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new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?
View Poll Results: Are Samsung boxes a step backwards
yes 11 22.92%
no 37 77.08%
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Old 19-08-2004, 04:06   #16
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kneebs
Anyone else suffer from this, either on a samsung, pace, or SACM ? My PC aint the problem - CPU sits only runs at 1-30% through all this, and ample free memory. Is this the norm, or is it a problem, and am I likely to get fobbed off by tech support ?
I have exactly this problem and I use a DSL modem! I reckon its something to do with Winblows XP SP2
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Old 19-08-2004, 08:50   #17
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

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Originally Posted by Frank
I have exactly this problem and I use a DSL modem! I reckon its something to do with Winblows XP SP2
I'm still on XP SP1....
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Old 19-08-2004, 14:03   #18
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Any chance of running the tests on another PC, i.e. one connected through the same STB via a router or something? i.e. have P2P running on the main box and monitor the pings on the other?

Actually, I'd be interested in anyone's tests along these lines, particularly the packet loss element, I'd expect the p/l to be near 0, but the ping times to shoot up with increasing P2P load. Will try at home on DSL.
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Old 19-08-2004, 15:27   #19
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

well i was downloading some concert videos last night from BT, i had 3 Simultanious connections going and all were running at around 30kbs each..

if there was any packetloss i'd know about it, because the videos would never have Succesfully Downloaded (Bittorent automatically redownloads Failed packets and i never had a single one after 11 hours).

its also Not illegal to Use P2P apps (regarded the content you DL isnt Copywrited) so theres no Way they Should be Banning the use of P2P unless they can prove exactly what your downloading (then that becomes a Privacy violation).
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Old 19-08-2004, 15:56   #20
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Quote:
Originally Posted by BBKing
Any chance of running the tests on another PC, i.e. one connected through the same STB via a router or something? i.e. have P2P running on the main box and monitor the pings on the other?

Actually, I'd be interested in anyone's tests along these lines, particularly the packet loss element, I'd expect the p/l to be near 0, but the ping times to shoot up with increasing P2P load. Will try at home on DSL.
Well, as you can see from the two attached screen shots, main.jpg is my main pc, with azureus client running - you can see in the bottom right corner the upload/download speeds, and you can see the ping results.

networked.jpg is my other pc (connected thru the main one via ICS), with just the ping running.

the networked pcs' packet loss is 38%, and the main one is 36% - not quite the near 0% we suspect it should be !

Any ideas ?

Cheers
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Old 19-08-2004, 16:07   #21
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Quote:
Originally Posted by MatTman
well i was downloading some concert videos last night from BT, i had 3 Simultanious connections going and all were running at around 30kbs each..

if there was any packetloss i'd know about it, because the videos would never have Succesfully Downloaded (Bittorent automatically redownloads Failed packets and i never had a single one after 11 hours).

its also Not illegal to Use P2P apps (regarded the content you DL isnt Copywrited) so theres no Way they Should be Banning the use of P2P unless they can prove exactly what your downloading (then that becomes a Privacy violation).
Like you say, bit torrent automatically re-downloads 'missing' packets, so you wouldn't know by using bit torrent alone that you were suffering packet loss. Can you try running a ping test (eg ping -t www.bbc.co.uk - press control-c to stop) once bit torrent has been running a while, and post your results here ?

I take it you're on the 1meg / samsung STB aslo ?

Cheers,
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Old 20-08-2004, 12:45   #22
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Right a (fairly) quick call to CS to swap the broadband config file to the pace box downstairs (I used to use the box downstairs for internet, so I already have the cabling installed to upstairs) and heres the results....

Only a few packets dropped on each PC, resulting in 0% or 1% packet loss on the PCs. Note the almost constant download rate through azureus of over 100KB/s - I don't think I've had anywhere near that speed through azureus using the samsung box (using the same torrent yesterday on the samsung earlier today i was lucky to get 50KB/s) .

I know its not the cabling to the STB upstairs, as this problem has only appeared since the samsung was installed. Should I ask for another samsung, or can I get a SACM ?

Oh, and I spoke to Tech support last night (after 8pm so I couldnt get CS to swap the broadband round), who warned me that if the pace box gets the 1.5meg upgrade, "the box will literally blow up, I'm not kidding" I could hardly contain my laugh

Cheers,
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Old 20-08-2004, 14:17   #23
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Just in case anyone is interested, the middleware that is running on these boxes is Tsunami by Livewire. More details here: http://www.livewire-tv.com/tsunami.html

although I have not been able to discern whether there is any sort of filtering available with it yet.
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Old 20-08-2004, 15:17   #24
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

I also have speed problems with the new Samsung box in the Birkenhead area. Check this out.

Pinging www.google.akadns.net [216.239.59.147] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=546ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=150ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=161ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=64ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=270ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=312ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=324ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=91ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=224ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=78ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=150ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=247ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=302ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=105ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=108ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=71ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=280ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=259ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=341ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=236ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=247ms TTL=245
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=245

And my netstat -s:

TCP Statistics for IPv4

Active Opens = 1138
Passive Opens = 260
Failed Connection Attempts = 204
Reset Connections = 55
Current Connections = 31
Segments Received = 178515
Segments Sent = 171253
Segments Retransmitted = 30119
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Old 20-08-2004, 21:27   #25
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Well, after speaking to a helpful guy in Tech Support, who referred my problem to the faults team, they rang me back earlier to sort out an engineer visit for tomorrow morning - hopefully I'm gonna be given a new samsung box, or a SACM...I'll let yous know....
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Old 21-08-2004, 12:35   #26
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Well, 1 new samsung box later, and the same problems are still being experienced.... I've now arranged for a SACM to be installed - I just gotta wait till 1st September for it to be done...
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Old 21-08-2004, 15:52   #27
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

I'm sorry, but measuring broadband performance on boxes using p2p is probably the most wrongest way you can go about it.

Saying you get 100k on box x, and 50k on box y, is bollox, as it all depends on how much other peers are uploading, how hard the seeds are getting hammered, what position you're in in peers queues, time of day, etc etc...

If you're uploading at 15k, and downloading at 100k, then you do realise that every packet that is recieved using TCP, it has to send an acknowledgement packet, to say it recieved it ok? Typically on 100k down, you're looking at about 10k up in acks alone, add on your 15k upload, and all the bandwidth for keeping 100's of connections to peers open, and you've pretty much max'd out your upload. Thats why it takes ages to download web pages.
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Old 21-08-2004, 16:10   #28
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Nutty,

Please (re?) read post numebr 15 - I've also tested using uploads to webspace / downloads from download.com, not just P2P - when uploading to webspace, download speed from download.com drops to 25-30KB/s (through the samsung). Some loss of speed would be expected due to ACKs - on the pace box, the download speed only drops to 80KB/s.

38% packet loss is the main cause of my slow web browsing, not saturated up/down stream. On the Pace box I'm currently conencted through, even downloading flat out via P2P, browsing, although slightly slower than normal, is a damn sight faster than through the samsung box. I suffer next to no packet loss through this box
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Old 21-08-2004, 20:58   #29
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Sorry I didn't read the 2nd page..

Whats the cause of the packet loss? Most likely a bad connection rather than the samsung box itself.. or it could be a bad box. Not in general, just yours.

It would be very bad, if all these samsung boxes ntl are dishing out, had some severe flaw. I'm sure they must be capable of having 0 packet loss on the cable modem built in. They'd all be recalled with packet loss like that.
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Old 21-08-2004, 22:06   #30
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Re: new samsung boxes more trouble then they worth?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nutty
Sorry I didn't read the 2nd page..

Whats the cause of the packet loss? Most likely a bad connection rather than the samsung box itself.. or it could be a bad box. Not in general, just yours.

It would be very bad, if all these samsung boxes ntl are dishing out, had some severe flaw. I'm sure they must be capable of having 0 packet loss on the cable modem built in. They'd all be recalled with packet loss like that.
Well, I'm edging my bets towards a problem with samsungs in general - not everyone, 'cos there's people here who say they have no problem. The two samsungs I've now had have both had problems with bad packet loss - I doubt its the connection, 'cos a) I didn't have any these problems with the pace that was connected to the same wire, and b) the engineer hooked up some sort of tester to the cable and all was fine this morning.

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