Xilo LLU randomly dropping to 0Kb/s

[Kiyoshi]

About 3 weeks ago my Internet connection started playing up. The modem (Netgear DG834GT) would sync at my normal speed and be fine, but then around 1 hour later - could be sooner - it will start performing really poorly. The modem doesn't disconnect, I'm still synced at ~3Mb/s during all of this, but the 'throughput' suddenly becomes abysmal. Torrents slow down to single figures or stop, Steam downloads stop, online games disconnect, web browsing takes minutes to load google.co.uk, etc.

This will go on for 30 minutes or so, I try various things like rebooting the PC, re-sync the connection, restart the modem and so on, and then it will be fixed and back to normal for say another 30 minutes or an hour, then it will go again.

This is my modem:

And a Speed test when its 'working':

And a Speed test when its having its tantrum (it can't even load the page properly):

My Exchange: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EATHP

My ISP is Xilo LLU Pro 16 Home, I've been with them for just over a year without any issue. They do not impose any download quota or throtelling as far as I know. I have since tried plugging into the master socket, disconnecting everything but the bare minimum, switching the modem for a brand new Netgear DG834 still in it's box, and an old Thompson something or other, new microfilter - still the same issue with all of them.

I called their support yesterday and the short version of the conversation was:

1. I was told Netgear routers were rubbish and I should get something else (?) - it's been fine for over a year, and I've tried 3 routers, 1 non-Netgear.
2. My Christmas lights might be interferring so unplug those. I said I was sceptical but that I would do that and call him back when it didn't work. That was yesterday and no it didn't work, so I will be calling him back today.

I don't really want to move ISP since that's probably a cost and then time without an ISP. It might be an issue with the phone line anyway rather than the ISP, and as I say it was fine up until about ~3 weeks ago. Nothing else as far as I know has changed in the house. We have 2 Windows 7 PCs and 1 Windows XP laptop and the issue occurs for all of them - all previously working.

Any ideas?

Edit: Just as an update, and rather than bumping this old thread. Xilo changed my profile to higher interleaving and a SNR margin. This seems to have resolved my issue. I now sync at a slower speed, around 500kbps less than I did before but at the time of this edit the modem has been connected for almost 130 hours without the issue happening that I've noticed. I never did find out what the cause of the issue was, nothing electrical had changed in my house as far as I was aware but I'm just glad it's fixed. Xilo offered to change it back to it's original setting to see if the issue came back, I haven't followed them up on that as yet as I'm a bit wary of fiddling with it now it's stable once more. But hopefully this update might be of some use to you if you come across this issue yourself at any time.

 

[uno]

1. I was told Netgear routers were rubbish and I should get something else (?) - it's been fine for over a year, and I've tried 3 routers, 1 non-Netgear.
2. My Christmas lights might be interferring so unplug those. I said I was sceptical but that I would do that and call him back when it didn't work. That was yesterday and no it didn't work, so I will be calling him back today.

I've had a look through all the calls yesterday and believe I have found one similar to this.

The initial problem reported was that your router was requesting to be logged out every few minutes. This log out is routed requested and shows within our RADIUS as "User-Request". This is common with some routers that will drop a connection for various reasons and restart it. Netgear routes are one of the more common offenders with this problem but we didn't say they were "rubbish".

Christmas tree lights (as well as other powered decorations) at this time of year can be a problem causing REIN, which can adversely affect broadband. You indicated to us that the issue had been going on about three weeks and for most, that would tie in with when decorations are normally unboxed and used.

I can see the call this morning also where you report the issue occurred again but the connection has held out for 14~ hours so far without a drop, reconnect or resync.

As per that call, we've raised a fault and having the line checked and SNR monitored. If this is dropping, we can alter that as required but with a 14 hour connection without a drop, that may not be the cause.

Just to assure you, we don't throttle traffic and have not started to do so.

Matt

 

[Kiyoshi]

Thanks for the response.

As I tried to explain to the people I've spoken to on the phone, I don't think the router is requesting to be logged out. By that I mean I think what they're seeing when they ask for my phone number; I think that's me manually disconnecting the modem in an attempt to fix the issue when this 'problem' manifests.

Is what you're referring to this? I can't be 100% on every single one, but I imagine the majority of those are me disconnecting and reconnecting the modem.

I haven't seen the modem drop the connection. When the issue happens the modem is still connected at 3Mb/s - I just don't get any bandwidth up/down until it decides it's going to work again. It can take 30 minutes or so, and then suddenly the bandwidth goes up to 3Mb/s again - but I've never seen the connection actually disconnect unless I've done it myself.

As an example, in-game everything fine:

Connection suddenly slows down, the modem is still connected and I can browse to google.co.uk VERY slowly over perhaps 15-20 minutes but the modem states it is still connected at the same speed throughout all of this:

I've also noticed an increase in packet loss during this period, and the packet loss corrects itself once the connection is back to it's normal self.

Just as an example it's happened 3 times this morning since I got up (that I know of), yet the router uptime for me shows as almost 17 hours continuous.

And to back track a bit, this picture I linked earlier seems to show decent connection lengths - 6, 8, 12 days at a time until 16th December when I started having to reconnect the connection all the time.

 

[Kiyoshi]

Just an update, it went again just now with the same symptoms. The modem shows as still being connected throughout the duration but for me there were no signs of life as far as the connection was concerned.

A ping test during that period:

Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Reply from 173.194.66.104: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Won't link one now it's over, but it's more or less 100% successful.

 

[uno]

We've raised a ticket and have asked for some further information from you as well as a change to be made on your router - could you do that and let us know once done.

We'll be able to monitor this and see if we can tally your packet loss to any major SNR fluctuations.

This could still be a REIN issue which can be very intermittent and only occur at certain times and might disappear by itself on/after 6th January.

Matt