ISDN stuffed

Moriarty

My ISDN is really terribly stuffed. Usually I get steady 7.8k/sec downloads and a generally very acceptable connection over it, but recently there has been some sort of an intermittent fault on the line. For a day or two at a time I will be able to connect fine and latency will still be normal, but bandwidth will be severly hit. I'm talking <0.5k/sec transfer rates with it timing out regularly - web pages take minutes to load properly when they are usually loaded almost instantaneously.

Stranger still, when I open up a few of IE windows at the same time - loading up a number of threads here on boards for example - and I look at the status window for the dialup connection it seems to be downloading stuff at a fair whack, compareable to normal operation. Each page still takes an age to load though.. its like the individual TCP connections are getting killed after a second or two. I can play games that use UDP with nearly no noticeable impact on performance while the ISDN is playing up. I've tried dialling up on numerous ISPs (my normal surf no limits account aswell as eircom free dialup) and its the exact same across them all.

Anyone have any ideas what may be causing this? I'm stumped (The current 'crapness' is now entering its 4th day, the longest yet..)

Johnny Versace

Is the line from Eircom? Ring 1800493493 and get it tested.

Are you running both channels or single channel? Both channels will be called MLPPP or Multilink. Or else both single channel devices will be selected. You can find these in the Dial up networking properties.

The drivers could be shagged. Pop in your ISDN CD, go into system/device manager, remove the drivers (check under each heading to make sure you get them all), press OK, restart, they'll be copied across from the CD...

That's about it really.

Also, when is the last time you restarted the ISDN modem??

Good luck.

Moriarty

Yeah it's an eircom line, i'll ring and get it tested in a few minutes. I run single channel, but I've tested dual channel and the exact same problem is affecting it. I can't really see how the drivers (which have been rock solid) could suddenly deteriorate and then repair themselves. I'm using a popular asus TA.

(edit: btw, what's that eircom number for exactly? Just so I know who I'm talking to when they pick up )

Johnny Versace

Have you tried running individually on each channel? Maybe one is shagged. Sometimes when eircom test the ISDN line they only test the main channel, so it could miss the problem if it is with one of the channels.

I'd reinstall the drivers anyway just to be 100% certain.

Maybe even reinstall dial up networking? (add/remove programs/windows setup or something/untick communications/ok/retick communications)

Some of these may not be necessary, but I think it might be good to rule out what it isn't.

Moriarty

Just tried running each channel individually and reinstalled the TA drivers, no affect. So whats that eircom number for?

I have a feeling I'll be having a fun evening on hold with the fantastic people in eircom support..

Eurorunner

Eircom can't guarantee delivery of a functioning ISDN line due to the state of the lines in some cases as per my previous thread here

Moriarty

Gave them a ring (for reference the 1800493493 number is no longer, for basic rate ISDN you now have to go through 1901) and biddy tried to fob me off saying it was a problem with my ISP. Got her to do a line test and when she phoned back she said there weren't any problems with the line. She's reported it to the ISDN faults people, so apparently I can expect a call from them sometime tomorrow. Bleh.

Moriarty

Update: I've had eircom engineers out to me a number of times over the past week. They can't find any fault with the line. They've run resistance and voltage checks and both pass with flying colours (I saw the test being run in front of me). They also ran some sort of a loopback data send/recieve test with an overgrown handset (aurora? something like that) with no problems detected. I'm starting to come back to my terminal adapter as the possible cause of all this hassle. I've ran some diagnostics on the connection and there are an inordinate amount of frame errors on the B channel (>9,000 over 5 hours).

A new TA should be arriving on my doormatt monday morning, so one way or another I'll soon know more. If it doesn't resolve the problem I'll be back onto the engineer immediately to pester him further. If it does I'll be most annoyed with myself for not catching this sooner..

bkehoe

I encountered a problem like this at a place I did some work for once. Their isdn line was barely working with lots of errors. Got eircom out to have a look and it passed all their tests but after getting very insistant they ran some kind of check from the exchange which discovered a contact on the line (probably a branch of a tree or something), and had it fixed within a week.

captainpat

You didn't report any errors, just slow connection, so might be spyware. If you don't do it already, its worth running Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy, (get at Download.com, see Google). Spyware can seriously degrade web performance by reporting everything you do, taking much of your bandwidth.

Moriarty

I scan for spyware regularly, it's not the problem. The problem isn't that bandwidth is being soaked up by some unknown thing, it's that it simply isn't there to begin with.

I've also noticed that it seems to only affect TCP connections.. UDP for games etc seem unaffected which just confounds me totally.