Strange problems with Lightwire Wimax

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Strange problems with Lightwire Wimax

Bceltics

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#214302 5-May-2017 17:47

ISP: Lightwire (used to be Netsmart but they bought them out a few years ago)

Router: wrt1900ac

Hi about 3 weeks ago, shortly after the hurricaine hit, my internet started to get very slow, going from around a stable 8/3 to fluctuating wildly around 2/1 with websites loading very slowly. During the next few weeks the internet was staying slow and cutting out often, sometimes around 12+ hours.

Lightwire support doesn't have a clue what the problem is, and from their end they think the internet is working fine. From what I've learnt, other people on the same wimax tower as me are having problems too. They have decided that the old technology is the problem and upgraded the old tower to their (slightly) newer wimax technology 2 days ago.

They came around to my property to upgrade my antenna and to get the slightly faster speeds (meant to be around 15/6) however the reception wasn't great so I need to cut down some trees before they can install it. The old antenna's reception was fine however which I am using now.

Now to the strange part, after they upgraded the tower, the internet is back working fine but for very few websites. Reddit, geekzone, bing, imgur work fine. Everything else, speedtest, apple.com, stuff, nzherald, any google service. Don't work.

So I tried traceroute from my router and the websites fail to finish. But If I try the same websites on the OS X Network Utility tracerout, they work fine.

Google

Router

OS X Network Utility

Traceroute has started…

traceroute: Warning: google.com has multiple addresses; using 103.13.116.181

traceroute to google.com (103.13.116.181), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets

1 linksys (192.168.1.1) 1.953 ms 0.810 ms 0.776 ms

2 arnie.lightwire.co.nz (114.134.15.254) 54.770 ms 59.242 ms 59.884 ms

3 rt-bdr-hn.lightwire.co.nz (114.134.15.177) 50.156 ms 59.191 ms 59.936 ms

4 as45177.akl-ix.nz (43.243.21.12) 59.882 ms 59.588 ms 60.195 ms

5 ae1-15.mdr-cr2.as45177.net.nz (103.13.116.129) 59.869 ms 59.270 ms 90.007 ms

6 cache.google.com (103.13.116.181) 60.018 ms 178.045 ms 61.097 ms

Trademe

Router

OS X network utility

Traceroute has started…

traceroute to trademe.co.nz (202.162.73.2), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets

1 linksys (192.168.1.1) 1.343 ms 1.094 ms 1.037 ms

2 arnie.lightwire.co.nz (114.134.15.254) 60.492 ms 69.294 ms 70.151 ms

3 rt-bdr-hn.lightwire.co.nz (114.134.15.177) 59.901 ms 59.503 ms 71.750 ms

4 as9834.akl-ix.nz (43.243.21.36) 58.906 ms 69.742 ms 70.146 ms

5 203.57.145.135 (203.57.145.135) 69.938 ms 59.290 ms 64.803 ms

6 www.trademe.co.nz (202.162.73.2) 65.267 ms 68.409 ms 60.050 ms

Router

OS X utility

Traceroute has started…

traceroute: Warning: reddit.com has multiple addresses; using 151.101.1.140

traceroute to reddit.com (151.101.1.140), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets

1 linksys (192.168.1.1) 1.195 ms 1.037 ms 0.803 ms

2 arnie.lightwire.co.nz (114.134.15.254) 52.289 ms 60.151 ms 59.445 ms

3 rt-bdr-hn.lightwire.co.nz (114.134.15.177) 79.651 ms 59.222 ms 59.986 ms

4 tengigabitethernet0-2-0-610902.aktnz-rt1.fx.net.nz (131.203.124.241) 59.922 ms 59.303 ms 70.798 ms

5 tengigabitethernet0-2-0-911.wnmur-rt1.fx.net.nz (131.203.246.137) 102.900 ms 65.573 ms 201.133 ms

6 trademe-wnmur.fx.net.nz (131.203.246.138) 68.847 ms 69.295 ms 69.957 ms

7 202.21.128.139 (202.21.128.139) 90.139 ms 68.007 ms 70.066 ms

8 151.101.1.140 (151.101.1.140) 72.005 ms 66.749 ms 70.442 ms

Whats even stranger is that traceroute from my router doesn't seem to work on reddit, however in the browser it works fine. I thought this might be a router issue so I tried a different router yet there was the same problem. Devices I have tried this on, android, OS X, and windows 10.

So if anyone knows what the hell is going on, I would really appreciate your feedback.

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#1776653 5-May-2017 21:20

Have you tried to do traceroutes from Android and Win 10?

As for your problem it seems like you are either only getting NZ sites and sites that are cached in NZ. Or Lightwire have a failed uplink or mis configured router somewhere. Which means that depending on the IP address of the website you are trying to access, determines whether it loads or not. The slow loading is also a symptom of this. As most websites nowdays are made up of content that sits on lots of different servers. And if you have access to some of those but not others then you often get really slow loading, as a script ect tries to load content that is blocked.

It could also be a DNS related issue. Check that your router has the correct DNS servers configured. Ask lightwire if you don't know what their DNS server address are. Download and run the program DNS Benchmark from grc.com Use it to test both the Lightwire DNS servers and your computer's default DNS servers (which is normally just your router).

Run a Smokeping to a working website to check if the problem is your actual connection disconnecting and reconnecting all the time or not. Note also that alot of devices interpret a DNS failure as the equivalent of being disconnected.

And it could just be that a network link somewhere is overloaded. As this will make it luck of the draw if DNS works or not.

yitz

2075 posts

Uber Geek

#1776682 5-May-2017 23:01

Seems more likely an IP routing issue somewhere than DNS (which seems to be resolving at least in all the pings/traceroutes).

Do you know what sort of IP address they assign, publicly routable or shared CG-NAT?

Bceltics

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1776694 6-May-2017 00:31

Here's some more info

From android

Google (doesn't load)

Reddit (loads)

Trademe (doesn't load)

Lightwire.co.nz (doesn't load)

Pic of timing out

Seems like smokeping is only on linux, I found the program pingplotter, which might be useful instead

google.co.nz

trademe.co.nz

lightwire.co.nz

Bceltics

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1776697 6-May-2017 00:45

yitz: Seems more likely an IP routing issue somewhere than DNS (which seems to be resolving at least in all the pings/traceroutes). Do you know what sort of IP address they assign, publicly routable or shared CG-NAT?

Thanks for the reply. I've got no idea, I'll be sending them an email about it. Thinking of linking this thread too.

Bceltics

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1776698 6-May-2017 00:55

Aredwood:

Have you tried to do traceroutes from Android and Win 10?

As for your problem it seems like you are either only getting NZ sites and sites that are cached in NZ. Or Lightwire have a failed uplink or mis configured router somewhere. Which means that depending on the IP address of the website you are trying to access, determines whether it loads or not. The slow loading is also a symptom of this. As most websites nowdays are made up of content that sits on lots of different servers. And if you have access to some of those but not others then you often get really slow loading, as a script ect tries to load content that is blocked.

It could also be a DNS related issue. Check that your router has the correct DNS servers configured. Ask lightwire if you don't know what their DNS server address are. Download and run the program DNS Benchmark from grc.com Use it to test both the Lightwire DNS servers and your computer's default DNS servers (which is normally just your router).

Run a Smokeping to a working website to check if the problem is your actual connection disconnecting and reconnecting all the time or not. Note also that alot of devices interpret a DNS failure as the equivalent of being disconnected.

And it could just be that a network link somewhere is overloaded. As this will make it luck of the draw if DNS works or not.

Hey thanks heaps for your long reply Adredwood!

AFAIK my router doesn't actually have a DNS setting, because linksys/belkin is useless. I googled this and someone was complaining about it on their forums. If push comes to shove I can check this using another router.

Also I'm waiting for a reply from lightwire for their DNS settings so I can test it on DNS benchmark.

Will reply more thoroughly tomorrow. Cheers.

bender

220 posts

Master Geek

#1776777 6-May-2017 09:53

Check your MTU.

kiwifidget

"Cookie"
3420 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1776855 6-May-2017 13:42

My parents are with Lightwire too and have been complaining about poor connectivity.

I think they are off the Minden transmitter.

Lightwire were going to send them a new router 2-3 weeks ago. They are still waiting.

Delete cookies?! Are you insane?!

Samsung

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Bceltics

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1776999 6-May-2017 21:49

Well great news, lightwire came over today (a Saturday morning I might add) and installed the new receiver on the roof and everything started working again.

Apparently the upgraded transmitter was a few degrees off when they tried to install it yesterday. When they first tested the connection it was getting 20/12 but they manually limit connections to 15/10 apparently to ease congestion.

So no idea what was causing the problem, but everything works now and I got faster speeds because of it so I'm happy.

kiwifidget:

My parents are with Lightwire too and have been complaining about poor connectivity.

I think they are off the Minden transmitter.

Lightwire were going to send them a new router 2-3 weeks ago. They are still waiting.

My transmitter is in Waihi. I guess your parents will have to wait until they upgrade them? Nothing really happened for 3 weeks while contacting support more than 10 times besides them admitting they had issues. Your parents might have to start kicking up a fuss otherwise lightwire will think everything is fine.

raytaylor

4014 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1782146 14-May-2017 22:59

Cut the trees - that will definitely help with speeds.

I think it was an MTU issue - some websites, specifically https urls are more problematic. I would have almost guessed that the westpac internet banking wasnt working, but ANZ's was fine. Westpac seems to have a stricter MTU. Too late now to test though.

Ray Taylor

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