Anyone had problems with Billion 7800

As per this post anyone suffer from download stalls on their Billion 7800? Trying to discover if its a firmware problem or something else. Problem is visible on ADSL2+, ADSL2 and ADSL1.

In reply to a post by Banger:

As per this post anyone suffer from download stalls on their Billion 7800? Trying to discover if its a firmware problem or something else. Problem is visible on ADSL2+, ADSL2 and ADSL1.

maybe just a faulty unit (D.O.A)

Yes if Billion dont sort it its goin back.

A little googling and I discovered it's not an unknown problem.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1533529

Wonder how many people notice.

In reply to a post by Banger:

As per this post anyone suffer from download stalls on their Billion 7800? Trying to discover if its a firmware problem or something else. Problem is visible on ADSL2+, ADSL2 and ADSL1.

It's not visible on mine using VDSL (I can d/l several GB without a break), so your comment in the other thread that it seems to be the modem would appear to be well founded.

Thanks Bill that closes down a few options. I can run my Speedtouch as a modem through the EWAN port and the problem doesnot occur, Billion told me to wait a week and see if it sorts itself. Wont be doing that.

Further playing shows running two downloads simultaneously and no stalls. Slight speed dip halfway through. Also video streaming seems to stall, eg running a 3mb stream from this site with Andrew demonstrating the I-plate. The stream stalled a couple of times but the video didnt. Might do with higher bandwidth video though.

Edited by Banger (Sat 10-Dec-11 01:51:57)

Wow just read the back of the Billion box and it says. "Firmware may require modification for certain ADSL2/2+/Annex M DSLAMS". Just goes to show you should always read the box. Armed with this I shall be onto Billion on Monday, may have been barking up the right tree with the Aussie forum but dont know if they solved it.

Playing with Wireshark and a 100mb download (dont really know what Im doing) shows a lot of duplicate ACKs in red and re-transmission of a segments. Would this suggest error correction not working correctly or congestion in the router?

No idea. For interest have a look at http://ask.wireshark.org/questions/2133/triple-dupli... and http://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsug_html_chunked/ChAd...

Edited by deleted (Mon 12-Dec-11 09:04:43)

Thanks John, that article suggests to me that possible one or two segments are being lost somewhere along the transmission which is why the stream stops. I suspect the router as the speedtouch loses 1 segment now and again but doesn't stall. I may send it back to rule out hardware failure. Otherwise it looks like a firmware problem.

Well it's gone back for an exchange to rule out hardware problem.

Well here's a turn up for the books have been told by Broadband Buyer that they will not exchange as the problem will not be resolved. So looks like I'm stuck with a refund.

Have ordered last one from Amazon, we'll see if this is firmware or hardware. Hope it's not a bad batch although Billion cant repeat the problem.

I'm using the 7800N on 1.06e and don't get any such problems (with TalkTalk ADSL2+). If you still get the same problem with the replacement, then go to Config, ADSL Mode, WAN connection and only select Annex L and ADSL2+ ADSL2. If still no luck then try rolling back the firmware to 1.06d. (PM me if you want the 1.06d because i think Billion UK have stopped putting older firmware on their support website)

Let us know how you get on!

In reply to a post by Banger:

Well here's a turn up for the books have been told by Broadband Buyer that they will not exchange as the problem will not be resolved. So looks like I'm stuck with a refund.

Not good, as there maybe a potential fault with it, it's easy for someone sitting at the other end of a telephone to say that a replacement won't work for you, i would of said that i wanted a refund instead as the distance & selling law applies they have to replace or offer a refund within a certain time frame, even afterwards you still have the warranty period return to billion uk

Thanks for that but Billion sent me 1.06b and 1.06d to try with no difference. I tried every combination of ADSL2+ and Annex L, even G.DMT was doing it so I came to the conclusion the modem was borked or incompatible with my DSLAM. If the latter Billion will have to tweak the firmware to fix it. Weird thing is I'm on a Broadcom line card and you would have thought that would be ultra compatible with the Billions broadcom chipset.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Well here's a turn up for the books have been told by Broadband Buyer that they will not exchange as the problem will not be resolved. So looks like I'm stuck with a refund.

Not good, as there maybe a potential fault with it, it's easy for someone sitting at the other end of a telephone to say that a replacement won't work for you, i would of said that i wanted a refund instead as the distance & selling law applies they have to replace or offer a refund within a certain time frame, even afterwards you still have the warranty period return to billion uk

I was working with Billion support and the idea of a replacement was to rule out hardware but BB Buyer wasn't having it. They were quick with the refund but never replied to my email about what testing they had done.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Thanks for that but Billion sent me 1.06b and 1.06d to try with no difference. I tried every combination of ADSL2+ and Annex L, even G.DMT was doing it so I came to the conclusion the modem was borked or incompatible with my DSLAM. If the latter Billion will have to tweak the firmware to fix it. Weird thing is I'm on a Broadcom line card and you would have thought that would be ultra compatible with the Billions broadcom chipset.

How did you find out about the line card being Broadcom?

Harry

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

How did you find out about the line card being Broadcom? Harry

Depending on your router the info will be available via the interface or telnet.

For me I see this: Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / TSTC

Thomson / Texas Instruments

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Thanks for that but Billion sent me 1.06b and 1.06d to try with no difference. I tried every combination of ADSL2+ and Annex L, even G.DMT was doing it so I came to the conclusion the modem was borked or incompatible with my DSLAM. If the latter Billion will have to tweak the firmware to fix it. Weird thing is I'm on a Broadcom line card and you would have thought that would be ultra compatible with the Billions broadcom chipset.

How did you find out about the line card being Broadcom?

Harry

The Speedtouch identified it as BDCM which the DMT program says is Broadcom.

Thanks guys, after a few g**gle searches I tried telnet,

# adslctl info --vendor
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: ShowtimeRetrain Reason: 0
Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 448 Kbps, Downstream rate = 4288 Kbps
ChipSet Vendor Id: TSTC:0x 0
ChipSet VersionNumber: 0x 0
ChipSet SerialNumber:

Harry

Got the replacement today and its still stalling during 200mb downloads. Billion are looking in to it.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Got the replacement today and its still stalling during 200mb downloads. Billion are looking in to it.

maybe the dslam doesn't like the billion, for some strange reason or other ,or the issue is with the kit at the exchange line card ect

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Got the replacement today and its still stalling during 200mb downloads. Billion are looking in to it.

maybe the dslam doesn't like the billion, for some strange reason or other ,or the issue is with the kit at the exchange line card ect

Yes but my £5 ebay speedtouch doesn't do it, cant believe a really old speedtouch is more compatible with line card than a brand new Billion.

Can someone with a Billion 7800 or N tell me what their router MTU is set to in the PPPoA profile. Mine was 1492 have changed to 1500 as the syslog was saying "unable to set mtu to 1500" a few times and stalls are less frequent.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Can someone with a Billion 7800 or N tell me what their router MTU is set to in the PPPoA profile. Mine was 1492 have changed to 1500 as the syslog was saying "unable to set mtu to 1500" a few times and stalls are less frequent.

MTU is set to 1492, which seems to be the default for PPPoA on my 7800N running firmware version 1.06e.

p

In reply to a post by prinknash:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Can someone with a Billion 7800 or N tell me what their router MTU is set to in the PPPoA profile. Mine was 1492 have changed to 1500 as the syslog was saying "unable to set mtu to 1500" a few times and stalls are less frequent.

MTU is set to 1492, which seems to be the default for PPPoA on my 7800N running firmware version 1.06e.

p

You could try 1478 or 1472 see which gives the best performance, your internal set up, wireless or Ethernet cable from router to pc ? what is the mtu set to on the pc? one sure way to find out if it's something related to the billion router or not is if you know someone with a different isp say be/02 or bt even and ask them if they wouldn't mind trying it on their connection, if it still does the same then it's related to the billion if not then it's your isp or the way in it's network is configured

In reply to a post by Banger:

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Got the replacement today and its still stalling during 200mb downloads. Billion are looking in to it.

maybe the dslam doesn't like the billion, for some strange reason or other ,or the issue is with the kit at the exchange line card ect

Yes but my £5 ebay speedtouch doesn't do it, cant believe a really old speedtouch is more compatible with line card than a brand new Billion.

Doesn't the ST have another make of chipset to that of the Billion, that's maybe the reason???

Mac

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by Banger:

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

maybe the dslam doesn't like the billion, for some strange reason or other ,or the issue is with the kit at the exchange line card ect

Yes but my £5 ebay speedtouch doesn't do it, cant believe a really old speedtouch is more compatible with line card than a brand new Billion.

Doesn't the ST have another make of chipset to that of the Billion, that's maybe the reason???

Mac

Same make, Broadcom but obviously different chipset and firmware.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Got the replacement today and its still stalling during 200mb downloads. Billion are looking in to it.

I presume you didn't go for the 7800N as you don't need wireless, however no 7800N reviewer (at least in UK)has mentioned this downloads stalling problem which you're experiencing because i'm sure many will also be connecting to broadcom gear at their dslam (even though the 7800N and 7800 are supposed to have the same Broadcom 6358 chipset). If the problem persists, It might be worth asking Billion support if you can directly send them the 7800 in return for a new/refurbished 7800N. Pretty sure you won't have any problems with the 7800N
PS
Billion support are normally very good so keep hassling them to get this sorted out ASAP.

MTU on my 7800N is set as 1492 - don't think the router will allow you to set anything higher. However you should check what the optimum MTU for your connection is by following these simple steps:

1.Go to Start and select Run.

2.Type in cmd (Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7) or command (Windows 98/ME) into the Open: field. Hit the enter key or click OK. The DOS prompt should open.

3.At the DOS prompt, type in ping bbc.co.uk -f -l 1492 and hit the Enter key.

4.If you get the response "Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set", lower the size the packet in increments of +/-10 (e.g. 1472, 1462, 1440, 1400) until you have a packet size that does not fragment.

5.Now increase the packet size from this number in small increments until you find the largest size that does not fragment. Add 28 to that number (IP/ICMP headers) to get the optimal MTU setting. For example, if the largest packet size from ping tests is 1462, add 28 to 1462 to get a total of 1490 which is the optimal MTU setting and can be put in your router's settings!

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Got the replacement today and its still stalling during 200mb downloads. Billion are looking in to it.

I presume you didn't go for the 7800N as you don't need wireless, however no 7800N reviewer (at least in UK)has mentioned this downloads stalling problem which you're experiencing because i'm sure many will also be connecting to broadcom gear at their dslam (even though the 7800N and 7800 are supposed to have the same Broadcom 6358 chipset). If the problem persists, It might be worth asking Billion support if you can directly send them the 7800 in return for a new/refurbished 7800N. Pretty sure you won't have any problems with the 7800N
PS
Billion support are normally very good so keep hassling them to get this sorted out ASAP.

I would prefer to sort out this one I have. Weird thing is if I set up multiple streams on a download eg DownthemAll on Firefox, no problem and can hammer my connection with max speed. One single download/stream and you get the 1 second pauses/TCP timeouts. Billion have escalated it to engineers. TBH it's pretty hard to spot unless you have a meter and monitor every download or video stream. Downloads are not a prob I have found a workaround but 3 mbit HD video streams maybe as it will cause pausing.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by prinknash:

In reply to a post by Banger:

Can someone with a Billion 7800 or N tell me what their router MTU is set to in the PPPoA profile. Mine was 1492 have changed to 1500 as the syslog was saying "unable to set mtu to 1500" a few times and stalls are less frequent.

MTU is set to 1492, which seems to be the default for PPPoA on my 7800N running firmware version 1.06e.

p

You could try 1478 or 1472 see which gives the best performance, your internal set up, wireless or Ethernet cable from router to pc ? what is the mtu set to on the pc? one sure way to find out if it's something related to the billion router or not is if you know someone with a different isp say be/02 or bt even and ask them if they wouldn't mind trying it on their connection, if it still does the same then it's related to the billion if not then it's your isp or the way in it's network is configured

PC MTU is 1492, tried a whole bunch of MTU settings on the Billion and it just seemed to adjust the time period at which the stalls happen which is pretty random and sometimes not at all just depends how the router is feeling.

Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1500 bytes -> ..fragmented
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 750 bytes ->bytes=750 time=130ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1125 bytes ->bytes=1125 time=135ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1312 bytes ->bytes=1312 time=138ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1406 bytes ->bytes=1406 time=137ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1453 bytes ->bytes=1453 time=138ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1476 bytes -> ..fragmented
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1464 bytes ->bytes=1464 time=138ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1470 bytes ->bytes=1470 time=138ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1473 bytes -> ..fragmented
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1471 bytes ->bytes=1471 time=139ms TTL=52
Pinging [68.67.73.20] with 1472 bytes ->bytes=1472 time=138ms TTL=52
The largest possible non-fragmented packet is 1472 (1500 - 28 ICMP & IP headers).
You can set your MTU to 1500

I used TCP Optimizer from Speedguid,net which does the hard work for you. Gonna try some different window sizes see if that makes any difference.

Edited by Banger (Wed 21-Dec-11 08:50:27)

1.06f is out tomorrow. Billion are going to send it to me to try.

In reply to a post by Banger:

1.06f is out tomorrow. Billion are going to send it to me to try.

Cool, let us know how you find 1.06f. Might even try it myself

1.06f has been delayed due to bugs. One good thing my line has been up 7 days without a drop at 2db SNR despite the throughput probs which seem fairly random now.

I have a new problem it reboots after so many days uptime. :|

Finally got a reply from Billion engineers on the download pauses.

"Dear UK,



If user download such a big files, Router will temporarily pause the network and will do regularly defragmented refresh on system memory inside to avoid Interruption occurs.

This does not affect to the files download failed for your further information. "

So looks like a memory problem, have asked when this will be fixed.

*Update*

No further help from Billion presume they are still looking at it but they did say they cant repeat it in the Lab.

I'm beginning to wonder if it is the linecard or MSAN. I can hammer downloads with multiple streams eg 4 and no pauses occur on say a 500 mb download file. Would of thought if it was the router it would still pause no matter how many streams. It's a puzzle. Max speed is 2.0 mb/s but with pauses, if there are a lot of them speed can drop to 1.5 mb/s. Multiple streams and it averages at 2.0 mb/s.