I installed the router this afternoon and had no problem getting it running.
However, between 7pm and 9.30pm I have still been disconnecting regularly. Between 8.30pm and 9.30 pm it was every 5 mins approx.
I have had to leave the warcraft raid I was in for the 3rd time in 5 days and let down 24 other people who cannot believe I get this service from a reputable telco.
Well for my part I had problems last night as well.
I had "gone back" to using my router, so the first thing I did was plug directly into the modem -and I still had problems.
Like I said from the beginning -don't blame your equipment -Telstra has a problem with their network that significantly affects latency-sensitive gamers..
As Cyril mentioned, lets hope the impending upgrade sorts things out.
ps. Everyone I game with knows I have the best connection for hosting, but they also know that it is completely unreliable. So if I host, and the room drops, we fall back to someone with a slower (but more reliable) connection, which means people get lag; can't hold as many players -but at least the whole room doesn't drop.
pps. whenever I get these issues I perform a ping test against the default gateway and invariably the results show a wildly fluctuating response time, ranging from 10ms up many hundreds or complete time-outs. This further implies that the issue is not about "international traffic" but is specific to telstras network.
hmm.. I wish to revise that last assertion. It may infact be due to heavy international traffic -just not international traffic "specific to me"
"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)
Just had it confirmed that it is a big fix and the issue is one where the TV service is interferring with modem service. It is quite a wide issue but affects certain areas. It is being fixed but not expected to be completed until the end of July.
mattbush: Just had it confirmed that it is a big fix and the issue is one where the TV service is interferring with modem service. It is quite a wide issue but affects certain areas. It is being fixed but not expected to be completed until the end of July.
Thanks for the info -I assume one of their reps told you this? I guess it makes about as much sense as anything else -but it doesn't really explain why it is so much more of an issue during prime time hours. Also, I'll believe the timeframe after it has happened.
"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)
mattbush: Just had it confirmed that it is a big fix and the issue is one where the TV service is interferring with modem service. It is quite a wide issue but affects certain areas. It is being fixed but not expected to be completed until the end of July.
Thanks for the info -I assume one of their reps told you this? I guess it makes about as much sense as anything else -but it doesn't really explain why it is so much more of an issue during prime time hours. Also, I'll believe the timeframe after it has happened.
Yes, I finally am getting somewhere inside Vodafone. The issue is when people come home and start using their televisions to view Sky through Telstraclear. That explains why it appears to be peak times.
They have also NOW discovered a reasonably large volumes of complaints that have sat idle.
I am still after an interim solution and if i dont get one will be switching providers, as this sort of treatment is inexcusable.
How would the number of people actually watching TV have any affect on their network? I always thought that the TV signal goes only one way, so would therefore be irrelevent whether it was being fed into a TV or not.
However, given the network is bi-directional by nature, perhaps there is some sort of unintended interference being caused on a part of the cable channel's bandwidth (perhaps the upload which only has 2mhz bandwidth)
But I guess the theorisation is pointless. I belive they have known about this issue for a while, but due to customer pressure are finally having to come clean.
"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)
I can't see how someone watching television can cause modem issues. It is a bit like saying that if too many people are watching terestrial television off their antenna, the signal gets weaker as each user turns their television on????
Like most catv networks, there must be a forward path that carries the tv pictures being analog and digtal carriers and the forward path for the modems.
There will be a return path too, to take information from the cable modems back to the controller.
I do know that any cable network including the TelstraClear one will be prone to cracks in cables, loose connections etc that may allow electrical noise and outside RF noise back into the network. I would imagine that this would have a large impact on certain nodes at different times. Especially on very windy Wellington days.
One burst of RF energy is enough to 'mute' the modems, inturn making them drop a packet or more.
damian: I can't see how someone watching television can cause modem issues. It is a bit like saying that if too many people are watching terestrial television off their antenna, the signal gets weaker as each user turns their television on????
Like most catv networks, there must be a forward path that carries the tv pictures being analog and digtal carriers and the forward path for the modems.
There will be a return path too, to take information from the cable modems back to the controller.
I do know that any cable network including the TelstraClear one will be prone to cracks in cables, loose connections etc that may allow electrical noise and outside RF noise back into the network. I would imagine that this would have a large impact on certain nodes at different times. Especially on very windy Wellington days.
One burst of RF energy is enough to 'mute' the modems, inturn making them drop a packet or more.
Maybe this is what the Rep was refering too?
Hmm, I don't think so.
Actually, I don't think your comparrison is quite right. In the case of cable TV, I think the setop box actually will communicate back up the line. For example pay-per-view, or capturing details about what the user is actually watching, or controlling what channels they are allowed to watch depending on what they have subscribed to, etc..
Perhaps when they fireup the setop box it might cause the issue then.
Who knows, I only know there is definately a problem, and it seems worst (but is not limited to) @prime time hours.
"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)
Only the analog set top boxes communicate when you order a movie, as they don't have the external modem like the digital decoders do. I would have it a guess that what the issue is people turning on their digital set top box, modem, thus creating more modems on the controller causing more arp traffic.
As for what channels you can watch, I know for a fact that it is sent to the decoders and it stores what channels it is allowed to access, for analog. Digital is the same as sky, the card get's activated with what channels can be watched.
Well at the end of the day, this is what they are telling us, as strange at it seems. I'm going to follow this up with the tech support guy I've been dealing with, to see what (if anything) he has to say on the matter.
I'm just sceptical on the time-frame -end of July could end up being end of this year, knowing how big companies like this work -and I certainly hope they make me eat my words, but in the meantime, I'm going to find out what sort of performance I might be able to get with ADSL2
"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)
damian: Only the analog set top boxes communicate when you order a movie, as they don't have the external modem like the digital decoders do. I would have it a guess that what the issue is people turning on their digital set top box, modem, thus creating more modems on the controller causing more arp traffic.
As for what channels you can watch, I know for a fact that it is sent to the decoders and it stores what channels it is allowed to access, for analog. Digital is the same as sky, the card get's activated with what channels can be watched.
The analogue boxes don't talk back to the headend, much. When you order a movie they store this in NVRAM. Every so often, the headend polls the box and gets the movie orders off it. The upstream uses FSK encoding, which is very low efficiency but very noise immune. It was designed to work on incredibly noisy analogue cable systems. The TCL systems are a doddle. If the box does not hear from the headend for a while it sulks and refuses to work, and won't start working again until it gets polled.
The digital boxes do more. The channel information (but not the EPG---Electronic Programme Guide) comes down 'in-line'. It's stored in extra fields in the MPEG data stream. Just as the TAG fields in an MP3 store data. (Just as, since MP3 is the audio part of the MPEG2 standard). The EPG is sent out of band through the associated cable modem. If you turn on your cable modem, then the STB will request the EPG and thus will draw down a reasonable amount of traffic, at that time. If you order a movie, the order and authorisation are done immediately through the cable modem (so if you turn off your cable modem, no PPV movies for you).
ARP traffic on the STB network is not a problem, since it's already been segmented away from the Internet, so leaving on your STB cable modem does not really matter, ARP-wise.
I believe I have actually just figured out our issue. I was using my modem connected directly to my pc via usb so that I could use my pc's onboard network to share internet to the other pc's in our house. Our net slowed to a crawl this afternoon so I did a test using a packet sniffer to see what was going through the modem and noticed that we were getting _exactly_ 1000 ARP packets every second and no TCP packets were getting through. After a bit of research it seems that USB is only capable of handling 1000 packets per second (still not sure on this if someone else can confirm) so basically it would seem that at peak usage times when the network is saturated with ARP packets it was maxing out our USB's throughput capacity. I've now got it running through ethernet and it's jumped up to ~1700 ARP packets per second and the internet seems to be running fine.
I was actually sure I had tried this already without success which was why I didn't test it earlier but maybe I was imagining things because it seems to all add up... so yeah if anyone else is having problems and using USB you might want to try that.
mcmurder: so yeah if anyone else is having problems and using USB you might want to try that.
I'm pleased you sorted your problem out, and commend you for posting your analysis and solution, as it may be of help for others.
Having said that, your problem is not the same as the one I'm having, nor most of the others posting on this thread. (I highly doubt most people are using USB connections for their internet -ethernet is far more typical)
"our" issue appears only to impact gamers, and seems to manifest itself as a "micro-disconnection" from the internet. Probably not noticeable to people browsing (or even streaming, given buffering facilities) but is significant enough to break UDP based connections, which is the protocol that most online games use. the result is pure frustration -I have certainly lost my confidence to Host games, and get dropped alot from the ones I join -except perhaps very late at night, which is about the only time I tend to get good stability lately.
I've observed I can correlate these breaks with time-outs when pinging the default gateway. I am currently awaiting a response from the TC helpdesk regarding the latest theory presented here, which is cable TV interferance with Cable Internet. I will post their response, assuming I get one.
"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)
While I don't play any FPS-style online games I do play online poker and was noticing some definite "lag" last night where the connection would seem to freeze for a few seconds and then come back. I checked the packet sniffer again and we were receiving in excess of 2000 ARP packets every second, each one being 60 bytes in size. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's around 120 kb/s of ARP spam which surely has to be having some effect on connection stability?
Next time it's that bad I might have to fire up TF2 or some game like that and see how it performs.
Are you subscribed to our RSS feed? You can download the latest headlines and summaries from our stories directly
to your computer or smartphone by using a feed reader.
Trusted
