FibreX Technicolor modem - lights and faults

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mdf

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#208295 5-Feb-2017 21:08

I've been having some issues with my FibreX cable in Island Bay recently. I'm wondering if anyone can shed any light on the significance of the lights on the Technicolor modem.

Sometimes I have no internet, and the "online" light on the modem is off. In these cases, resetting the modem usually seems to resolve the issue.

However, if I have no internet and the "online" light on the modem is still on, it seems to be an issue further up the pipeline and no amount of resetting modems, routers and PCs seems to do anything.

Correlation? Causation?

I've tried all the usual troubleshooting steps, including logging tickets.

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#1715891 5-Feb-2017 22:59

Like you, I am on "FibreX" cable in Island Bay - on the notorious node WKH.

I have had 11 significant outages in the last 4 weeks, lasting between 30 mins and 14 hours - most recently for one hour tonight.

Plus numerous outages lasting less than 30 minutes, requiring a modem reboot.

Typically all the lights on the Technicolor modem stay on, but the connection suddenly dies completely - and does not recover despite multiple modem/router/PC reboots.

During outages modem reboots are abnormally slow, typically taking 3 minutes or longer.

Speed tests - for what little they are worth - are "normal" before and after these outages.

I get "good" speed tests but poor real-world performance, particularly with overseas connections.

Unfortunately, fibre is not available in Island Bay until December 2019.

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michaelmurfy

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#1715898 5-Feb-2017 23:48

Strange - am seeing the same issue with @samsam since he is on the UniFi controller. His router keeps dropping the connection and we've been trying some investigation to see what is causing it as there is no real pattern. Some days it is really bad (confirmed with him also). It also doesn't matter what router he is using.

Hopefully there is some more official word to what is going on. I thought it may have been due to the DHCP lease expiring however it doesn't even appear to match that.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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BMarquis

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#1715946 6-Feb-2017 08:18

I thought it may have been due to the DHCP lease expiring however it doesn't even appear to match that.

Doesn't seem to be that from my investigations either.
All the LED's stay on, no amount of requesting a new DHCP lease resolves it.
Nothing gets through the cable modem until after it is rebooted.

Very annoying fault!
Big bandwidth consuming uploads (i.e backing up photos to amazon/google drive) seems to trigger it.
Small bandwidth consuming uploads (I have a wifi BBQ thermometer which sends temperatures to the clouds) cause a MASSIVE slowdown to the point of the internet becoming almost unusable.

JordantheNerd

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#1715947 6-Feb-2017 08:18

I think I'm having similar issues, also in Island Bay. We just switched over to FibreX, previously on an old cable offering that was only 15mbps down - now on 200mbps.

In some cases, I’ve found rebooting the modem and cable box doesn’t help. This tends to be when the “online” light is on the cable box but the “internet” light on the modem flashes. The router’s internet status page usually says “Connecting” under “Internet_Ethernet”.

It stopped last night at around 8:30pm. This morning I rebooted the modem and cable box and it’s come back online.

A few weeks ago there was an outage for an entire Sunday (15/1/17). This one was reported on the Vodafone status page, but none of these smaller problems I’ve had seem to be reflected on their page. I had hoped that when whatever equipment might have died on this day was replaced, the unreliability would have stopped. I guess not :(

Other times I think I’ve had issues (based on when I’ve loaded the Vodafone status page on my phone):

- 4/2/17 8pm

- 1/2/17 7:50pm

- 24/1/17 10:30pm

- 19/1/17 10:30pm

… and more.

How can I tell if I’m on this notorious node?

Is this likely to be something they can / will fix?

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#1715956 6-Feb-2017 08:54

JordantheNerd:

<snip>

How can I tell if I’m on this notorious node?

Is this likely to be something they can / will fix?

You can take it as read that if you're in Island Bay and getting multiple outages, you're on WKH.

I have advised Vodafone of all of the faults noted in the past month, giving dates and times.

They are aware that WKH has ongoing problems.

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Jase2985

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#1715993 6-Feb-2017 10:34

this didnt take long at all.

samsam

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#1715994 6-Feb-2017 10:34

I was having these same problems. Unify USG dropping out at seemingly random times and then reconnecting (without reboot) after 5-30 mins. There was a bit of downloading/uploading going on at times.

Vodafone sent out a technician on Saturday and he diagnosed a faulty connection causing high packet loss, but only sometimes. We had to wiggle it to get it to show up. He replaced it and I have not had any drop out for the last few days.

The tech mentioned high packet on the network could kick off a device. Also doing a packet loss test (via xbox one) showed 14-25% packet loss before the repair.

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#1716219 6-Feb-2017 22:12

Just chiming in to add i'm on the same node and have experienced all the same outages. It's highly frustrating given I was under the impression that moving to the FibreX (With Docsis3.1 hardware) would iron out the bumps. Apparently not. My late 2019 *real* fibre installation can't come soon enough.

michaelmurfy

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#1716246 6-Feb-2017 22:40

Can confirm @samsam's connection seems stable now. I do however have an idea to see if we can find a trend.

I am running a Smokeping server (at https://smokeping.murfy.nz) - if you've got a static IP that is externally pingable I will start monitoring them. It'll be interesting to see if the dropouts occur at the same time. Send me a PM with your IP address (or use DDNS if you're not static) as well as your node (if known) and I'll put them up on Smokeping.

michaelmurfy

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#1716476 7-Feb-2017 12:59

Got a couple of connections already on https://smokeping.murfy.nz/smokeping.fcgi?target=FibreX - if you've got a static IP or dyndns set up then let me know.

BMarquis

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#1716500 7-Feb-2017 13:34

Note that (AFAIK, as I'm in Melrose) I'm not connected to WKH

rt19

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#1716818 7-Feb-2017 21:17

Hi, I live in Ngaio and have been seeing similar issues. I upgraded to FibreX last week Wednesday and noticed these issues from Sat 3rd Feb. Since the cable modem upgrade I notice micro outages and total outages. Cable Modem lights look all good, but I notice I have no IP address on WAN interface of my gateway firewall - it loose access to DHCP and fails. I then reboot the cable modem and wait between 5-30 minutes maybe rebooting a few times and it all works again. I have noticed the DHCP lease time for my static IP reservation is only 10 minutes which is very short for an expiry. Vodafone Customer services keep informing me that its a problem with my 3rd device and that I need to config it for a static IP address not DHCP...go figure. I've never had an issue before with my gateway when it was connected to the old Cisco cable modem. Cheers

rt19

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#1716971 8-Feb-2017 08:35

Can anyone please tell me what there DHCP lease time are?

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#1716997 8-Feb-2017 09:21

rt19: Can anyone please tell me what there DHCP lease time are?

"FibreX" 200/20 Mbps, IP not "static"

Ubiquiti ERL router

DHCP lease time 86400 seconds = 24 hours

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michaelmurfy

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#1717435 8-Feb-2017 23:41

The problem is NOT related to DHCP lease times. For the few people I am monitoring I am seeing high packet loss up to an hour before their connection drops but in general connections are looking rough as guts:

Lets compare this to a VDSL connection in rural nowhere shall we?

There is something really dodgy going on especially with the 2 connections I've got around Northland. I do need more connections to monitor to paint a bigger picture so if you've got FibreX with either a static IP or dyndns then please let me know of your location + IP/DNS address and I'll add you - @mdf @Sideface maybe? The only thing you need is ICMP enabled in your firewall.

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