CL DSL woes...

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Greetings, recently I moved to a rather rural location and no longer have such luxuries as comcast cable, which was always super fast and nearly no latency. Now, I have a CentryLink DSL connection in the mountains which has been rather...frustrating.

I have noted with the internet here that connections seem to drop/time out rather regularly, latency spikes. At first I did not pay too much attention to it as at this time the network was not mine. At the time, we were using the carrier provided modem/router with built in wireless. What I had noted was that backups to google would not complete, they would go most of the way and then just stop. Likewise uploading photos in Google hangouts or other messaging platforms would also not complete on wifi. On cellular, no problems and never these problems elsewhere.

Now, I am living here full time and the network is mine. My servers and unifi gear is all setup and all of the cabling is new. Internally, the network is rock solid stable with no issues. This is not a typical home network and far from my first rodeo. I have deployed my router (untangle) with all Unifi gear, ac mesh and unifi access points and my windows domain. I am also now working from this location and note that Voip is sketchy. Still weird network issues.

We also had our CL DSL line upgraded to a "business" plan with hopes that the additional upload speed would help. Now that we have this "business" plan, I opt to put the modem into transparent bridge and throw untangle behind it, and attempt to apply some QoS then attempt some bulk file transfers. This is where things become very clear, we have a problem, Houston. It should also be noted CL 'mandated' we needed a new modem so we are also working on a brand new modem, before and after the line change. Went from ADSL to VDSL.

When doing ANY 'heavy' download I note that page loads start to become very slow, and the latency increases. I check the modem status and see that there are MANY errors reported and the modem is reporting that the line quality is marginal. Never have had DSL before and not really sure what I am looking at here:

upload_2018-11-4_9-12-4.png



The other thing that I note as well is it seems that when the page timeouts start, it is losing connection to CL network, it has to re-auth. I noted on 11-3 that the public IP had changed at least 5 times....

When doing multiple speedtests back to back, I note that the tests often will not complete either:
upload_2018-11-4_9-14-1.png


And if they do complete, the latency will increase through the roof, or returns:

upload_2018-11-4_9-17-48.png


I have another app which has been monitoring both Yahoo and Google and since it's introduction yesterday has reported 7 disconnects as well. This behavior also causes any streaming to be an event as well if it requires the internet.

A technician is scheduled to come out Monday AM but was wondering if there are other things I can check/review in the mean time? This is a new house with fresh copper from the pole > house > box > modem.

Ciffs:
  • Moved rural and have DSL.
  • Some performance issues with internet
  • Want to validate nothing is caused by 'me' before tech comes
  • Anything else I can do/try?
 
Greetings, recently I moved to a rather rural location and no longer have such luxuries as comcast cable, which was always super fast and nearly no latency. Now, I have a CentryLink DSL connection in the mountains which has been rather...frustrating.

I have noted with the internet here that connections seem to drop/time out rather regularly, latency spikes. At first I did not pay too much attention to it as at this time the network was not mine. At the time, we were using the carrier provided modem/router with built in wireless. What I had noted was that backups to google would not complete, they would go most of the way and then just stop. Likewise uploading photos in Google hangouts or other messaging platforms would also not complete on wifi. On cellular, no problems and never these problems elsewhere.

Now, I am living here full time and the network is mine. My servers and unifi gear is all setup and all of the cabling is new. Internally, the network is rock solid stable with no issues. This is not a typical home network and far from my first rodeo. I have deployed my router (untangle) with all Unifi gear, ac mesh and unifi access points and my windows domain. I am also now working from this location and note that Voip is sketchy. Still weird network issues.

We also had our CL DSL line upgraded to a "business" plan with hopes that the additional upload speed would help. Now that we have this "business" plan, I opt to put the modem into transparent bridge and throw untangle behind it, and attempt to apply some QoS then attempt some bulk file transfers. This is where things become very clear, we have a problem, Houston. It should also be noted CL 'mandated' we needed a new modem so we are also working on a brand new modem, before and after the line change. Went from ADSL to VDSL.

When doing ANY 'heavy' download I note that page loads start to become very slow, and the latency increases. I check the modem status and see that there are MANY errors reported and the modem is reporting that the line quality is marginal. Never have had DSL before and not really sure what I am looking at here:

View attachment 117433


The other thing that I note as well is it seems that when the page timeouts start, it is losing connection to CL network, it has to re-auth. I noted on 11-3 that the public IP had changed at least 5 times....

When doing multiple speedtests back to back, I note that the tests often will not complete either:
View attachment 117434

And if they do complete, the latency will increase through the roof, or returns:

View attachment 117436

I have another app which has been monitoring both Yahoo and Google and since it's introduction yesterday has reported 7 disconnects as well. This behavior also causes any streaming to be an event as well if it requires the internet.

A technician is scheduled to come out Monday AM but was wondering if there are other things I can check/review in the mean time? This is a new house with fresh copper from the pole > house > box > modem.

Ciffs:
  • Moved rural and have DSL.
  • Some performance issues with internet
  • Want to validate nothing is caused by 'me' before tech comes
  • Anything else I can do/try?
Just wanted to welcome you to the in-laws place before I read your post.

Sincerely hope all is well. ;)
 
I haven't messed with DSL in a long time (thank God), but from what it sounds like, it might be bad signal strength to the "modem". Not sure if the consumer has access to that feature. It varies by make, model, and ISP. They should be able to test with their instruments and tune it in properly for you to get full use out of the connection.
 
LOL, the in-laws isn't really that bad. We'll see what the tech says tomorrow, not holding my breath.
 
The tech showed up, basically argued with me, told me I am wrong, there is no issue, and didn't want to hear anything I had to say. When asking why my IP changed at least 6 times on Saturday(ppoe re-authing/connection fully dropping), he said he wasn't here and doesn't know but "there is no issue". The whole experience was honestly disappointing and my day would have been more complete without the experience. It was all around not only a time waste, the tech was ignorant on what QoS was, and unwilling to listen to any of the issues experienced and unwilling to look at anything. When he noted the modem was in bridged mode he instantly had an attitude. It was the most bizarre experience I have ever had with an ISP, bar none. Generally, when showing data a conversation then takes place with someone higher up, "magic" happens and problem goes away.

I have his boss's number and am going to sleep on it. Basically was told the box on the corner needs to be upgraded, it never will, it is full, and that's too bad. I am not asking for any miracle speeds, just a stable connection :(
 
I'd at the very least start sending emails to the executive team describing the experience and interaction you had with their employee. That typically changes their whole tune pretty quickly.
 
I'm sorry to hear you've been centurylinked.

How's LTE coverage?
 
Honestly, this place is a temporary living arrangement so I am personally not that vested in resolving/solving the issues. There are MANY here who are rather upset with CL so I get it, the tech is burned out. If this was going to be something longer term then yes, I would pursue it in more political fashion with hopes the infrastructure could be upgraded. I would be even willing to sign a 3-5 year commitment at that point and could prob get a couple others to, as well.

LTE coverage is great on ATT and the speedtests are also great. We have a 6gb limit between two phones on a family plan which is the killer. Megapath provided an unofficial quote for a 3/3 dedicated Ethernet circuit here($384/mo), but TBH not sure how they can service that since all the copper in the ground belongs to CL.
 
As someone who worked in the field on both copper (dsl) and fiber lines, I can tell you that dsl is, unfortunately, garbage tech. Fundamentally inferior to coax ip. You wouldn't believe how old some of the lines and terminals are.

On the other side, the telcos have this statistic they use that says they'll only average something like a maximum of 2.1 years of subscription fees out of each customer. So when the cost of replacing anything in the chain exceeds the total revenue they can extract from any customers attached to it, it becomes zero priority. Basically all the dsl providers have a moratorium on replacing any equipment proactively.

Now on the other hand... They won't typically cut their customers off, so if there's a ground based pedestal or cabinet and it gets hit by a car...
 
May have missed it but didn't see mention of land line phone service. If you have it, listen to the dial tone for static and such. Not at all uncommon for these old phone lines to have corroded or loose connections. Squirrels love building homes inside the cabinets. Water and humidity can degrade performance. Tech that worked fine for 300-3000hz analog phone audio with a lot of robustness often fails when asked to deal with high frequency digital signals.

Used to be you could ask for a line to be 'Conditioned' when you got DSL on a POTS phone services. That was simply a term for the service tech walking the entire length of line from the main cabinet to your house's network interface. As part of the process, they were supposed to make sure both wires were the same length and all connections tight and sealed from weather and free from rodent gnawing. Needless to say, not a popular activity for most techs.

If your local laws allow, secretly record the session the next time a tech shows up.

Could also be a bad board in their cabinet. Had similar symptoms with AT&T DSL years ago. Several techs came and tested and of course everything was fine when they were here. Problem was finally solved when a neighbor got new DSL service and after a day or so of fighting her service not working, the tech had a board replaced in the main cabinet. My service must have been on that same board as my problems vanished after that.
 
upload_2018-11-7_17-35-6.png


The line quality is no longer reporting "marginal" and seems to be mostly OK compared to in the past. I think either the tech did something and made no mention of it, or, there is something fucky going on in that box. Last Saturday was snowing/shitty so I figure there was more load from folks sitting at home netflixing it up probably causing issues. We were moved from ADSL to VDSL and the VDSL has a more consistent latency and speed, but there is still something wonky. Whatsapp cannot complete a backup on CL internet, it stops at 99% and does not complete, for hours. Backup on cellular? Completes instantly.
 
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SNR is low for that very high B2 attenuation.
generally, higher attenuation means longer loop length.

my guess is either wiring issue (internal wiring or telco run to NID), or very long loop length.

NID on the house happen to have a test jack? If so, and if you can, plug modem directly to test jack and view signal details.
That will help determine inside or outside issue.
 
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Per modem estimated loop is 8256'. They also said the box was too far away.
 
Welcome to the country.

We don’t have good internet because a lot of people think we don’t deserve it, even if we were willing to pay for it.

Enjoy the fresh air.
 
Per modem estimated loop is 8256'. They also said the box was too far away.

pretty much SOL then.
Only thing that they could maybe possibly do, which may not have an impact, is lower the max sync rate at the port of the DSLAM.
Back when I was a field tech for DSL ISP/telco, we somewhat frequently had customers with high error rates. It was due to the port config on the upstream to allow a sync rate of 1024 on ADSL2+. 1024 was the max.
Dropping that down to 896 cleared issues up quite frequently.
Looking at the port stats on DSLAM would help me pinpoint that, as only upstream would have a ton of CRCs.
In those cases though, the modem was completely dropping sync.

VDSL may behave differently though, as I have no experience with that particular DSL infrastructure.
 
Thanks, that's good information.
The one thing I note with this modem and it has to be a glitch, the modem reports that 6tb of traffic went through it since Saturday. My router doesn't even show 1tb for the month. At 20mbps, if the connection could always maintain that, it would take like 2 months to hit that.
 
Also, this bugs me.
upload_2018-11-8_17-12-33.png


So, according to this, that's 15.8gb/sec? has to be a glitch in the matrix?

Uptime:

upload_2018-11-8_17-13-44.png


My router reports total xfer of like 141gb total for the whole month, which was added 11-2...

Today was probably the first time all week that I noted an issue with internet, but did not do any speed tests/diags, was a busy day...
 
Also, this bugs me.
View attachment 118685

So, according to this, that's 15.8gb/sec? has to be a glitch in the matrix?

Uptime:

View attachment 118686

My router reports total xfer of like 141gb total for the whole month, which was added 11-2...

Today was probably the first time all week that I noted an issue with internet, but did not do any speed tests/diags, was a busy day...
Does there happen to be a firmware update for this thing?
I know you can purchase and install your own modem with cable. Like I said, I haven't touched DSL in so long. But, I'm wondering if you could purchase your own modem for DSL and get it installed?
 
Lol. Turns out you can!
https://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/dsl-modems-routers/default.aspx
I'd buy one of these ASAP and be done with the whole back and forth. I like to control my modem anyway. Typically, you can save money by buying your own. Likely, they're billing your in-laws a "rental fee" for that piece of junk...

The equipment here now is owned. I saw that there were a few other LTE providers...It seems they resell the LTE service and you will be de-prioritized. One of those sites had: Sprint and T-Mobile consider 50 GB unlimited 4G LTE data after that data speeds can vary based on how busy the network is. T-Mobile and Sprint call this data prioritization. AT&T and Verizon enable data prioritization after 22 GB. I might have to pick up one of these, the CL service is really shoddy when trying to host meetings...

https://unlimitedville.com/plans is one of those providers, but again, you are bound back to the tower limitations. Just yesterday 31gb passed through the router for the whole house. LTE speed tests beat the pants off of CL as well. I might try my phone for a work meeting once as a hot spot and see how it behaves.
 
https://www.ubifi.net/

I am thinking about giving this one a go. They say you need their gateway because you don't get de-prioritized with it and there is no caps. Obviously, if the tower has higher use the speeds could be impacted. The ATT speed tests here blow the doors off CL and the tower is 1.5 miles from here. I could prob run an antenna to the top of the house to get better signal...The $300 equipment fee is my hang up ATM, but we'll see.
 
Good luck to you. I thought uswest and the qwest were bad years ago. Century Link is far far worse. At least there is cell options for some. I tried DSL at my place a few years ago, 20 Mb/s tops, stable connection (in city) but the idiots ended up cutting off my land line for a week. All for $40 including modem rental.
 
https://www.ubifi.net/

I am thinking about giving this one a go. They say you need their gateway because you don't get de-prioritized with it and there is no caps. Obviously, if the tower has higher use the speeds could be impacted. The ATT speed tests here blow the doors off CL and the tower is 1.5 miles from here. I could prob run an antenna to the top of the house to get better signal...The $300 equipment fee is my hang up ATM, but we'll see.

I'm doubtful of their latency claims, but sometimes you just want bandwidth. Probably not good for gaming
 
I'm doubtful of their latency claims, but sometimes you just want bandwidth. Probably not good for gaming

I am going to try it for hosting meetings. The latency when doing random tests has been mostly OK and the upload is also leaps and bounds better. It is pretty sad when you have a business line from century link and it cannot be used for business :( Even VOIP is impacted and like I said, I setup QoS and such.

Also going to see how much data can be sent through it before it is de-prioritized.
 
Honestly, this place is a temporary living arrangement so I am personally not that vested in resolving/solving the issues. There are MANY here who are rather upset with CL so I get it, the tech is burned out. If this was going to be something longer term then yes, I would pursue it in more political fashion with hopes the infrastructure could be upgraded. I would be even willing to sign a 3-5 year commitment at that point and could prob get a couple others to, as well.

LTE coverage is great on ATT and the speedtests are also great. We have a 6gb limit between two phones on a family plan which is the killer. Megapath provided an unofficial quote for a 3/3 dedicated Ethernet circuit here($384/mo), but TBH not sure how they can service that since all the copper in the ground belongs to CL.
CL becomes the LEC/middleman & rents out the copper to Megapath. The Layer1 issues then become Megapath's problem from your perspective.
 
This shit is why I refuse to live anywhere without cable service.

Great, I came from cable service, 300/30. What it also came with:
  • Neighbors with unattended dogs that bark day/night
  • Neighbors with car stereos/exhaust, etc and carry on like retards
  • Neighbors who want to get in your shit
  • Living in a large city with shitty traffic which made driving a chore
  • Going shopping anywhere was a real chore
  • Large city crime, so glad to NOT have people dying so close to home and so frequently.
  • Sirens, god I hate that sound.

I hope your comment wasn't serious! So MUCH more to life than internet.



Also, I did get the Ubifi LTE router/gateway in. Have run about 130gb of data through it and it is just as quick as it was when I got it. It averages about 30mbps down and 15mbps up. Latency is a little higher but has not been a problem. Ordered some antennas as where I have it setup does not have the best service and I'd like to play with the other bands that seem to suggest it may be possible to see 60-80mbps down.
 
Great, I came from cable service, 300/30. What it also came with:
  • Neighbors with unattended dogs that bark day/night
  • Neighbors with car stereos/exhaust, etc and carry on like retards
  • Neighbors who want to get in your shit
  • Living in a large city with shitty traffic which made driving a chore
  • Going shopping anywhere was a real chore
  • Large city crime, so glad to NOT have people dying so close to home and so frequently.
  • Sirens, god I hate that sound.

I hope your comment wasn't serious! So MUCH more to life than internet.



Also, I did get the Ubifi LTE router/gateway in. Have run about 130gb of data through it and it is just as quick as it was when I got it. It averages about 30mbps down and 15mbps up. Latency is a little higher but has not been a problem. Ordered some antennas as where I have it setup does not have the best service and I'd like to play with the other bands that seem to suggest it may be possible to see 60-80mbps down.

Yeah, because it's impossible to have cable internet in a decent neighborhood? I hope your comment wasn't serious.

You act like anywhere with cable is going to be a murder ridden shit hole. I've had DSL before and never again.
 
Also, I did get the Ubifi LTE router/gateway in. Have run about 130gb of data through it and it is just as quick as it was when I got it. It averages about 30mbps down and 15mbps up. Latency is a little higher but has not been a problem. Ordered some antennas as where I have it setup does not have the best service and I'd like to play with the other bands that seem to suggest it may be possible to see 60-80mbps down.
Glad to see you've gotten some relief. I've dealt with situations like this in the early days of Internet in our hotels where reliability was horrible and yet it was more important than color tv. What to do? Multi-wan!

I'd get every connection you can possibly get--the vdsl, adsl, lte, and whatever else you can get and bond it all together. Whichever one keep dropping out or having issues gets disconnected and then you continue to tweak it from there.

A few years ago when I was publishing about 45,000 photos a year on my web site, I needed more upload bandwidth that was available in even a single cable modem--so I got 3 and used a rv016 to multi-wan my way to uploading bliss. At a time when 384k upload was quick, I had almost 2Mbit upload at my disposal with my combined modems. If you have a lot of upload demand, you may want to consider a similar setup.

Keep us posted with how everything settles in the end. I've always wondered what it would be like taking a nice network and putting in a place where most of the businesses didn't even have the same resources I had at home. :D
 
So far I have run about 565gb though the LTE gateway, the speed has not been throttled. I am using nordvpn to run ubuntu torrents though it. Right now, I have it locked on a band and it reports excellent coverage.
 
Greetings, recently I moved to a rather rural location and no longer have such luxuries as comcast cable, which was always super fast and nearly no latency. Now, I have a CentryLink

i stopped reading at this point.

CL is hands down the WORST org to work with on the business side. I can only assume residential is the same.

how is your cell coverage in the area? may wanna get that going if you have LTE.
 
i stopped reading at this point.

CL is hands down the WORST org to work with on the business side. I can only assume residential is the same.

how is your cell coverage in the area? may wanna get that going if you have LTE.


I bought an LTE modem with unlimited service/plan that seems to be really unlimited.

upload_2018-12-4_20-23-37.png
 
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