UPC "Drop-outs" of late, going insane

ED E

Started at 0.5 Mb then sped up a little:



Then straight back to

Mr. CooL ICE

Been having this lately too. It will be dodgy for about half an hour and then fine for a few hours. I ran a ping -t test to google.ie for about an hour one day and was getting about 3% packet loss. The pings were jumping from ~20ms up to 3-4 figure ping times. No real pattern. Horribly annoying trying to play games.

Located in Sandyford, Dublin

Morf

Wireless on my oldish laptop (5 years +) just refuses to work at this stage.

Dunno if it's a wireless adapter issue or this IPv6 business.

A wired connection was giving me no joy with it for a while there too.

Desktop (wired) has been pretty decent lately, very few issues.

ED E

Huge packet loss, dropped to 2Mb. Mid upload portion of test connection died, 60s later back perfect.

Morf

My old laptop is basically useless unless wired at this stage.

Can't be bothered hoping it'll work when 80%+ of the time it either doesn't see the network or does but only has limited connectivity.

My phone Samsung Galaxy S3 mini is a lot better but I'll get whatsapp/emails up to 2 hour late on occasion. It won't like mobile internet take over either (where wifi isn't available). Quite annoying.

beauf

Morf wrote: »

Wireless on my oldish laptop (5 years +) just refuses to work at this stage.

Dunno if it's a wireless adapter issue or this IPv6 business.

A wired connection was giving me no joy with it for a while there too.

Desktop (wired) has been pretty decent lately, very few issues.

I'm having the same issue. With my old setup Atlanta modem/TP Link router, pretty solid wifi. All devices worked with it. With the new TC7200 I have very unreliable WiFi, some devices just don't like it. But wired connections are fine. Last 3 or 4 days its been especially bad.

ED E

Thanks for replies guys but this thread isnt about wireless clients, just the WAN link going down.

That said, wireless in their CPE is getting worse and worse. Get over to talk2UPC and let them know you arent impressed.

Morf

ED E wrote: »

Thanks for replies guys but this thread isnt about wireless clients, just the WAN link going down.

That said, wireless in their CPE is getting worse and worse. Get over to talk2UPC and let them know you arent impressed.

My wan has vastly improved. Can't specifically remember a loss of wired service but i'd hazard a guess at two minor ones since I last posted.

ED E

Its only making 40Mb even after reboot. 110-130ms to Amsterdam.

beauf

I'm getting 60~77mb / 8~9.55mb with about 22ms ping. through a powerline adapter.

Whats "wireless in their CPE" ?

degsie

beauf wrote: »

I'm getting 60~77mb / 8~9.55mb with about 22ms ping. through a powerline adapter.

Whats "wireless in their CPE" ?

CPE = Customer Premise Equipment = Modem/Router

ED E

degsie

ED E wrote: »

What's the big deal? You are faster than 52% of other IE users :eek:

ED E

IKR. I get up to 12Mbps from 3G if I go out into the garden, may as well just use that ^^.

ED E

UPC

ED E

Then back to:

ED E

Two reboots/stops today, about 60-90s each.

kk887

ED E wrote: »

Two reboots/stops today, about 60-90s each.

this happened a lot to me during the weekend or mid day or the evening.

I need that upc guy to write a letter to confirmed that this is caused by the cable inside the wall is damage and then I can talk to my landlady about this. But he never reply. I start to think that this cable inside the wall is damaged is their bs talk as every single time I did a complain, my network will be find for the week without any other issue.

and the other concern to backup this thought is that my up speed is no issue at all! if my cable is really damaged then why the upload speed didnt affect?

or perhaps they are different wire inside that cable?

ED E

kk887 wrote: »

this happened a lot to me during the weekend or mid day or the evening.

I need that upc guy to write a letter to confirmed that this is caused by the cable inside the wall is damage and then I can talk to my landlady about this. But he never reply. I start to think that this cable inside the wall is damaged is their bs talk as every single time I did a complain, my network will be find for the week without any other issue.

and the other concern to backup this thought is that my up speed is no issue at all! if my cable is really damaged then why the upload speed didnt affect?

or perhaps they are different wire inside that cable?

Thats a different issue to mine, you should make a new thread for it. Probably in their Talk2 Forum here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1546

ED E

Calibos

I'm assuming you long ago ruled out contention ED E. In my case with my full speed 24/7/365 UPC connection I am doubly lucky in that my local node or whatever they call it is only 2 years old as is the house to house cabling. I also live in a mixed business/residential area where most of the residents are older and likely not heavy users.

IIRC you've also ruled out issues with your EPC. Remember I resolved the issue I had with my connection at the beginning by putting a fan on my EPC3925 and bridging it to an ASUS router that didn't overheat under our heavy usage load. ie You've ruled out the seasonal ambient/central heating temp issues I thought I could discern from anecdotal connection problem reports I was reading here.

However. Have you ever correlated your connection episodes with rain? Has UPC ever checked your local cabinet or cabling for you? Does everyone on your road experience these episodes or maybe only those from a certain house down the line. EG.if it turned out these episodes occured only in the hours after rain then it might warrant investigation of the local infrastructure by UPC. I only thought of this due to the heavy rain today and then seeing your post showing another 'episode'

kk887

ED E wrote: »

I dont know is my real problem relate to yours or not but I can say that I am having connectivity problem around that time as well. This is odd as whenever you posted in this thread, I mostly will have connection issue as well.

ED E

Calibos wrote: »

However. Have you ever correlated your connection episodes with rain? Has UPC ever checked your local cabinet or cabling for you? Does everyone on your road experience these episodes or maybe only those from a certain house down the line. EG.if it turned out these episodes occured only in the hours after rain then it might warrant investigation of the local infrastructure by UPC. I only thought of this due to the heavy rain today and then seeing your post showing another 'episode'

Good suggestion, but if it was water ingression on the cabling or kit a reboot wouldnt solve it.

I think Im going to revisit the heat thing just in case.

kk887 wrote: »

I dont know is my real problem relate to yours or not but I can say that I am having connectivity problem around that time as well. This is odd as whenever you posted in this thread, I mostly will have connection issue as well.

If its them BSing you then maybe its the same issue, nothing to do with cabling.


PS:

kk887

Yesterday morning, my speed is around 5mb and then it drop out completely until midnight. It gave me back the connection for 10-15mins and then disconnected till now.

UPC saying they will send another tech to come have a look tomorrow.

ED E

I checked heat with a temperature probe before, and while it did seem fine I could only measure one point at a time. Casing did seem pretty warm some times and as theres not much else I can do, so I made this modification last night. We'll see how it goes.

beauf

How are you powering that.

My old netgear died probably from overheating. I often thought a USB fan, or even sitting them on a laptop cooler might help reliability.

I don't know if the USB ports on the Router supply power though.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Quick-and-easy-router-cooler/

Probably not a bad idea to turn off the router now and then perhaps with a remote switch or timer. having the modem separate to the horizon box. means it won't interfere with TV recording.

ED E

A timer is something I considered, but tbh it'd be sad to have to resort to that.


The USB ports would supply 500mA(or close to). Its an old 12v fan though so I have an old DC adjustable PSU powering it at 6v to get medium RPMs. Its audible though, so if this ends up being a working solution I'll be sorting out something quieter and more permanent.

beauf

ED E wrote: »

A timer is something I considered, but tbh it'd be sad to have to resort to that. ....

It worked for my old router. But then it was long past saving at that point. I used to stack it on top of the old modem. Without realising this was a really bad idea. The Timer keep it working for a bit longer.

Calibos

When I did my ghetto fan mod for my EPC3925, I used a spare 120mm PC case fan, cut off the fan connector, found a spare USB cable, cut off on end, joined the black and red wires of the USB and fan together and bobs your uncle. Fan runs at 5v off the USB service port on the back of the Router.

That said, I wouldn't get your hopes up ED E. While I reckon my connection drops were down to the router overheating, the connection dropped completely IIRC. I didn't get any of this 1-5mbit malarkey. You never know though. Could be that it was my ambient temp combined with constant hammering of the router with 20 local devices and hundreds of torrent peers would knock out my connection in the space if seconds when the router temps reached a tipping point whereas in your case maybe it takes longer to overheat because you aren't hammering it as much and your connection slows down as the router overheats but never to the extent of mine and thus your connection hangs in there and stays up, albeit at a drastically reduced speed.

[Edit] Just had a look at my Ghetto Router Fan Setup and it appears I had the foresight to us some Molex to 3/4 pin fan adapters that must have come with some of my fans at some point. ie. I didn't cut the fan connector off my 120mm PC Case fan meaning it can be re-used for its original purpose in the future. Instead it is plugged into one of the Molex to 3/4 pin fan connector adaptors and it is the molex on the other end of the adapter I cut off in order to join the black and red wires to the USB cable.

Gone West

I have the same issue.
UPC are an embarrassment.
The routers are crap. They should provide their customers with something reasonable that can handle the load.