Regular 10 minute glitches

Heedyheed · 17-07-2006, 18:44

Is it my imagination, or is the number of short breaks in service on the increase? I'm seeing more and more such instances - usually lasting about 10 minutes. I've had at least one a day during the last week or so. It's just happened again between about 18:20 and 18:30. During that time I couldn't ping bbc.co.uk or any of the NTL servers that usually respond. Walk away from the PC and come back some time later usually fixes it - no modem reboot, no PC reboot, no close and re-open IE - it just goes away by itself. On the few occasions where I have rebooted the modem (Terayon 210), the cable light flashes slowly for ages, whereas the slow flash sequence after reboot usually lasts about 30 seconds.

Are there any free tools that will keep an eye on network connectivity in the background and log any short-term loss of connection. I'd like to start to collect some stats that I can use to back a complaint to NTL.

Mike

P.S. ...And just to prove the point it has just done it again between about 18:50 and 18:55. During that time I couldn't even ping NTLs DNS servers on 192.168.4.100 and 192.168.8.100.

Rob200sx · 18-07-2006, 13:00

Mine's one of those NTLhome:200 boxes and I'm on 10mb BB.

I've been having intermittent connection failure ever since being put on the 10mb broadband, we've got an engineer coming on Thursday to hopefully sort it out.

The problem is much much worse in the afternoons though.
For example today I've lost connectivity at
11:46
12:30
12:45
12:50
12:54

After a few minutes it comes back up, at the weekends this also happens but I have to reboot the cablemodem to re-establish connection.

Give NTL a call, they may arrange an engineer to come out for you.

Heedyheed · 18-07-2006, 15:04

I've not been over-impressed by NTL's 'engineers' ability to resolve intermittent problems. The last time our TV box failed the bloke they sent spent most of the time on his phone chatting to his mates and arranging his weekend's social activities. He also left the cabling to various other boxes disconnected - something I had to fix myself once he had gone.

No, I'd rather not have another of them in my house unless absolutely necessary. Anyway, I'll have to pay two or three quid for the priviledge of reporting a fault and spend 20-30 minutes on the phone to their bloody Indian call-centre doing things that I've already tried.

Nah - unless it gets worse or continues as it is for a couple more weeks I'll live with the inconvenience of the odd interruption. Fortunately, my problem is a lot more infrequent than yours.

Mike

Spike_UK · 19-07-2006, 01:40

I've been getting this on and off since I was upgraded to 10mbit. Sometimes it goes days without doing it, then BAM it'll do it 4 times in 15mins.

I've had a engineer out once but they couldn't find anything wrong.

toytown · 19-07-2006, 15:51

My 10Mbit has been doing it for the last few days also, always around the same time, between 13:30 - 16:00, it can cut out about 10-15 times. It doesnt seem to be heat related (at least in the case of the cable modem as its only just warm to touch).

Outages may only be small, but it means im getting kick off online games and my phone which use VOIP gets cut off or im unable to make calls.

LOL, i had a ping running so that i knew when my internet would come back on, and whilst typing this message, the connection has gone again. Its getting on my nerves. This outage whilst typing this message lasted 8 minutes

IanUK · 19-07-2006, 18:03

I've had DNS glitches today lasting about 2-3 mins several times, I usually have another ISP's DNS listed, but for some reason I didn't.

I can't wait til I get DSL and get rid of this rubbish.

KevAmiga · 19-07-2006, 19:07

Tried specifying an alternative proxy?

Heedyheed · 19-07-2006, 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevAmiga

Tried specifying an alternative proxy?

Would you expect changing the proxy to fix a problem where it isn't even possible to ping NTL's DNS servers on 192.168.4.100 and 192.168.8.100 ??

dcclanuk · 19-07-2006, 22:10

my internet messes up every so often!

downloads/online games arent affected, its just the web browsing, which at time can be quite frustrating

edit: oh and i am on the 10mb aswell

KevAmiga · 19-07-2006, 22:15

@ Silver Surfer ..

Due to the fact that the NTL proxy servers sometimes handle DNS stuffs too.

---------- Post added at 22:15 ---------- Previous post was at 22:11 ----------

Saying that.. if you cant even ping the DNS server ( i didnt see that bit of your post sorry ) .. still worth a go tho.

goblin · 20-07-2006, 00:07

I have the same issues, which I've typed out here:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=50041

things for me are getting progressively worse. Hope you guy's are fairing better.

toytown · 20-07-2006, 12:41

Mine is getting considerably worse, last night it was off from about 8:00pm to midnight (not totally off, just sparse 5-10 mins of usage, before it reset again). This morning everything has been fine until around 11:25 where it started cutting off again. Heres the log from the CM if its of any use

Code:

First Time, Last Time, Counts, Level, ID, Text

Thu Jul 20 11:35:15 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:35:15 2006    1  Critical(3)  68000300     DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Thu Jul 20 11:35:04 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:35:04 2006    12 Critical(3)  82000200     No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Thu Jul 20 11:34:13 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:34:13 2006    1  Critical(3)  82000700     Unicast Ranging Received Abort Response - Re- initializing MAC
Thu Jul 20 11:33:48 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:33:48 2006    16 Critical(3)  82000200     No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Thu Jul 20 11:32:33 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:32:33 2006    1  Critical(3)  82000700     Unicast Ranging Received Abort Response - Re- initializing MAC
Thu Jul 20 11:32:14 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:32:14 2006    16 Critical(3)  82000200     No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Thu Jul 20 11:30:38 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:30:38 2006    1  Critical(3)  82000300     Init RANGING Critical Ranging Request Retries exhausted
Thu Jul 20 11:30:38 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:30:38 2006    17 Critical(3)  82000200     No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Thu Jul 20 11:28:53 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:28:53 2006    1  Critical(3)  82000400     Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un...
Thu Jul 20 11:28:20 2006        Thu Jul 20 11:28:20 2006    16 Critical(3)  82000500     Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received -

As you can see it taking around 7 minutes to get a connection again, after a reset. I tried ringing NTL but got cut off after 25 minutes, im going to try again later, hopefully with a little more luck.

Heedyheed · 20-07-2006, 13:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by toytown

... Heres the log from the CM if its of any use...

At least you can get logs off your modem. I've got a Terayon 210 which, I understand, can only be accessed by
NTL

.... and of course their 'support' people in Bangalore or wherever are programmed to always say there's no
problem with the modem or any part of the NTL network.

How do people who take any pride in what they do manage to work for a company like NTL?

Mike