cable modem just over 2 years ago we got a modem from a "dodgy batch" so we were sent another, which took the engineer some time to get it to work, but why it should mess up with no problems after 2 years, I dont know

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

anything with an address starting 10.** is a private ip address and there for on your side of ntl's network. (I think) try traceing it here
http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

Sorry trebor, but NTL uses the 10.*.*.* address range internally. I don't know why - ask BBKing.

What's BGP?

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

Ah I see, don't know what that could be then, as the only extra thing I am running is a Linksys router, but regardless if that is connected or not it does the same thing, so that address must be the modem then? (Would NTL replace the modem free of charge or would I have to pay, am willing to do so though if it'd sort out the problem quicker)

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

that complicates things a little :confused: when you can't even tell where on the network the problem is. no wonder NTL have so much trouble keeping things working :spin:
so you will either have to have a look here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d...ips/index.html
or pm/email that trace route to somebody working in tech support and hope they can find out what piece of kit that ip belongs to.
but it is still a problem with the first hop a packet come to.

good luck you're going to need it.

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

well i've found out my ubr ip, which isn't that 10.x.x.x one. So am I right in assuming it must be my green cabinet down the road or my modem?

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

An IP address is an IP address, keeping track of a public one is just as easy as keeping track of a private one. Private IPs are used internally for:

* office desktops, which only access the net via proxies and don't need full internet access
* back end servers which don't need to access the internet and are easier to secure privately
* cable modems and set top boxes that only ever need to talk to the local dhcp server or ntl monitoring equipment.
* UBR gateway IPs for those cable modems which obviously have to be in the same range

Public IPs are a finite resource, so using private IPs for equipment that never needs to talk to the full internet is sensible, RIPE wouldn't be happy if we asked for 2,000,000+ public IPs to publicly address all the STBs and CMs. We do have databases with all this stuff on, you know!

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

We have all had dealings with NTL databases, when they send the bills ;)
so now you are here BB can you offer any advice to robtufts

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

I'll be ringing TS tomorrow again after being fobbed off on monday by saying the problems are probably outside NTLs control (ie the network outside of NTL that's playing up) so I got my trace routes etc to prove them wrong, and hopefully send an engineer round (as it's one of those problems that you have to see to experience it i think)

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

Im almost certain that was the problems with BGP earlier today. If you run a trace now does it show the same results?

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

BGP ?

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

if you have 2 weeks free :

http://joe.lindsay.net/bgp.html

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

In simple terms BGP = Border Gateway Protocol .

Its basically a routing system for traffic used in conjunction with Cisco Routers.

:)

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

I couldn't do a trace as it'd show OK results, most of the time its fine but then every 5-30 minutes it'll have a fit and time out, sometimes not as often as others, the only thing I could show you was a picture of what happens when I play games such as counter strike (attached, contains loss, but that was because of unrelated fault which is now fixed). I would be merrily playing away and for no reason I will get a spike like it, stay at that ping for a good 30 seconds before it'll allow any access, webpage browsing or game playing.

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

if you're connecting into luton, there's more at fault than the routing. i've had similar problems for the last month ro so. last week i decided enough was enough and called TS. spoke to helpful guy who actually listened to what i had to say, rather than reading form a crib sheet. i explained my upstream was being throttled, and so killing my download. after doing some checks, it turns out that the luton ubr i'm connected to is not very well balanced. utilisation on the upstreams were 87%, 95%, 92%, 37%, 34% and 28% respectively. fine if you're on the last 3, poor if you're on 1, 2 or 3 as at peak times the ubr just gets swamped. lucky me, i'm on upstream 1 :rolleyes: .

i thought the countrywide re-balancing work earlier this week might have solved it but i think they must have missed luton as it's as bad as ever. back on the phone tomorrow i think, i've just had to cancel a job tonight due to instability of the link.

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

Hi Grandmoffrich

You may want to ask them to check the proxy you are going through as most of the luton ones are pants. I am still suck on the luton-inkotomi1 proxy and my connection is useless unless I change Proxy...

Welcome to the forum BTW :welcome:

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

stuartbe,
thanks for the welcome :wavey: , i've just been lurking since the demise of .com.

i don't think the proxies are the (whole) problem for me, as traffic other than web is affected - telnet sessions time out, FTP sesions hang, VPN will not connect etc.

As for the inktomis, I switched a while ago to use brentford proxies (BRE) seems to work quite well <he says putting kiss of death on them>.

cheers

Re: What's up with the connection?
 

Just a quick reply to say, got my terayon swapped out today for one of the ntl:home 200 modems and everything is fine now, shame it took months to have a 30min call out to fix the problem :(