Dropped packets?

Im seeing a lot of Red spikes in my BQM today, taken in conjunction with the router stats, does this look like a line fault or is it an ISP related thing? Im now more than mid way through my initial 12 month hitch so performance is being watched closely by me with a view to a possible move late this year.

Yesterday there was almost no red visible in the BQM today it is showing many spikes between 12 and 8 pm.

Router stats below,

Downstream Upstream
Attainable rate (kbit/s) 89108 25339
SNR margin (dB) 8.6 15.3
Line attenuation (dB) 0 0
Output power (dBmV) 13.3 7.5

Statistics

Path 1
Downstream Upstream
Line rate (kbit/s) 66998 19999
CRC errors 7047 0
FEC errors 177 370
HEC errors 2206 0

AFAIK router has been up for about 2 and a half days now.

Edited by deleted (Mon 06-Jul-15 22:36:28)

Wimbledon perhaps?

Don't forget that the ICMP pings are most likely to get lost in either direction so the performance of the link may be perfectly OK for real traffic and still BQM shows some packet loss.

It wasn't Wimbledon it seems... some days clear.. other days there are red spikes at strange times. Given that the line has a history of dropping connection on ADSL.. I wonder if this is part of the issue that caused to problems?

Ive been refitting the network with cat6 cables, the modem lead is now a 1 metre ADSL nation lead and soon there will be a filtered power strip in place.

Once that is done I might try the fritzbox back in VDSL mode.

Currently synced at 66998 and bt soeedtest shows us pulling down 65Mbps with a SNR of 8.6db downstream
CRC errors 15476 seems to be a high number though - DSL up time is currently 898882

Wondered why pages were taking an age to load tonight.. took a peek at my BQM and saw that the thole screen is coloured from top to bottom... what isn't blue is yellow with occasional red spikes.

Im so sick of the cruddy copper I am connected to... Again we see why the customer separation doesn't work... I can only shout at my ISP... NOT the incompetent muppets that have failed repeatedly to sort out this line

[edit]
Just put in a call to Vivaciti. They say it looks like a VLAN issue... its only 4 weeks since I was told we were on a hot VP... then told we were not... I'm sick of running in circles with this. its been over 10 years of ADSL/VDSL issues with this line.

Edited by deleted (Wed 15-Jul-15 21:43:23)

Ugh - that's horrible.

It doesn't feel like a line error, though.

Its still as bad this morning - although I just ran a BT test that returned 65 down and ZERO up..... I couldn't progress it to a tap3 test... absolutely useless. At one stage about 5 mins ago I had no navigation despite the HG612 stats showing me as connected.

Adium keeps showing a disconnected status, and it just took a couple of minutes to load a preview of this post (hence me adding to it now) I usually find Thinkbroadband is slow to load for me, but not THIS slow

Ive had enough of this. Im not going to put up with this every couple of weeks, it isnt fit for purpose.

The current BQM is almost like a switch. Dire from 4:15pm to 8am. No ramp-up, or ramp-down.

I'd agree that whatever the cause, it isn't fit for purpose.

Are you running something like BQM, but from inside to outside?
eg http://alternativeto.net/software/gping/

It eventually cleared and we had a few dats of a relatively clear BQM, but then this afternoon it strated with huge red patches again, and although speeds seem ok the packet loss indicated by the BQM and confirmed on the f8lure graph I sat up suggests all is not well.

Its pretty certain that come November I will be taking a good look at what is on offer with other ISP's - ones that DONT use Enta.

In reply to a post by warweezil:

It eventually cleared and we had a few dats of a relatively clear BQM, but then this afternoon it strated with huge red patches again, and although speeds seem ok the packet loss indicated by the BQM and confirmed on the f8lure graph I sat up suggests all is not well.

This is with a Fritz!Box, right? Suspend the f8lure (plus A&A if applicable) logging.

I'd be interested if this clears things up. I had similar graphs - I recognise the shape of the red packet loss!

Simon.

The Fritz is behind the 612 running in router mode, I set up f8lure because the TB BQM was showing red, wanted to see it from another perspective, the BQM shows the problem as blocks that start off about half way down the graph and then tapering away over a couple of hours. f8lure seems to agree with the analysis - as shown here. - on the full graph the red runs bottom to top.

Im wondering if others on Vivaciti are seeing this or if it is a feature of the exchange, a few weeks ago I was told I was on a hot VP, then - on calling back in a week as instructed for an update I was told as far as they could tell there had been no VP issue at my exchange, nothing like clear information...

Im thinking about getting a filtered power strip (read somewhere that it helped a few people with Fritz units) and then trying the fritz as a modem again, see if the drops still happen, for clarity the line drops were always an issue on ADSL and seem to have carried over to VDSL to a smaller degree.

I do think the Fritz!Box drops pings if it receives too many, and this is what you're now seeing. I spent weeks with AVM and Plusnet support with similar looking graphs. Both with and without the HG612 and with a UPS.

Disable F8lure. (Does F8lure also enable an A&A ping? This may take a day or so to be cancelled).

Simon.

In reply to a post by bet_here:

I do think the Fritz!Box drops pings if it receives too many, and this is what you're now seeing. I spent weeks with AVM and Plusnet support with similar looking graphs. Both with and without the HG612 and with a UPS.

Disable F8lure. (Does F8lure also enable an A&A ping? This may take a day or so to be cancelled).

Simon.

Could well be, some devices do rate limit ICMP to prevent them being flooded with ping requests. Although any decent bit of kit I would expect to expose that setting in the firewall config or at least on the command line.

I have done.... but don't overlook the fact that that I set up f8lure to check the packet loss that I was seeing through the Thinkbroadband BQM, which is that some days there is almost no red, other days there are huge blocks of it, if it was down to the router I'm sure the red packet loss "blocks" would be a consistent and daily feature.

The BQM graph was just as "noisy" pre Fritz when I had a HGV2700 on ADSL/ADSL2+, it was worse on Enta than when I moved to Vivaciti for an LLU service from Enta/IPSC, and returned when Vivaciti moved me back to WBC/Enta (BT had suddenly upgraded the exchange to WBC after TalkTalk arrived) - I should have dumped Vivaciti then

It's difficult because if the router is ICMP rate limiting then as to if you see that happening or not depends on what is pinging your IP at a given time, just because you didn't have a test pinging it doesn't mean someone else isn't...

Of course it might not be rate limiting and you really are seeing a lot of packet-loss, difficult to tell.

Some routers Implement rate limiting/anti-ddos settings they don't expose to the user.

In reply to a post by warweezil:

The BQM graph was just as "noisy" pre Fritz

Hi warweezil. Before the Fritz!Box was the red packet loss the same 'shape' - big triangles of packet loss. I've been trying to find some old BQM's from my line, but can only find a thumbnail. There wasn't always the 100% loss and it often looked like yours. I suspended the f8lure ping, and it cleared up around midnight the next day. Re-enabling f8lure resumed the packet loss, and cancelling again cleared up around the say time. May just have been co-incidence though, which is why I'd be interested to see what happens to yours tonight.

I have started f8lure on my line - just after 6pm. Here's my BQM

edit - and stopped f8lure around 8:30pm

My Broadband Ping

Edited by bet_here (Tue 21-Jul-15 02:42:30)

Looks familiar.. mine stopped earlier, now i will have to watch the bqm for the next packet loss spike.

In reply to a post by warweezil:

Looks familiar.. mine stopped earlier, now i will have to watch the bqm for the next packet loss spike.

But you won't be able to tell if it's the Fritz!Box that's dropping the packets or not. See my BQM above - even the small amount of loss between 6 and 7pm was probably the Fritz.

You would probably need to unlock the HG612 and have that respond to the pings.

Simon.

The 612 is unlocked. I only get to play around with this stuff at weekends, the weekdays are too full with work and running around for 2 disabled family members, I usually (not always) get a day to myself at the weekends so maybe this weekend I will do something with it.

The underlying problem is that the BQM graph for my enta connection has too many days when it is really "noisy", BTw Speedtest suggests the throughput is currently ok ( the low speed issues of a few weeks ago seem to have disappeared for now) so what I am seeing would seem to be an issue within Enta - Its ok at the moment.

My gut feeling is that a migration is called for.

Related to this, do you find that these forums take a few seconds to open? for some reason the pages here seem to lag compared to pretty much every other site I visit regularly.

In reply to a post by warweezil:

My gut feeling is that a migration is called for.

Understood. I felt the same way with Plusnet. Really happy with my move to Zen.

I see your BQM has had a few red spikes in the past 24 hours. Are these re-syncs?