ADSL problem, should I be concerned?

Lex_Diamonds

I've noticed something that has started happening with my Eircom ADSL connection. I have Windows 2000 and when I look at the system logs in the Event Viewer I see a LONG list of errors
attributed to RMSPPPOE. They are all identical and are as follows.

Received a PPPoE Session packet with an incorrect payload length; possibly fragmented. Ignoring this packet.

Should I just ignore this or is it having a detrimental effect on my surfing?

Thanks for your help

Dustaz

No idea. Does anything seem wrong?

Lex_Diamonds

Not that i can tell, games ping seems fine. Downloading and surfing could be slower but it might be my imagination

TacT

lex, haven't you just run command/cmd then ping -t www.irelandcs.com for say 10/20 mins and noticed any vicious spikes or lost packets? I hope not, now gimme some broadband

Boston

have you the usb version

Lex_Diamonds

yes I have the USB version and I am using RASPPPOE instead of the Eircom software to connect.

yes I ran ping to irelandcs as you suggested, had 60ms for ages then it flew up to over 200 for a good while.

Didnt happen from day one though

Boston

sorry, i dont have an answer to your problem, but you could for me, ive a friend with the usb modem, eircom gave him the win98 drivers, and he cant seem to get working win2k pro ones,
if you know how to make an iso of the driver CD, id provide a place to upload it to, id be extremely greatfull,

actually i wouldnt even need an iso, if you could just copy the whole contents of the CD into a folder then upload it, it would be great.

Its drivers so its not breaking any laws, email me if you agree

The Cigarette Smoking Man

Originally posted by Lex_Diamonds
yes I ran ping to irelandcs as you suggested, had 60ms for ages then it flew up to over 200 for a good while.

You should get a ping of about 20 - 30 with DSL, especially since it's Eircom.net DSL.

And stop doing continuous pings on my servers.... :mad:

Lex_Diamonds

Boston,

here is a link to the drivers that will work in a win2k/XP environment

http://www.alcatel.com/consumer/dsl/supuser.htm

Hope that helps

Boston

the thing is (accroding to him) they are updates, so he has to install working drivers then update them. i dont know, ill check out his system next week

TacT

Originally posted by The Cigarette Smoking Man

And stop doing continuous pings on my servers.... :mad:

aww but they ping so nicely

actually, is it not possible to block gaming server's icmp's without ruining everything

Son of Blam

Originally posted by «Bo§ton»
the thing is (accroding to him) they are updates, so he has to install working drivers then update them. i dont know, ill check out his system next week

The drivers for the Alcatel USB modem on the Alcatel are not updates, they're the full set of drivers.

-Son of Blam

Labyrinth

Received a PPPoE Session packet with an incorrect payload length; possibly fragmented. Ignoring this packet.



Lex,


It basically means that the packet has been corrupted, or ( as it says ) has been framgented. I wouldnt worry about it too much. PPPoE is a tunneling protocol. Its only sole purpose ( in eircoms scenario ) is to provide authentication facilities so Eircom can bill check who u are and bill you ....

The IP packets contained in the PPPoE packet, would normally contain a tcp payload ( eg : for playing CS ) . TCP is considered a reliable transport as it performs error correction and takes care of retranmissions... What I'm saying ( badly ) is that if your not getting too many of them... dont worry about it. Retransmissions are perfectly normal in a networking environment.

As the IP packet is being sent back to you from the server you are talking to, the DSLAM in the exchange wraps a PPPoE header onto it and sends it down the line to your PC. your pc then removes the header, and passes it to the IP stack, where normal IP processing takes place. If the packet is chucked away, the the IP stack will notice it is missing and request the server retransmit it.

so the upshot is, its normal but if there are a lot of them, then be worried..... Altho, its definately a problem at the DSLAM or errors on the dsl line ( but more than likely the former )

Ace Rimmer.....

( CCIE - so dont question my arrogance on networking )

Lex_Diamonds

Thanks a lot for that information, very informative.

OK, an example, I have been connected for 1 hour and I have recieved 33 errors. Is that alot?

Cheers again

hudson806

Originally posted by Lex_Diamonds

Received a PPPoE Session packet with an incorrect payload length; possibly fragmented. Ignoring this packet.

The problem is almost certainly that your packet MTU is too high - the PPP header is 8 bytes, meaning that packet MTU should not be higher than 1492 (it ofen needs to be less for PPPoE).

There is a gadget on dslreports for testing this:

http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

It also includes instructions for changing the MTU if necessary.

Altho, its definately a problem at the DSLAM or errors on the dsl line ( but more than likely the former )

It is highly unlikely that this is being caused by the DSLAM or line -packet fragmentation is common with PPP and is very different to packet corruption:- Reed-Solomon error correction (used in ADSL) should catch corrupted ones without problems, unless the line is extremely bad - which would be noticed because it would cause the connection to drop frequently.

Labyrinth

Originally posted by hudson806


It is highly unlikely that this is being caused by the DSLAM or line -packet fragmentation is common with PPP and is very different to packet corruption:- Reed-Solomon error correction (used in ADSL) should catch corrupted ones without problems, unless the line is extremely bad - which would be noticed because it would cause the connection to drop frequently.

What I said was that if the number of errors was very high then the problem was either the DSLAM or the line....

33 retransmissions over an hour is not very many at all.......

Anyway, the actuall message is that the payload is of an incorrect length..... and in my book that means that the length specified in the header, is not the same as the actual payload length - and thats corruption. The packet is being received... if the mtu of the total packet was larger than the physical mtu, then it wouldnt even tramsit from the head end.

Ace

Labyrinth

Originally posted by Ace Rimmer
Received a PPPoE Session packet with an incorrect payload length; possibly fragmented. Ignoring this packet.

so the upshot is, its normal but if there are a lot of them, then be worried..... Altho, its definately a problem at the DSLAM or errors on the dsl line ( but more than likely the former )

Ok , so i need grammatical lessons..... IF there are a high amount of errors, then theres a problem at the DLASM or errors on the line.

Ace

Lex_Diamonds

I took various tests and everything appears to be in order. Some little glitches but nothing major.

irishguy

i have powernet and i got a TTL of 242 and pings ranging from 52ms to 3342ms the average was about 450ms this is realy crap i think all chorus trafic has to go trough some part of londen and sometimes some part of europe then it hits dublin. any one know whats wrong?