UPC connection dropping

Mister Gooey

The broadband (when up and running) is great and will only get better. They are investing in their network unlike Eircom!

rogue-entity

Intermittant service issues here too. Their broadband service is well worth it, when it's working. Their TV service is what I would describe as 'adequate' compared to similar issues had with Sky+HD.

First service outage we had was caused by a line fault which was fixed the following morning. Things were fine after that for several months until last winter when the service was going out every other night for an hour or so at a time. Call from UPC later informed us that these were necessary upgrades.

Speeds were pretty consistant 15-18Mbps during off-peak moments and around 10-15 during peak moments on the 20Mbit connection. Following the upgrade speeds dropped to about 10-15 consistantly regardless of the time of day. Following the outages on Monday they've been more stable at around 18-22Mbit but still short of the full 30 that they advertise and upload speeds remain consistant at 1-1.5Mbit, about half of the 3Mbit they advertise.

I would think 25-28Mbit/sec during off-peak hours should be a given and and idealistic during peak hours (2-2.5Mbit/sec for upload speed).. but so far the service hasn't approached that.
So Im curious if it's something that UPC could solve.. or if just everyone's copped onto the faster-after-midnight speeds and running torrents/downloads overnight, a bit like everyone else is copping onto using the Industrial Estate as a way to bypass cork road traffic in the morning.

Im starting to wish I'd switched to Magnet and at least I'd have a broadband service that didn't fail during power-cuts.

minced_alive

Ardmore3 wrote: »

Minced Alive - did they give you a new modem? I had similar issues and a new modem (the Cisco modem/router - disabled) fixed the issues. I also use the Linksys Wrt610N as my router and have had no issues since. UPC are doing un-announced work on their cable network and this I think is what pi***s people off. So tv, broadband etc will be effected no matter what we do!

Nope, I still have EPC2203. At some point 2nd level tech decided to do forced firmware upgrade/use new TFTP boot file as there were (allegedly) some network changes. For a while I thought it fixed the issue, but I was wrong.

The problem is that I can't afford to stay home anymore, had about 4 techs calling in with one more appointment missed with no result whatsoever.

My expectations aren't high given the fact I was in the BB business myself for a while (as a tech), so I know exactly what to expect. I can live with most of the problems, don't expect 24x7 support, can live with a few outages/year, but intermittent L1/L2/L3 issues and their incompetent help desk is to much to digest.

I know that my 80 quid/month won't make any difference, but what p*sses me off is that a company focusing on residential market gives a sh*t about its customers and does everything it can to deter them.

minced_alive

Ardmore3 wrote: »

The broadband (when up and running) is great and will only get better. They are investing in their network unlike Eircom!

Agree. UPC BB is worth of its price when it works as advertised. Once you run into problems it's like hitting a brick wall at 60mph.

Hate to argue with incompetent people about the nature of the problem when they blame everything on end user and his/her OS and router (which of course can be the case with some of us).

minced_alive

rogue-entity wrote: »

I would think 25-28Mbit/sec during off-peak hours should be a given and and idealistic during peak hours (2-2.5Mbit/sec for upload speed).. but so far the service hasn't approached that.
So Im curious if it's something that UPC could solve.. or if just everyone's copped onto the faster-after-midnight speeds and running torrents/downloads overnight, a bit like everyone else is copping onto using the Industrial Estate as a way to bypass cork road traffic in the morning.

Im starting to wish I'd switched to Magnet and at least I'd have a broadband service that didn't fail during power-cuts.

If you check internals (its config) of the BB modem then you'll see that they are capable of higher speeds than that. I would say it's rather about network planning/management/resilience and over subscription. Don't forget UPC still heavily depends on other carriers for their backbone network services.

Stevek101

I'm still having the issue but it isn't half as bad. Hopefully it'll stay like that.

Mad_Mike

Canaboid wrote: »

Mike, as a matter of interest is your TV a philips LCD, OR, is the problem worse when the TV is just turned on but abates after it's been on a while, say 20 mins.

No. None of these apply anyway

Canaboid wrote: »

and others had this issue with the DVR box from UPC and it was caused by IR leakage. The fix involved putting some tape over the IR receiver on the UPC box.

Cool. I'll give that a try and see what happens. The thing is, we got multi-room, and have since tried the 2nd box and it works perfect! Swapped remotes and still no change. I'll try the tape over IR receiver first and if that doesn't help, I'm gonna swap the boxes and see if that sorts it.

minced_alive wrote: »

Mike, in my case TV problem was probably caused by wrongly installed splitter (discovered after 15 months of flawless service), but strangely enough, it started at same time as BB/phone problem.

Anything in particular to check for? How do you mean wrongly installed?

minced_alive wrote: »

As of BB, this is the reason why I don't want to go for 30Mb as of yet. Hate the idea of 12 mth contract.

Are you really sure that wireless is the problem? I bet it is the T3/DHCP problem. I'm lucky to have my own wireless router...

Ok, here's the GOOD news...... I got so fed up of it last night, I took my Eircom Netopia router, plugged it directly into Ethernet port of the Cisco. Disabled the wireless on the Cisco and am back using the Netopia wireless again and it has worked PERFECT since. Hasn't dropped once in almost 24 hours


Now, if only I could get the *promised* 30 meg, I'd be halfway towards being happy!!!

Stevek101

Oh for **** sake. I should of kept my mouth shut. Now Wikipedia is not working on UPC!

Mad_Mike

By the way, I did these tests this morning............

11 minutes past 10...



13 minutes later........



3 minutes later..........



AND...3 minutes LATER!!!!!

rogue-entity

minced_alive wrote: »

If you check internals (its config) of the BB modem then you'll see that they are capable of higher speeds than that. I would say it's rather about network planning/management/resilience and over subscription. Don't forget UPC still heavily depends on other carriers for their backbone network services.

Well that's true.

Stevek101 wrote: »

Oh for **** sake. I should of kept my mouth shut. Now Wikipedia is not working on UPC!

So far, the only website I've noticed is not available on UPC, is pastebin.ca. I can access the site just fine if I proxy through a remote server, or use my phone's internet connection.

Tyrant^

Ive been getting disconnected allot after midnight for the past couple of weeks since they announced this new "fibre powered broadband"

wataru

yea me n the neighbours got dropped there for about an hour.. wonder whats up?

minced_alive

rogue-entity wrote: »

Well that's true.


So far, the only website I've noticed is not available on UPC, is pastebin.ca. I can access the site just fine if I proxy through a remote server, or use my phone's internet connection.

it looks like it is result of the problem. If you do a traceroute or a ping you might discover it's a routing problem. Mine lasted for almost months, I complained like mad to no avail and then, all of sudden it works again. Frustrating...

minced_alive

Tyrant^ wrote: »

Ive been getting disconnected allot after midnight for the past couple of weeks since they announced this new "fibre powered broadband"

I wouldn't mind that as long as it works throughout the day, which isn't the case (anymore).

minced_alive

Mad_Mike wrote: »

Anything in particular to check for? How do you mean wrongly installed?

I my case the splitter/frequency filter had cables installed the other way around.

jor el

Tyrant^ wrote: »

Ive been getting disconnected allot after midnight for the past couple of weeks since they announced this new "fibre powered broadband"

I've noticed that the last week or so too. Disconnects for a few minutes only, so didn't mind so much.

wataru wrote: »

yea me n the neighbours got dropped there for about an hour.. wonder whats up?

Last night my connection dropped at about 1AM, was gone for 10 minutes anyway before I gave up and wen to bed. Don't know if it's back today, hope so.

mtsachev

Btw I went on an plotted availability charts using rrdtool.

Last 24h:




Last week:




Their Cisco modem is under 100% availability because its wireless is crap. If the service was OK would have bought my own modem by why bother when it's not.

minced_alive

mtsachev wrote: »

Btw I went on an plotted availability charts using rrdtool.

Last 24h:




Last week:




Their Cisco modem is under 100% availability because its wireless is crap. If the service was OK would have bought my own modem by why bother when it's not.

Good one, was thinking of OpenNMS as per http://www.opennms.org/wiki/EPC2203

Hope more people will complain with similar stats.

mtsachev

That's even better. I created one for the Cisco modem and will post it when I have some data. The data gatherer is very simple for Cisco's modem:

    require LWP::Simple;
    my $raw = LWP::Simple::get('http://192.168.1.1/system.asp');
    if (!defined $raw) {
        return;
    }
    
    my @parts = split /\n|\r/, $raw;
    @parts = grep /dBmV/, @parts;
    for (my $i = 0; $i <= $#parts; $i++) {
        $parts[$i] =~ s/<.+?>//g;
        $parts[$i] =~ s/[^\d\.]//g;
    }

$parts[0] is rx, $parts[1] is tx level.

PS. Not sure what's the default timeout with LWP::Simple or if it can be overriden. It shouldn't really be a problem for a normal wireless network though.

mtsachev

For anyone interested in the monitoring code. It uses Perl, fping, LWP::Simple, and RRDs. Fping could be replaced with regular ping too but that will require some changes. You have to set it to execute every 5 minutes.

I used it for quite a few other things but I've tried to cut out everything that won't be of use. I've tried it only on Linux, parts of the code have ran fine on FreeBSD too but it's undergone many modifications since. No reason why it wouldn't run on Windows or OS X if fping is used, otherwise might need modifications to the code that parses the output.

PS. You obviously have to edit the stats.conf file and make adjustments to the paths.

mtsachev

The modem monitoring charts are a bit boring, especially transmit level :-) I'm not an expert on this kind of stuff but maybe a low value like 4.7 dBm isn't right.

How Soon Is Now

Bloody hell!!!! My connection has being dropping early mornings every couple days for last couple months.
It went on Sunday and i reset the router like i was told last time by a tech guy on there helpline and now my wireless adapter is not workin???

Everytime i switch from cable to wireless it says not connected i have uninstalled it installed it changed drivers everything driving me crazy.

The internet is working but only threw the cable and wifi seems to be working with my phone in the house no idea what i can do at this stage as i cant find any info on the wireless adapters site seeing as its an older model.

Nothingbetter2d

FloatingVoter wrote: »

Thanks, but the router is a Netgear wgr614v9 (modem is Scientific Atlanta).
This only started 4 days ago. No problems of this sort in the previous ten months. (and I didn't bother going for the 30 Mbs upgrade so thats why I didn't post in that thread).

netgear 614 series routers are terrible. i have had 2 from ntl and 1 from chorus in the past and all 3 sucked so bad i replaced then with linksys routers

IrishTonyO

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

netgear 614 series routers are terrible. i have had 2 from ntl and 1 from chorus in the past and all 3 sucked so bad i replaced then with linksys routers

Never had a problem with the Netgears 614 myself, maybe I am just lucky

niallk

For the record, if any of you doubt it, UPC are upgrading the network. Got this letter about a week ago:

Important notice
Chorus NTL Network Improvement Programme
Chorus ntl will shortly commence a Network Improvement Programme in your area. On completion of this work, we will be able to provide you with Fibre-Power Broadband, Home Phone and Digital TV.

• Our approved contractors will carry out the work over the coming months.
• Existing TV customers may experience minor interruptions to their TV service during daytime hours, but we promise to keep disruption at a minimum.

It goes on to say that, over a 12 week period, crews will be along to run new cables on the outside of homes , where the old ones are. When these new cables are installed and tested they will return to get rid of the old ones. (I believe the new cables were installed on my road on Monday/Tuesday.)


I'm in D22 and have been having terrible UPC problems over the last couple months as well. (Dropouts,etc. and general drop in quality.)

youcancallmeal

Just found this thread. It all makes sense know. I've been having dropped connection issues in Knocklyon for the past couple of weeks. It didnt help that my wireless router decided to give up after 24X7 non stop usage for the last 5 years. Got a new wireless router yesterday and it dropped the connection once since then. I never restart my modem, just restarting the router does the trick for me. Its quite annoying as I play games online a lot and getting kicked in the middle of a game is not fun

saltie

angerfist2009 wrote: »

Bloody hell!!!! My connection has being dropping early mornings every couple days for last couple months.
It went on Sunday and i reset the router like i was told last time by a tech guy on there helpline and now my wireless adapter is not workin???

Everytime i switch from cable to wireless it says not connected i have uninstalled it installed it changed drivers everything driving me crazy.

The internet is working but only threw the cable and wifi seems to be working with my phone in the house no idea what i can do at this stage as i cant find any info on the wireless adapters site seeing as its an older model.

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Just found this thread. It all makes sense know. I've been having dropped connection issues in Knocklyon for the past couple of weeks. It didnt help that my wireless router decided to give up after 24X7 non stop usage for the last 5 years. Got a new wireless router yesterday and it dropped the connection once since then. I never restart my modem, just restarting the router does the trick for me. Its quite annoying as I play games online a lot and getting kicked in the middle of a game is not fun

Same here, in Swords. Same experiences as above. Cisco router.

Defo network issues. Anyone suggest a good router make/ model?

minced_alive

Folks,

UPC have confirmed that they will be rolling out new SW on the headend side in some areas (in my case D12 was confirmed) on Friday week. This is supposed to fix drop out issues we all are complaining about.

I will report back with results. I would suggest to complain, complain and again complain in the mean time with logs from the modem proving the point.

minced_alive

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Just found this thread. It all makes sense know. I've been having dropped connection issues in Knocklyon for the past couple of weeks. It didnt help that my wireless router decided to give up after 24X7 non stop usage for the last 5 years. Got a new wireless router yesterday and it dropped the connection once since then. I never restart my modem, just restarting the router does the trick for me. Its quite annoying as I play games online a lot and getting kicked in the middle of a game is not fun

I think you are referring to DHCP problem(s) some of us might have. Yes, renewal of IP address seems to fix the problem in short term, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that it is caused by T3 time outs/modem loosing upstream channels.

Can you try not to restart your wireless router next time and try to renew IP address instead?

youcancallmeal

minced_alive wrote: »

I think you are referring to DHCP problem(s) some of us might have. Yes, renewal of IP address seems to fix the problem in short term, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that it is caused by T3 time outs/modem loosing upstream channels.

Can you try not to restart your wireless router next time and try to renew IP address instead?

Cool I'll give that a go next time so and report back. Should I just do ipconfig /renew ?