EE BrightBox unreliable / disconnections / packets lost??

Hey guys - I've noticed a lot of problems have been figured out here so I'm here to post my own. I tried finding something similar but it seems each issue is it's own;

Here it is and no surprise : I have issues with my BrightBox. I recently moved in with my partner who lives with her sister. My partner who plays games regularly had zero issues while on Sky broadband&router but in order to pick up a phone package too her sister foolishly went with EE broadband (aka Orange aka our wireless routers never worked) and have been receiving worsening issues since my moving in with the two of us using the network simultaneously. This, in it's entirety, leads me to believe it is the router's fault but EE (rather, the script on the phone) are so very reluctant to simply replace or upgrade it.

During games such as League of Legends and Vindictus I often lose connection without warning or regularity, videos on youtube sometimes stop entirely until I refresh/move the bar to unloaded part and streams on other sites perform drastically worse and even my android phone has troubles staying connected on apps.

Now, multiply that by 2 because my partner has the same issues entirely. It is in trying to play the games together that the BrightBox fails the easiest, during League I'll get "reconnecting" every 5-15 minutes on my own but if we both play at the same time it'll never reconnect for one of us. Vindictus might manage up to an hour or two on my own because it's local hosting but if two of us play it's 3 minutes at the best until we both dc. Putting the phones on top of that at the same time can seriously axe any time to nothing as well.

It's been like this for a while so I ran through various speedtest websites and noticed that one of them would often return 100% packets lost (a bug on their side but enlightening nonetheless) - so I put on a program called WinMTR and it showed that while pinging 1byte of data every 0.1s (I figured this was as close to gaming activity) to google.com I was losing 15% packets to 192.168.1.1, to the router(?) on the dot. Putting another WinMTR on at 1024bytes every 2s lead to there being 3% loss on 1024b and 28%+ loss on 1b - which seems colossal for a connection that claims in admin that: "Downstream Rate: 10403kbps Upstream Rate: 1219kbps".

WinMTR summary on 7th January

I also went through ISCI netalyzr and it's response was "Network buffer measurements (?): Uplink 6200 ms, Downlink 1400 ms" "This is quite high, and you may experience substantial disruption".

We got EE on the phone and they did the whole resetting the router, 'updating it on our end' speel and sent us away for a week. Same problems, phoned again, they ended up sending some guy (not an engineer) to replace the cover plate (filter?) on our internet port in the wall and again said wait a week because it'll 'update on their end'. However, the issue is still set in stone - at least 15% packets lost, hugely unreliable connection. Netalyzr had slight improvements, with the buffer measurement halved but still came up with red warning flags in the same places. Left it about a month now but it's still the exact same. Typically I've thought it worse during 'peak' times but since it's my holiday this week I'm still noticing issues when I wake up from 5am onwards.

Put on WinMTR again today and it's almost a carbon copy - there's only 9 hosts in total to get to google.com which might be an improvement but it's still the 15% on 1byte/0.1s, 3%/28% loss with 1024/2s and 1/0.1s. I tried out 1024/1s and 1/0.1s too which slapped 48/18% loss WinMTR from 12th March. It's as if two trains are trying to go down the same tunnel and are pushing each other off the rails like schoolboys for lunchtime.

Over at Netalyzr today: "Network buffer measurements (?): Uplink 1900 ms, Downlink 700 ms" "This is quite high, and you may experience substantial disruption". AND "DNS resolver properties (?): Lookup latency 1400 ms" "This is particularly slow, and you may see significant performance degradation as a result." Same issues as before, except the DNS for flavour now.

I'm not sure if those settings are unfair in a typical internet environment so if there's better ways to simulate activity I'll put that on asap.

I'm kinda of resentful to phone up EE again due to their bad service, script reading and gross disregard for my own inspections so I was wondering if anyone has any clues as to where or what this issue is besides some sort of incompetency on the side of my ISP. Do they 'owe' me a functional router or do I just have to go and buy my own?

I looked around on the EE site for feedback as well, a couple saying that their Bell line (old phone line that could cause serious interference) could be still connected and that in System it says things about interference - is the following normal?

Defect/Failure Indication
Operation Data Upstream Downstream
Noise Margin 6.2 dB 11.4 dB
Line Attenuation 12.8 dB 30.5 dB

This is the length of my problems and frustrations with EE and any response would be great in order to work around it, thank you.

Robert.

New orange (EE) connection here. Same nightmare. Fighting all afternoon with Brightbox and overseas ignorance to get it up and running ... AGAIN! A bad bad move.
Trying Channel 11 here, as seems Brighty rather sickly in close proximity to other devices. Gonna pull my hacked HomeHub up here next visit.

Edited by professor973 (Wed 12-Mar-14 18:48:20)

ask EE support to send you a brightbox 2 much much more reliable and also has 5ghz wireless

it supports adsl/2/+ fibre in modem mode and fibre in ethernet mode

Thanks.

In reply to a post by Ianph:

ask EE support to send you a brightbox 2 much much more reliable and also has 5ghz wireless

it supports adsl/2/+ fibre in modem mode and fibre in ethernet mode

That sounds good, I'll give that a try thank you.

Hi Robert

There's nothing to suggest the router is at fault specifically.

When apps/games are not connecting have you checked if the devices are still connected to the router and if the broadband is in sync?

Can you post the full ADSL stats from Advanced settings/Status and include the Time Connected?

In reply to a post by vimto_girl:

Hi Robert

There's nothing to suggest the router is at fault specifically.

When apps/games are not connecting have you checked if the devices are still connected to the router and if the broadband is in sync?

Can you post the full ADSL stats from Advanced settings/Status and include the Time Connected?

I've not really checked that yet - however when I do lose connections to these games I try to load up google to check the internet itself is still going and that works out fine. Not sure about how to check if the broadband is in sync mind you.

As for my asdl status:


INTERNET
Broadband Type: ADSL
Broadband State: Connected
Internet State: Connected
Time Connected: 13:58:58
Downstream Rate: 10403kbps
Upstream Rate: 1219kbps

This page shows information about your ADSL connection if applicable.

Status
Configured Current
Line Status --- SHOWTIME
Link Type --- Fast Path
Operation Mode Automatic G992.5(ADSL2+)
Data Rate Information
Stream Type Actual Data Rate
Upstream 1219 (Kbps.)
Downstream 10403 (Kbps.)
Defect/Failure Indication
Operation Data Upstream Downstream
Noise Margin 5.9 dB 12.3 dB
Line Attenuation 12.8 dB 30.5 dB
Indicator Name Near End Indicator Far End Indicator
Output Power 12.1 dBm 0.0 dBm
Fast Path FEC Correction 0 0
Interleaved Path FEC Correction NA NA
Fast Path CRC Error 1374 12
Interleaved Path CRC Error NA NA
Loss of Signal Defect 0 0
Fast Path HEC Error STR 5138 5
Interleaved Path HEC Error NA NA
Error Seconds 1216 7
Statistics
Received Cells 8230921
Transmitted Cells 1599837

Thanks for the response.

error seconds look a bit high to me and also noise margin is a bit high and if that was at the standard 6db instead of 12db you would easily get 2-3meg more download speed

do you have any phone extensions/ alarms cables coming from the master phone socket?

In reply to a post by Ianph:

error seconds look a bit high to me and also noise margin is a bit high and if that was at the standard 6db instead of 12db you would easily get 2-3meg more download speed

do you have any phone extensions/ alarms cables coming from the master phone socket?

In terms of our meg rating, we were at 7 before he came and it went up to that 10 after he changed the filter and they messed around but it's the reliability I'm after - at current we have the main phone plugged into it as well while the asdl is in what seems to be a separate part, like so:

http://i.imgur.com/0GbCNaD.jpg

I did end up with

Indicator Name Near End Indicator Far End Indicator
Output Power 12.1 dBm 0.0 dBm
Fast Path FEC Correction 0 0
Interleaved Path FEC Correction NA NA
Fast Path CRC Error 1696 12
Interleaved Path CRC Error NA NA
Loss of Signal Defect 0 0
Fast Path HEC Error STR 6206 5
Interleaved Path HEC Error NA NA
Error Seconds 1508 7

After 3 hours this morning, but I was trying to set the DNS server to a certain IP, which lead to completely negating browsing so I just reverted it to obtain from ISP which may have caused the majority of that.

could you also post the attenuation and noise margin figures too please

best way to show those figures is right after a reboot of the router, power down router > leave for 30 secs > power back on and then obtain all of the stats and post them here