US Cable Support > Suddenlink > [Connectivity] Incompetence or just not understanding?

[Connectivity] Incompetence or just not understanding?

That PP look pretty much like you have your upload saturated, losing packets between your router and the cmts......

reply to Uplinkpro
First, I have to say I have never seen a route with so many hits on the SL network.

Second, how does a similar trace look without any upstream utilization look?

Third, how do the power levels look on your modem?

Fourth, if you truly feel like it's an issue SL can fix, try contacting SDL L3Tech and direct them to this thread.

Good luck.
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What the heck is a GatorKram? »www.gatorkram.com

reply to moldypickle
upload is capped to 100kb across the network when my tested cap was already 200kb so should technically be halved. while i have this cap currently its only using 80ish kb in those picks and pretty much all day.

as for my modem here is a shot of the cp:

Just look at the 2 PP tests. That pretty much proves that you are just saturating your uplink. Doesn't matter where you put your bandwidth cap at, if you use it up then you get packet lose. The fact that the second jump shows no lose in the second trace proves that much. Continuous utilization of 80% or better would be saturating the link.

I'm also going to assume that your capping your upload speeds at 100KBps, not 100Kbps. If you are indeed capping at 100 bits then that is another reason you are getting crappy results. 80% of 100 bits would leave you with an up speed of 20kbps, or 2KBps... roughly 3 times slower than dialup.

A possible reason you are getting packet lose the entire way could be too rapid testing. Expand your testing data out to 24 hours and post back with that information. Could also try increasing the testing frequency to 15-20 seconds or so. Looks like you're flooding the network with a ping request every 3 seconds. The routers in the network CAN choose to drop your pings giving false packet lose.
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30/2 Suddenlink : Current
5/1 CMA : Old
15/2 TWC : Old

Excuse me, 100 KB/s. In other tests I've done (not pictured) I used longer periods between pings and got similar results. The problem though is that it can drop packets between tests. When doing a simple ping to the first jump (10.236.64.1) via the command console I can easily get a large amount of packet loss both when using the connection and when not. On the other hand, due to the somewhat random nature of the massive amounts of ms gain and packet loss I can see the opposite, where I can nearly fully utilize the connection and only get about 2-4% packet loss.

Just before that second picture was taken I actually tested our connection with limits that are 1/4th of what I pay for (limited to a 500 KB/s dl and 50 KB/s ul) and it was actually worse than the picture posted in the first post.

Basically, it's a relatively random problem for the massive packet loss spikes, but we have a constant underlying amount of packet loss that gets exacerbated by actually using the connection. So if i use the connection it gets worse, and sometimes it gets worse even when not using it for anything other than browsing. As you can see, this can be quite a bit of a problem.

To add to this, I've been told different things by different techs, from it's only my connection and I'm using too much of it to other people in the area calling about similar problems. This also is a relatively recent problem that started on the 10th of February (2 weeks ago today). Before then I had no problems such as this even when fully using the connection. Also, those limits put in place mentioned above aren't even being fully used due to the heavy packet loss. I'll limit any downloading to a meager 500KB/s and only see about 350KB from it which, quite frankly, is fairly poor considering I'm paying for 15 mb down.

I'm not saying your aren't having the issues, just that the 2 minute snapshot doesn't support it. You need to run a longer data set, ESPECIALLY if the problem is seemingly random. SDL tech on here will also do the same himself, but he can see a lot of other information including a time matched set of the bandwidth you and your node are using.

If you can get the 24 hour runs ahead of time, you'll be able to provide that much more info for him to help you. 2 minute snapshots are pretty much worthless :s EVERY isp will suffer from momentary issues that could come from external influences even.
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30/2 Suddenlink : Current
5/1 CMA : Old
15/2 TWC : Old

I have done some 6 hour runs but lost them due to crashes.

Anyway, it's not 100% random, but mostly random. It tends to get worse between noon and midnight, while after midnight and in the morning it's generally not as bad. Either way though there's loss no matter what time of the day it is - it just gets worse from time to time and tends to do it at peak hours. However, it doesn't ONLY do it at peak hours, as some times the problems can last well into 4 AM at times. Basically, it has a pattern to it with random outliers, but in all intances there's a constant amount of packet loss.

Also, something similar has happened here a few years back or so and when that happened SL apparently had to rewire a good deal of the area. During that period we had several techs come out and say nothing was wrong until one came right as it was happening only to find out there were people already fixing the issues and that it was a common problem in the area.

reply to Uplinkpro

Uplinkpro's modem

Neighbor's modem

As I mentioned before I would give a longer graph if I didn't have as many problems as what I've been having pop up and trying to troubleshoot them as well as crashes.

Looking at that graph though the main problem times showing up on your graphs are the times I've been limiting the bandwidth usage and still getting those errors, while the low problem times I've been increasing how much can be used, which is pretty weird imo.

On to another problem that surfaced around 1 AM though. Around 1 AM this morning for the first time since I've been measuring this with ping plotter I got some packet loss either from the router or the modem. A few days ago when the tech came out he had to replace the modem on his second visit due to it apparently throwing out ignore codes. So I decided to reset the router and it had apparently fixed the problem until about an hour ago when it started losing more packets on both 192.168.1.1 (router/modem obv) and 10.236.64.1. I decided to limit the pings to those two simply because that's where most of the issues stem from.

Anyway, during the morning I was able to get relatively low packet loss (around 2% over a fairly large sample) even while running download speeds uncapped. After I saw that it was running fine I put the cap back on the speeds so I could play some online games without any trouble. Now back to the issue, as mentioned above the packet loss did a sudden comeback about an hour ago and doesn't seem like it wants to stop again anytime soon, though after having reset both the modem and router it doesn't seem to be dropping from my end again. Currently it's averaging about 10% loss, but over the course of this problem has tended to get worse as the day passes by.

Also, as mentioned above, that speed test listed above was done during the middle of the problems while utilizing none of the connection showing that we were only getting about half of the 15Mb/s. Something else that's interesting, just did some back to back speed tests while not utilizing any of our limit and went from 7.72 Mb/s to 24.97 Mb/s on the next one. Needless to say, I'm gonna have to keep an eye on it tonight to see if anything else changes compared to before though.

If you're getting packet loss to your router, you have a problem inside your home network. Also being that you have a router, you may look into if someone else is using your network. Those graphs above sorta point out the issue being on your end

Just did a few speed tests after removing the router from the equation and got some very mixed results. When testing to servers within 200 miles I get slightly above what I pay for to speeds dropping off pretty rapidly after 200 miles. currently running a few different ping plots for some comparisons, though resetting the modem might have temporarily fixed the problem like it did last night. Either way I'm still not getting all of my throughput to all the servers I tested to, but I can't say what's at fault in those tests.

Also, another thing to note, before bypassing the router and resetting the modem again the modem was throwing out a battery testing message, while now it's showing "telemetry normal".

Edit: Here's a recent speed test to the same server mentioned above that gave higher than rated speeds in the prior test, this is while doing a few ping tests, but that's not going to affect the speeds that much:

A small update:

I had to scrap some of the long duration tests I ran the other day due to the connection being too erratic over yesterday (the 26th). This wasn't just limited to the internet either so it wouldn't be a good test overall.

Anyway, apparently there were some Suddenlink trucks working in the area during the day and evening and so far in doing ping tests the connection has gotten a lot better than it was before, though there are still some minor issues (probably directly related to the next point). In the tests I've been running for the last 5-ish hours I have seen no packet loss on the internal network and minimal packet loss overall while completely maxing the connection (yay dling Mass Effect 1/2 from origin and not being able to limit it). Needless to say, getting about 3% packetloss while maxing your connection and still getting around 70ms isn't too bad, and for a small burst I saw speeds as much as 4 MB/s (although that was only for about a minute, but still).

Basically, so far it looks like the connection might be fixed; however, since I saw similar results around this time a few days ago I'm going to be cautiously optimistic and continue monitoring the situation.

reply to Uplinkpro

PP traces

That's pretty similar to what I've been getting as well since I restarted this test cycle. The massive spike that you see after 4 AM and one that just happened (around 9:40) are due to both the cable and internet connections completely dropping until I reset the modem. Other than those incidents it's not nearly as bad as it was before though.

Cable and Internet went down until you reset the modem? How did the modem restore the cable?

reply to Uplinkpro
Looks like you are either unknowingly maxing your connection half a day at a time, or you are having some hardware go out.

reply to Uplinkpro
Have been barely using my connection (since I was finally able to finish my work download) and still getting crazy spikes heres a new PP for the past 6 hours

I've given it a bit more thought and decided to test something else while I'm at it. The modem seems to work fine by itself, minus the internet and phone randomly having service interrupted until the modem is reset. The router by itself seems to also run fine. So, I swapped out the cable between the two to see if that will have any effect on the issues.