PPPoE Disconnect BT HH5

I'm connected to a VDSL cabinet 1.4km away. I was getting around 14 mbps down and 1 mbps up. About two months the internet kept going away 10 to 20 times a day. On investigation the hub light stayed blue and DSL connection was maintained but looking at the logs the PPPoE was disconnecting and taking around 5 minutes to sort itself out. Talked with BT who where mindbogglingly useless and did offer to send an engineer but threatened me with charges if they deemed it to be my fault, strangely they where not keen that they paid me the same charge for my time if it was their fault. I've parked the engineer as I'm sure he know nothing of PPPoE issue and simply test the line and declare it fine. Routing through the various forums, I'm not the only one with this issue. The best fix I'm found so far is sticking a BT modem before the hub. I put an ECI in place and I've a stable line again BUT at a cost of dropping to 10 mbps and an extra 10ms of ping.

As part of the East Sussex BDUK contact 2, it does look as if my VDSL will be moved to a new all in one cab 50m from me in a few months, so I'm not rabidly desperate to resolve this issue as even with modem I should get top speed (finger crossed), but if anyone knows a better fix for this PPPoE issue I'd be super grateful.


BT Home Hub 5 (Type A) | Software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.222.1.1 | Last updated 22/02/16

Edited by deleted (Fri 12-Aug-16 12:32:46)

We have been getting loads of PPPoE or PPPoA (cannot remember what one it was) Disconnects on and off for ages for our ADSL connection, overseas support said there is no issues at all and to ignore it, told them that we cannot ignore it due to we loose connection that sometimes has been an hour or two and was a bit hard to know the exact time due to the HH logs are full of these PPPo# errors.

I did find out later that it was a BT internal issue which was still listed at least a week ago on my parents BT account as listed faults.

Paul

Ok, I just checked my HH4 logs and it was loosing the PPPoA connection.

Paul

I'm reasonably sure that the issue that I have is a software bug. It didn't used to happen, the line stats have remained the same, I can only think that a problem go introduced on a code update to the HUB 5 or perhaps an update to the DSLAM, that conflicts with the hub under certain circumstances. Problem is that BT don't seem to recognise "software issues" and the only route they seem to have is to send a bloke out with a ladder and a hard hat. I've asked repeatedly if someone in third line support has reviews the logs that I've supplied but the answer is "we'll send out an engineer", which looking at the various forums where this issue has been surfaced, has lead to no result except for the customer being told "Your line is fine". I think I'll treat myself to a new router.

Check your Connection time for both "Internet Connection Configuration" and "Line Status" not got a HH5 so the settings and pages might be different.

But when the PPP goes down you still remain connected to the exchange so the two connection times then differ a lot.

Paul

In reply to a post by plankton:

I'm reasonably sure that the issue that I have is a software bug. It didn't used to happen, the line stats have remained the same, I can only think that a problem go introduced on a code update to the HUB 5 or perhaps an update to the DSLAM, that conflicts with the hub under certain circumstances.

It is important to remember that the PPPoE disconnection is likely not the root issue. More likely, it is a symptom of a deeper problem.

It is normal for the end initiating a PPP connection (in your case, the HH5) to send periodic LCP echo requests - like a ping, but at a lower level of the protocol stack. If several of these LCP echo requests fail to produce a reply, the PPP connection is torn down (a disconnection) and re-established.

It's also possible for the end terminating the PPP connection to tear down the connection. This can happen if the termination point notices the connection is dead because traffic isn't being responded to, or for management reasons such as the ISP rebalancing load between its gateways.


The PPP disconnection might be because there is a temporary drop out of the DSL - maybe not enough to knock it out of sync, but enough to cause a break in data transmission. If the router shows statistics for errored seconds and severely errored seconds, that might help in understanding what is wrong.


Replacing your router with something different is a reasonable way ahead, as it eliminates possible causes at your end. However, if replacing the router cures the problem, that does not necessary mean there was a software bug - it might be that there was an incipient hardware failure.


Paul - it's usual to use PPPoA over ADSL / ADSL2 / ADSL2+ and PPPoE over VDSL2. The operation of the PPP layer is the same, even though the layers underneath work differently.

David, Thank you for your sage thoughts. I think that purchasing a nice new router makes sense as It will, as a minimum, give me better WiFi than the BT offerings, even if this doesn't resolve the PPPoE issue. I have to think that a move to a shiny new all in one cabinet on 73m of line in 5-7 weeks will be a definitive PPPoE cure.