Case study: if you own a 3rd pty router.. try bridging first! - the 4100 is just a basic router, not an advanced one!

Got this the other day

Huge routing issues. Hopefully you guys can forward...

Hope you guys can forward this to the right place. I've been having this problem for the last 2-3 days. I cannot watch Netflix movies without interruption, I can't play games, and I can't even chat on a simple VOIP system (Ventrilo) without having issues. I did not notice any threads on this in the midwest forum so I am posting it here.

Attached is a pingplotter output of a traceroute to the Ventrilo server I've been having issues with. As you might notice I start having problems just after the first SBCGlobal hop. This image is 500 samples so it should give you a good idea of how bad it is (almost 15% packet loss.)

Hopefully you guys can either direct me to the right place or send this to someone who can fix this issue.

Thanks guys, appreciate the time you put into this.

Ran the usual tests but was seeing packet loss right to him. This was just the DSLAM to his modem, not even out to the internet yet.

Sending 50, End-to-End F5 (Channel) cells on 5/1 :1 vpi 241 vci 121
Timeout is 2 seconds, Interval between Cells is 100 milliseconds
!!!!!!!!!!!!.!.!!!!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.!.!.
Success rate is 88.0 percent (44/50)
[wholesale]

Naturally if I was seeing packet loss to just the modem his would be apparent as well. he tried the same tests with the laptop right to the modem and was seeing the same thing. So was I.

Solution:
Set the 4100 to bridged mode (PPPoE not used) mode and let the PFsense router do the authentication. Packet loss stopped and my tests were now 100%.

Explanation:
What was happening was that the modem was handling all the traffic from PFsense. it was using more ports than what the modem uses. Thus it would look like packet loss right to the modem. When the person set the modem to the Bridged (PPPoE not used) mode. The packet loss went away.

Main points to remember is this

• if you are doing anything like operating bit-torrent, ventrillo, or gaming, it's best to just bridge (PPPoE not used) mode the modem. Let your equipment handle the traffic as your equipment sees fit. The modem was just designed to get you on the internet for light surfing and checking e-mail. it wasn't designed for multi-port operations and such.

• Modems that would be affected by this are : 5100b, 4100, 4100b, 2210, 2210-02 and the like.