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Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

HolaPussycat
Grafter
Posts: 50
Registered: ‎29-03-2011

Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Up until about 3 weeks ago, we've had a rock solid connection with stats as follows:
Data Rate (kbps)      8128      832
Noise Margin (dB)    14          16
Attenuation (dB)        12.4        5
Download speed achieved during the test was - 6197 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 1200-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :8128 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 832 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 7150 Kbps
Yesterday it was failing to connect altogether as of 10AM (while we were connected at 9AM, there appeared to be a routing problem, with long ping times, or just completely timing out, to our gateway at that point, lo0-central3.pcl-ag04.plus.net [195.166.128.243])
With the spare router to test, initially still unable to connect, then another restart showed a change in routing. We had a gateway change to lo0-central4.ptn-ag01.plus.net [195.166.130.73] and then after a switch back to the original router lo0-central2.pcl-ag07.plus.net [195.166.130.59] all successful.
Again, last night at some point, the physical connection according to the modem is retained, but connections could no longer be made. Reconnecting the router, we are now routed through lo0-central2.pcl-ag08.plus.net [195.166.130.71].
Annoyingly, all the disconnecting and reconnecting (I'm assuming) has left us with these stats:
Data Rate (kbps)        7456      832
Noise Margin (dB)      15.0        16.0
Attenuation (dB)          12.8        5.0
Output power(dbm)    17.9        12.4
Can any of the plus.net team forward to me a picture of what you are seeing of our connection?
James
Routers tested with: Belkin F7D4401 v1 (primary) Netgear DGN2000 (spare)
11 REPLIES 11
adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Hi HolaPussycat,
Sorry to hear about the issues with your connection. According to our connection logs it has been quite intermittent.
I've forwarded your support ticket to the correct team so it should be picked up soon.
Adam
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
HolaPussycat
Grafter
Posts: 50
Registered: ‎29-03-2011

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Thank you for giving that ticket a bump Adam.
I was kind of hoping someone might at least say, "we have / have not had a problem with ag04," and I can appreciate that from where you're sitting it looks it could well look like the line is just dropping (or not, which is why I'd quite like to see what you're seeing of the connection).
For the generated images of the connection stats (example below), how far back can you go?

James
HolaPussycat
Grafter
Posts: 50
Registered: ‎29-03-2011

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Just as a point of interest, there was a BT Openreach van heading away from the exchange at around midday today. As the exchange is serving less than a thousand households, we don't see them here very often, so I wonder if I'm not the only person who's been experiencing problems, or even if they were the cause of the problems earlier this morning.
adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Hi,
Quote
For the generated images of the connection stats (example below), how far back can you go?

We can obtain logs as far as up to 24 months ago.
Quote
I was kind of hoping someone might at least say, "we have / have not had a problem with ag04

we have not had a problem with ag04 Smiley it's rare you'd hear us mention that or to the contrary, the majority of issues like this as not related to our gateways and are related to an individual connection.
Here's your logs for the last 7 days. It does look like things have been quite stable over the last 24 hours.
<img src="http://ccgi.psmith12.plus.com/visradius/generated/image13202282075927.png" />

If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
HolaPussycat
Grafter
Posts: 50
Registered: ‎29-03-2011

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Adam, would it be possible to see the connection logs for the connection this week?
I've just arrived back, having been out for just over an hour (connection working fine when I left at 9:20) and had to restart the router again.
As before the router is telling me it believes it's connected, but can't trace a route to the gateway. I'm hoping this isn't an intermittent problem with the router (the router certainly doesn't see any problem with itself), as finding a suitable router with a gigabit switch is a pain.
James
---------results---------
#tracert plus.net
Unable to resolve target system name plus.net.
#tracert 195.166.130.71
Tracing route to 195.166.130.71 over a maximum of 30 hops
  1  router [10.0.0.2]  reports: Destination net unreachable.
Trace complete.
adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

No problem:
<img src="http://ccgi.psmith12.plus.com/visradius/generated/image1320406646494.png" />
From what you've described this does sound like a router problem to me, especially if you can't trace to the router or beyond it when you're actually online. Have you been able to try an alternate one?
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
HolaPussycat
Grafter
Posts: 50
Registered: ‎29-03-2011

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Thanks Adam,
please don't misunderstand those stats though:
At 10:50AM, the router was up and running, convinced it was connected (green light, router webserver running and giving all the details of the connection, and happily saying it's connected) the internal network via the router is all present and working, but any connection to the outside world is where the router is saying, no I can't see that IP.
Just to annoy me, I've just looked at the delivery date of that router... 2nd of November 2010. Clearly the 12 months then it's broken, internal timer, has been triggered! My first ADSL router lasted over 6 years and 2 house moves, and since then it really does seem like they don't last.
It looks as though I'll have to buy a gigabit switch to pop in the corner next to the router and test out using the spare for a few weeks (unless anyone can recommend a good gigabit router, preferably IPv6 capable, given that Belkin don't seem to have bothered updating their firmware for 11 months)
James
adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

No problems,
Don't worry I'm keeping an open mind on this one. If it helps we can send you a test router on a loan. If our router does prove to be faulty personally I'll still be happy to replace it as you did bring the issue to our attention before the 2nd.
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
mikeb
Rising Star
Posts: 463
Thanks: 15
Registered: ‎10-06-2007

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Do you mean getting tracerts kinda like the one below regardless of the intended destination:

1      0 ms     192.168.1.1         Router-adsl
2     47 ms     195.166.128.235     - - -
3     *         * no response *     - - -
4     *         * no response *     - - -
5     *         * no response *     - - -
6     *         * no response *     - - -
7     *         * no response *     - - -
8     *         * no response *     - - -
9     *         * no response *     - - -
10    *         * no response *     - - -
NB: There was no lookup for the gateway of course because DNS was obviously not
accessible either but it would have been "lo0-central1.pcl-ag02.plus.net"

... or does nothing even get past your router ?
I ask simply because I've been occasionally seeing tracerts as above (in addition to various other issues with monotonous regularity) only since being 'upgraded' to 21CN.  A totally dead gateway - all the lights are on but there's defo no one at home and all that !  A problem only resolved by eventually terminating/restarting PPP and obtaining a new gateway after waiting for several minutes just to see what (if anything) would happen. It was a case of  a sudden 100% loss of connectivity with no indication of a problem at all other than nothing was actually working in reality. Without manual intervention everything would presumably have just sat there indefinitely and completely unable to do anything.  It's way more than a bit difficult to justify saying that this is not indicative of a problem somewhere other than at my end of course ... although no doubt someone will try to  Roll_eyes


B T Plusnet, a bit kinda like P T Barnum ...

... but quite often appears to feature more clowns Tongue
HolaPussycat
Grafter
Posts: 50
Registered: ‎29-03-2011

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Thanks Adam,
Sadly, both the routers I have are my own purchases.
The current network setup has 2 distinct arms away from where the master socket is in the building, so I went the trouble of finding what I thought would be a good gigabit modem router (the Belkin) to replace the Netgear which had generally just been a bit flaky on the software side (not a user friendly interface). I'd bought that because I'd had trouble with the hardware (broken wireless that time) on the D-Link routers I'd had before. The D-Link had nice software though, with easy port forwarding setup, etc.  I hadn't really considered a Belkin before, as it felt like you were paying for a name (despite not being a household one) and a funny shaped box design, but figured it would be well supported with updates as it was a new model. Sadly that hasn't been the case, and I'll probably not buy Belkin again.
Given that I've just seen a cheap (super cheap in fact, only £10.40 ex VAT) 5 port gigabit switch at ebuyer, I think I'll go down that route and save the pennies for a better single box long term.
Next dropout I have, I'll switch back to the Netgear and see what happens to that long term. Again though, I've now been connected for over 24 hours, which shows just how intermittent the problem is.
Would it possible to email me the full connection log (just the plain text log of course)? I could at least analyse this myself to draw some conclusions as to what changes I've seen between different kit I've had installed in that time.
James
HolaPussycat
Grafter
Posts: 50
Registered: ‎29-03-2011

Re: Synced and connected, but poor or no connection.

Mike - I did have something approaching that last week:
On the occasion I've pasted (above) I couldn't get a response from the DNS servers (I'm now using a mix of Google as primary and one of Plus.net's as the secondary) so I only tried tracing to the gateway IP, which wasn't responding (as you describe).
On a previous occasion however (whether the DNS lookup had been cached locally, or I was just lucky enough for it to respond, I don't know) I was being met with either really slow response times from IP en route to my own server, or timeouts as you are seeing for everything.
Next time I'll save the results and try a few other IPs instead of just the gateway (I had about 10 traces from one of the events, which I should have kept, as they could have been quite revealing).
James