O2 Broadband Dropouts

Major_Disaster

Major_Disaster

Major_Disaster

Associate
Joined
2 Nov 2007
Posts
488
Hello,

Recently my O2 Home BroadBand connection has completely taken a nose dive.

I will have periods of complete connection dropouts sprinkled with hours of extremely limited connectivity.

For example, ive been running ping -t google.com and seem to get 5 or so minutes of replies followed by 5 or so minutes of failures.

Ive tried raising my SNR (to 9.5db) and that hasnt done anything to help.

Im thinking it might be that my exchange (Holborn) is becoming overcrowded? Is there anything i can do? This may sound stupid - but is it possible to "change" exchanges (to Kings Cross)?

Cheers for any help
 
Unfortunatly you can't change exchanges, I would ask them too.
I'm on an exchange which is 3.7km straight line but there is one 1.5km away meaning I would get better speeds but it's not gonna happen.

Are you on o2 Access or LLU?
 
Im on LLU. Used to get around 16Meg pretty solidly but now as i say it can be all over the place.

Apart from phoning O2 up and asking them to either kick people off the exchange or upgrade the capacity (neither going to happen) i dont know what to do?
 
Have you gone back to O2 and told them you're still having issues? Also is the lack of connectivity because your ADSL is dropping or does IP traffic just stop flowing?
 
UPDATE: Had the same issues tonight and phoned up O2. The woman was convinced there was nothing wrong with the exchange or the capacity of their network as a whole.

She wanted to log into my wireless box to check everything was ok. The problem is i am using a DG834PN (with DGTeam firmware) and dont have the wireless box anymore anyway.

But, sureley the problem cant be with the router if it works fine continuosuly and then as soon as peak times hit - the internet goes down.

Should i just try to pick up one off a certain auction site?

@Caged - could you explain the differnece between the two? All ive been doing is:
ping -t google.com

and getting

reply from blah blah
time out
time out
time out
reply from blah blah
time out
reply from blah blah
reply from blah blah
time out
time out

etc etc
 
You don't have a choice, the be/o2 box belongs to the company, not you. If you can't send it back when you leave them you pay for it so find a cheap replacement or you'll be paying the bill :D

He means is the line actually loosing connection i.e. re-syncing or does traffic just stop flowing.

First thing you have to understand is the be/o2 network gives ping request low priority so the first few hops will always timeout/be high. Secondly, there are many, many things that effect adsl.

First, what're you line stats?

Second, IDK about O2 but be use f8lure graphs as the quickest way to stop congestion on exchanges/lines. The box should be set to respond to wan pings by default.

Third (optional) Pingplotter is a good way to watch pings and hops over time (and copying the graph makes explaining easier).
 
Thanks for the replies.

I guess im going to have to find a Wireless Box then...

Oh, the traffic just stops flowing. From the router status page everything seems fine and the lady on the phone was convinced everything seemed fine (ie i was, and had been for a while, connected to the exchange)

Here is an example of what i mean:

Pinging google.com [209.85.129.104] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=54
Request timed out.
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=54
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=54
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=54
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=216ms TTL=54
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=58ms TTL=54
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.0.2: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=225ms TTL=54
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 209.85.129.104: bytes=32 time=133ms TTL=54
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 209.85.129.104:
Packets: Sent = 29, Received = 9, Lost = 20 (68% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 27ms, Maximum = 225ms, Average = 92ms
Control-C

Line stats are good (i think):

System Up Time 00:42:51
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN DHCP Client 58642 87788 0 3864 16436 00:41:19
LAN 10M/100M 30586 39733 0 2179 2640 00:42:46
WLAN 11M/54M/108M 36839 26135 0 13650 1321 00:42:41

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 17425 kbps 1325 kbps
Line Attenuation 28.0 db 13.4 db
Noise Margin 6.5 db 6.3 db

I have tried increasing the SNR to improve stability but that hasnt helped.

Sorry to sound stupid but im not sure how to work that f8lure graphs site you gave me... Where do i start?

Ill have a look at Pingplotter (once i can actually load the site).

Im currently on openDNS and have also tried Google DNS.

Thanks for the replies.
 
Oh my bad, forgot it was a netgear.

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26/usr/sbin/adslctl+info+--stats+%3E+/www.eng/netgear.cfg
keep this window open and down load this link:
http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg

Replace the ip with the ip of the router if you changed it and that should give you the stats.

F8lure simply pings your modem/router constantly and constructs a graph with it making any congestion rather obvious but more importantly provides a log displaying patterns. Access page, sign up, add test, enter your public ip (make sure the router will respond to a ping on the wan port), start. Ever want to stop simply stop responding to pings. A normal graph should look like this:

b9hg6h.jpg


I it's normal during the day tomorrow but shoots up at peak time tomorrow evening (and you're not downloading anything*) then it's almost certainly an issue with the line/exchange. although trying a different router/filter can never hurt :)

*Unless someone's hacked the wifi and stealing your bandwidth
 
I had a similar problem when using a Netgear DG834GT and the DGTeam Firmware, I am with O2 LLU aswell by the way.

Was getting constant drop outs etc so thought I would try my O2 Wireless Box II and the results were surprising, not had a problem since and the box actually syncs at a higher speed.

I would try and pickup a O2 box and give that a shot, it seems O2's LLU network just isnt Netgear friendly!
 
Hmmm interesting.

Just wondering, what sort of time were the drop outs? Mine all seem to be in the evening - hence i thought a capacity issue.

While i try and source a wireless box, would it be worth trying to spoof a MAC address?
 
I had connection issues yesterday with my O2 LLU connection yesterday. Called up o2 and the first thing i asked was if there was any known outages or problems with my exchange, to which they replied no. They ran some tests couldn't even see my router so i got escalated to second line support. They kept me on hold for 40+ minutes then tell me that my exchange is down. I'm in the TW16 area.

Everything looked normal on the router, synced at normal speed etc but couldn't ping anything (same results as above). After about 2 hours it came back.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I have managed to secure a router from a certain auction site so hopefully that will be on its way soon.

@Bones - Looks exactly the same (apart from i didnt get as far as second line support). What did they mean by the "exchange being down" exactly?

Odd thing is, now it seems to be on and off all of today - not just during the evening.
 
This was just a one off thing for me, its never happened before and hopefully hasn't happened again. It happened about 4pm yesterday, and was working again by 8pm. Coincidentally the outage happened exactly the same time as i decided to relocate my router so i thought i had borked something. Not sure exactly what they meant by the exchange being down.
 
Actually the dns servers used to cause connection issues for people hence they were changed (new ones). Not the ops problem but nvm.

Those are awful pings, but fine from 05:30-09:30, did you change anything then i.e. turn something off?
 
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