120M Thousands of T3s and T4s a day

RainmakerRaw · 01-02-2014, 23:16

My 120Mbps connection is handled by a SH2 and passed directly to a pfSense hardware firewall by SFTP cat6 ethernet. When connecting (wired) the speeds are rather erratic lately and I'm experiencing literally thousands of T3 and T4 timeouts a day.

I used to get 124Mbps down and 12.5Mbps up all day every day but since a neighbour got installed I struggle to get over 110Mbps down and 10Mbps up, but the speed is incredibly erratic. Often we only get 80Mbps or so, and this is to reliable test servers (Bytemark hosting, Ubuntu torrents, etc). We've had techs out already and they said the fault was at the head end further up the network and was finally fixed, but a couple of months later the line still looks wrong to me (see attachments).

I don't know if this helps but two SH1s both needed a -3dB attenuator after our neighbour got installed (we had perfect 0 power levels before that day, I guess her installer moved me in the cab). Since I switched the the SH2 we don't need the attenuator any more and get power levels around 0 just with the bare coax. AFAIK we're the only two people on the estate with VM as it's a completely new build development and everyone else took Sky/BT while we waited for VM to finish the CAB installation etc.

Can someone please take a look at the stats and see if anything is obviously wrong before I go through the whole rigmarole of rebooting the SH2 for India before they book a tech visit again? TIA.

jb66 · 02-02-2014, 10:15

Your issues has nothing to do with your neighbour. The sh2 reports lower levels than a sh1

RainmakerRaw · 02-02-2014, 16:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by jb66

Your issues has nothing to do with your neighbour. The sh2 reports lower levels than a sh1

Sorry I think you've misunderstood (and hence, I've worded the OP badly). I wasn't blaming the neighbour lol When she was installed (she's a friend, incidentally) we got moved to a different port in the cab, which happened to have a faulty card. It was all resolved with a tech visit the same week. I only mentioned it in case the faulty line card/port and head end issues could be impacting on my connection now.

broadbandking · 02-02-2014, 18:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by jb66

Your issues has nothing to do with your neighbour. The sh2 reports lower levels than a sh1

How do you work that out as my levels are the same on my SH2 as they was on my SH1. To the OP network/headend issues can be many things as your are is a new build you might of needed the levels adjusted but again could be many different issue, how is your connection now?

jb66 · 02-02-2014, 19:34

Becasue when I put my superhub 1 on it reports 3db then when i plug my sh2 in it reports 0.5db. also the SNR is 2db higher on my SH1

broadbandking · 03-02-2014, 00:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by jb66

Becasue when I put my superhub 1 on it reports 3db then when i plug my sh2 in it reports 0.5db. also the SNR is 2db higher on my SH1

That doesn't mean ALL SH2 report higher than all SH1's

RainmakerRaw · 03-02-2014, 02:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by broadbandking

How do you work that out as my levels are the same on my SH2 as they was on my SH1. To the OP network/headend issues can be many things as your are is a new build you might of needed the levels adjusted but again could be many different issue, how is your connection now?

It's OK tonight but only because I've rebooted. Mostly it starts counting off T3 and T4 timeouts by the second (literally every refresh of the network status page shows a ton more timeouts), but sometimes like tonight I get a connection that works fine and doesn't have any timeouts even after a couple of days.

When I get a dodgy/timeouts connection the speeds are erratic but they're OK on the occasions I do get an OK sync.

MUD_Wizard · 03-02-2014, 07:18

@ RainmakerRaw: Your stats all look optimal. Ignore the SH1/SH2 3dB change.

Post your network log.

RainmakerRaw · 03-02-2014, 08:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by MUD_Wizard

@ RainmakerRaw: Your stats all look optimal. Ignore the SH1/SH2 3dB change.

Post your network log.

As stated I rebooted last night and got a 'good' sync with no reported timeouts on the counter (unlike the 2,000+ counts on my last connection). The log before reboot was many pages long and just line after line of T3 and T4 timeouts.

I'm attaching what little there is of the current logs, as they do report some timeouts that aren't listed on the network status page. TIA.

Sephiroth · 04-02-2014, 17:11

I suspect a bug on the SH. I think you've got a SH2 because the SH1 doesn't retain that much log. When the SH2 was first trialled, we saw a similar phenomenon. Lots of T4 events but no actual modem reset.

A T4 event is a timeout that forces the modem to reset. You haven't reported that it resets and there is no evidence in the log of an actual reset.

Does that make sense?

RainmakerRaw · 05-02-2014, 04:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I suspect a bug on the SH. I think you've got a SH2 because the SH1 doesn't retain that much log. When the SH2 was first trialled, we saw a similar phenomenon. Lots of T4 events but no actual modem reset.

A T4 event is a timeout that forces the modem to reset. You haven't reported that it resets and there is no evidence in the log of an actual reset.

Does that make sense?

Yes that makes perfect sense, thank you.

It would actually explain things nicely. Since I've swapped to the SH2 and put it into modem-only mode, behind a home-built IPFire hardware firewall and wireless router, my connection is back to being 100%.

Please see attached speedtests. Building your own hardware wireless router and firewall is great fun... Seeing it not only fix your network issues but give it tons of awesome toys like proper QoS, a SQUID proxy, update cache, content filtering, parental controls, OpenVPN, and torrent webUI serving a VSFTP server is priceless!

For anyone interested it's running headless on an old Dell Inspiron with a 2.9GHz Pentium 4 and 2GB DDR2 RAM. It runs on a Cat6 SFTP wired network from two Intel Pro dual-port 1000/100/10 NICs, while broadcasting wireless N over an Atheros based USB dongle.

qasdfdsaq · 05-02-2014, 04:46

Pentium 4 - yuck.

You'd probably save money on electricity over a year or two by buying a newer, more efficient PC to replace that.

RainmakerRaw · 05-02-2014, 05:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Pentium 4 - yuck.

You'd probably save money on electricity over a year or two by buying a newer, more efficient PC to replace that.

Agreed, but it's short term before I replace it with a mATX Atom build... When you're paying for your wedding in less than three months, new hardware isn't on the cards.

Kushan · 05-02-2014, 14:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainmakerRaw

Agreed, but it's short term before I replace it with a mATX Atom build... When you're paying for your wedding in less than three months, new hardware isn't on the cards.

Why not put it on the wedding gift list? =P

Jumping · 05-02-2014, 21:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainmakerRaw

Agreed, but it's short term before I replace it with a mATX Atom build... When you're paying for your wedding in less than three months, new hardware isn't on the cards.

There are priorities in life and hardware is always more important than a wedding :P

Good luck and congratulations on the upcoming wedding!