yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-15 8:07 pm
[DSL] Is it normal to have high packet lost with DSL?I am subscribed to the DSL 5Mb line. The speed seems pretty consistent when I do online speed test, constantly hitting 5Mb. The only problem is just that during high traffic (streaming HD video from the internet, or BT downloads) the packet lost goes up real quick. Using the ping utility, I measured anywhere between 10-20% lost.
Is this normal? I'm not expected to use the bandwidth heavily? It just seems that when I do, surfing experience suffers. And I'm not talking about crazy download. Of the 5Mb bandwidth even if I download at 2Mb the packets are lost.
I have made sure that it's not a local network problem. No packets are ever lost to the router/modem.
Any ideas? Thanks! |
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 Striek
join:2011-04-09
Brampton, ON |
Striek
Member
2011-Aug-15 10:06 pm
No, this isn't normal.
Seems to me that your router can manage traffic well internally, but is having trouble managing higher loads over the PPPoE link. When it sends packets around the network internally, it doesn't have to route them - the only hardware involved is the integrated switch inside it.
When it sends packets out to the Internet, it needs to route them, at which point memory exhaustion and CPU power all start to have a much greater effect. Your modem wouldn't sync at 5mbps if it couldn't send that much traffic over it, so I highly doubt there's a line problem anywhere.
I would try either a) connecting directly through the modem to a computer, or b) using a different router, see if either one of those solves the problem, at least temporarily. |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-15 10:55 pm
Thanks for your help thus far but unfortunately that theory does not hold. I connected my mac directly to the del modem. Fired up all the BT and packets started dropping (10-20%) at around 150-200KB/s download. Don't think it is a LAN/router issue. |
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to yalag
Routers under load might stop responding to ICMP (pings).
It is considered low priority traffic.
There is no packet loss measured by ping when BT/streaming is not happening?
What about during a big ftp?
Post your line stats. |
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to yalag
What about upload? If upload is saturated, packet loss would be expected too. |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
to bjlockie
said by bjlockie:Routers under load might stop responding to ICMP (pings).
It is considered low priority traffic.
There is no packet loss measured by ping when BT/streaming is not happening?
What about during a big ftp?
Post your line stats.
What's a better way to measure packet loss instead of using pings. What is line stats? Thanks! |
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 PlatooN
join:2007-02-13
Kitchener, ON |
to yalag
working strictly from your description that sounds like either a modem or router issue. that's certainly not normal for DSL.
You might try picking up a super cheap modem from canada computers and testing it.
also post your line stats, maybe a line issue, but seems more likely to be overwhelmed modem or router. |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-16 1:34 am
I've actually switched connection quite a few times. I've switched from TekSavvy cable 5Mb->Rogers cable 2Mb->TekSavvy DSL 5Mb.
They all behave in the same way. Low ping, 0 loss when no download. High packet lost when I download/stream. Could it be the area I'm in?
What's a better way to measure the reliability of the connection than using ping? |
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PlatooN
join:2007-02-13
Kitchener, ON |
to yalag
line stats are the connection statitics from your modem. they show signal levels and loop length and other troubleshooting info.
how you get them depends on what modem you are using. so what modem are you using? |
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Farmer Chuck to yalag
Anon
2011-Aug-16 11:03 am
to yalag
10 to 20 percent packet loss can mean 10 to 20 percent of your money down the drain in overuse fees. Thing is the internet works in the rest of the world but doesn't work in Canada. These isp's should be sued to the nines over packet loss and overuse fees. When your packets are dropped it's like you dropped your money the packets are picked back up but instead of you picking up your money the isp's take your money off the ground in illegal overuse fees. |
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to yalag
Have you looked at how much of the upload bandwidth you're using? You talk about packet loss while your download usage isn't yet saturated, but didn't mention how much upload you're using.
I'd imagine BT (and some peer-to-peer video streaming services) have a significant amount of upload usage. |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-16 11:53 am
Below is my line stats. Do I have to retrieve is during high traffic or does it not matter?
Link Information
Uptime: 0 days, 0:04:54
Modulation: G.992.1 annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 800 / 5.056
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [KB/KB]: 0,00 / 0,00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11,5 / 11,5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 5,0 / 7,0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 13,0 / 25,0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / ALCB
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0 |
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PlatooN
join:2007-02-13
Kitchener, ON |
to yalag
well your stats look excellent.
How many systems are there on your network?
have you tried direct modem to more than one?
what are you using as a router?
what modem do you have? |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-16 1:09 pm
To give you guys more data, I've done a bunch of tests to show the situation:
No download operations:
201 packets transmitted, 201 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.375/11.325/21.709/1.986 ms
200Kb/s ftp download:
101 packets transmitted, 101 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.356/28.696/124.505/28.429 ms
HD video streaming:
104 packets transmitted, 100 packets received, 3.8% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.546/18.882/218.740/28.993 ms
100/s down, 15/s up BT download
104 packets transmitted, 90 packets received, 13.5% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 25.408/43.937/145.862/26.625 ms
100/0 BT
315 packets transmitted, 300 packets received, 4.8% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.305/14.700/60.506/5.973 ms
200/0 BT
218 packets transmitted, 167 packets received, 23.4% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.474/23.703/83.548/15.157 ms
300/0 BT
214 packets transmitted, 175 packets received, 18.2% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.431/29.453/156.946/22.451 ms
1)Everything is done with a direct connection. Ruling out router/LAN problems
2)I'm using a Thomson ST516 v6
3)All BT download were done through a L2TP VPN to US
Please help! My internet connection is useless as it is! |
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Replace your router. My guess is you have one of those D-link black ones, and they suck, bigtime. |
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to yalag
Hm... My interpretation would be the following:
- There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your internet connection: You're getting no packet loss with an FTP download.
- Losing 4 packets while video streaming might indicate a problem, but the sample size is too small to be sure. If video streaming is peer-to-peer, then losing a few packets because your upload is occasionally saturated might be normal.
-The BT numbers don't look right, especially those where you have ~zero upload. (Are you sure it's near-zero upload, including overhead traffic to maintain all those BT connections?)
Two questions:
- Have you tried using the modem in bridge mode, just to rule out the ST516's NAT routing to be the cause?
- When you're connected to the L2TP VPN, do your ping packets also go across the L2TP link? Could this point to problems with the L2TP link (or remote L2TP endpoint) rather than your own internet connection? |
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PlatooN
join:2007-02-13
Kitchener, ON |
to yalag
yep pretty much for sure your modem is having trouble with the number of connection. happens all the time to old modems.
the reason you only see loss on the BT downloads is BT makes TON'S of connections to achieve it's speeds, where FTP makes one.
try a 10$ modem from CC |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-16 6:24 pm
said by PlatooN:yep pretty much for sure your modem is having trouble with the number of connection. happens all the time to old modems.
the reason you only see loss on the BT downloads is BT makes TON'S of connections to achieve it's speeds, where FTP makes one.
try a 10$ modem from CC
But it's not an old modem, I just bought it from teksavvy 1 week ago. Brand new ST516. |
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Striek
join:2011-04-09
Brampton, ON |
Striek
Member
2011-Aug-16 6:37 pm
It could still be a manufacturing defect. You cannot rule out the modem as the cause until you have replaced it and observed the same problem with a different modem. But having seen the same problem with several different providers, quote:
I've actually switched connection quite a few times. I've switched from TekSavvy cable 5Mb->Rogers cable 2Mb->TekSavvy DSL 5Mb.
They all behave in the same way. Low ping, 0 loss when no download. High packet lost when I download/stream. Could it be the area I'm in?
Assuming that is the case, your problem is most definitely internal to your network, as you have then ruled out both the cable and DSL networks, as the problem appears on both, ruled out the ST516, as you didn't use it while with Rogers, and ruled out TekSavvy, as you had the same problem with Rogers. The only remaining constants are your internal network, and your computer, if you haven't changed that out to troubleshoot yet. |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2
1 edit |
to henry128
said by henry128:- Losing 4 packets while video streaming might indicate a problem, but the sample size is too small to be sure. If video streaming is peer-to-peer, then losing a few packets because your upload is occasionally saturated might be normal.
I went back and did a larger sample of the streaming situation. Below is the result: With streaming: 3855 packets transmitted, 3172 packets received, 17.7% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.280/26.720/1005.367/54.404 ms Without streaming: 530 packets transmitted, 530 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.029/10.823/97.107/4.501 ms It's quite ridiculous 17% lost on video streaming. It's not p2p stream, it's just a service similar to netflix etc. What's going on? |
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said by yalag:What's going on?
I don't know  If you're suspecting the modem's router is the cause, try putting the modem into bridge mode and using the computer to do PPPoE (bypassing the more error-prone NAT routing features). At least, I'd try this first before trying to replacing the modem... |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-17 12:33 am
Ok apparently I was an idiot. The streaming software I was using is a p2p stream  so in other words p2p = packet lost no p2p = no packet lost. This is the same for dsl and rogers. So the question is how do I do p2p (of any kind, stream, download etc) without having my internet connection suffers? Do I need mlppp or something? I already paid for a VPN connection, apparently that doesn't help much. |
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Technicolor TC4350
Asus RT-AC56
Grandstream HandyTone 702/704
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said by yalag:Ok apparently I was an idiot. The streaming software I was using is a p2p stream so in other words
p2p = packet lost
no p2p = no packet lost.
This is the same for dsl and rogers. So the question is how do I do p2p (of any kind, stream, download etc) without having my internet connection suffers? Do I need mlppp or something? I already paid for a VPN connection, apparently that doesn't help much.
You need good QoS (Quality Of Service) in a router so web traffic is prioritized over P2P. You could try » dd-wrt.comWhat router do you have? Or you could limit the download/upload of your P2P program. But something else (the streaming) might take too much bandwidth so the QoS is a better idea. |
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Striek
join:2011-04-09
Brampton, ON |
Striek
Member
2011-Aug-17 1:35 pm
A lot of p2p software can also limit the number of connections they use. It's usually in an advanced settings box somewhere.
If the option's there, see if that helps. |
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to yalag
It sounds like everything is normal and you're just experiencing the symptoms of not having an infinitely fast network connection If you try to push more data through the network than the network's capacity, it drops packets until the capacity isn't exceeded. Remember that you have both a download (~500 KB/s) and upload (~80 KB/s) bitrate limit. The upload capacity is fairly easy to exceed because it's quite low: Anything P2P would be trying to upload. Your choices are basically: - Get a faster connection so you get more throughput before saturating. - Don't saturate your connection. Set a limit on how fast your P2P program can upload. - Use QoS, as mentioned in the previous post. This tries to guess which traffic is less "important" and preferentially drops unimportant data when you exceed your connection's capacity. |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-18 1:36 pm
said by henry128:It sounds like everything is normal and you're just experiencing the symptoms of not having an infinitely fast network connection If you try to push more data through the network than the network's capacity, it drops packets until the capacity isn't exceeded.
Remember that you have both a download (~500 KB/s) and upload (~80 KB/s) bitrate limit. The upload capacity is fairly easy to exceed because it's quite low: Anything P2P would be trying to upload.
Your choices are basically:
- Get a faster connection so you get more throughput before saturating.
- Don't saturate your connection. Set a limit on how fast your P2P program can upload.
- Use QoS, as mentioned in the previous post. This tries to guess which traffic is less "important" and preferentially drops unimportant data when you exceed your connection's capacity.
That makes a lot of sense except in some of the tests I've set my BT client to have an upload limit of 0Kb. Does it still upload through other means? Perhaps I'm not understanding BT fully? And off topic, what is a good QoS router one recommends? |
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I don't know precisely how BT works either. I would imagine some amount of traffic just in starting and maintaining a bunch of connections to other nodes, but I don't know how much that would be. You could try measuring the traffic of the network connection (either Ethernet if there's no other LAN traffic, or perhaps measured on the router/modem if it can do that).
I can't comment on QoS. I've never played with it before. |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2
1 edit |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-19 12:51 am
I ran out and bought a dlink QoS router (dir825). Configured the the QoS rules to put the BT computer to lowest priority (8) and everything else on the network on priority (1). Still crazy packet lost What's the deal? |
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Striek
join:2011-04-09
Brampton, ON |
to yalag
Well no you've eliminiated everything but your computer (or the p2p app)...
Try limiting the bandwidth from the p2p app...
You can try a hard download/upload bandwidth limit, or a limit on the number of allowed connections.
Is the router in bridged mode? |
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yalag
join:2011-08-15
m2n0c2 |
yalag
Member
2011-Aug-19 12:59 am
said by Striek:Well no you've eliminiated everything but your computer (or the p2p app)...
Try limiting the bandwidth from the p2p app...
My BT app has a limit of 100k download and 5k upload now. said by Striek:You can try a hard download/upload bandwidth limit, or a limit on the number of allowed connections.
Is this what they called the "number of peers" parameter? What's a reasonable amount? 100 global? said by Striek:Is the router in bridged mode?
My router is in NAT mode, with a pop connection to teksavvy's speed touch modem. |
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so in other words