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Broadband connection problem

Confuzzled

Guest
Every once in awhile my ADSL will refuse to connect and up until recently I thought this was down to my isp. I use a router that is turned off at night and on when I need access. Before this I had just the standard USB modem. But when the problem occurs I have found that unplugging the router, re-plugging in the USB modem, re-installing its drivers, unplugging the USB modem and then reconnecting and switching on the router solves the problem.

I don't understand why but it seems to work everytime otherwise I would have to wait for awhile before the router finally fixed itself. Turning the router on and off for a period doesn't solve it but plugging in my old USB modem and then unplugging does? Why?
 
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I sometimes get the same problem, but have never been able to figure out precisely why it occurs. It's as though the ISP were "down" (offline) to the router and even clicking reconnect from the menu fails to establish a connection, but the provider is not down and using a different router or modem works fine.

More over, I don't recall this happening on my old ZyXEL USB ADSL Modem, but it has reared its ugly head on every one of the various different routers I've had from other companies. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "outages" people experienced were related to this and not outages at all.

Being environmentally conscious I only leave my broadband on during the daytime, so typically this usually happens during the earlier hours of the morning when I first switch it on. It’s rare and doesn’t bother me, but I’m a person that can’t stand not knowing why something fails to work =).

I’ll investigate this further as the usual reasons don't seem to apply.

PS "I don't use Wi-Fi."
 
I turn my router off when not in use, because I DO use Wifi. Not long moved here & plenty of jobs to do before CAT5 cabling. Luckily it seems to be a wifi wilderness around here. Netstumbler never spots anything else. Occasionally a laptop with an inbuilt wifi card comes up, but nothing else.

I don't have any probs with line speed dropping because of turning the router off. If anything, quite the reverse.

It does take the router rather longer to connect than it does to establish the wifi link though.

....but I no longer have probs with it not wanting to connect for minutes at a time since I swapped from PPP_o_A to PPP_o_E

Previous to that change the router would drop connection even while being used, and could take over a minute to reconnect.

On the advice of a network-tech friend I changed to PPP_o_E & problems went away. It establishes connection to exchange in a few seconds & doesn't drop out any more.

According to my friend PPP_o_E (if available at your exchange) will ALWAYS be better than PPP_o_E. At his exchange, PPP_o_A doesn't work at all, which has confused a few ISPs with customers near him.

When you change to PPP_o_E, it'll either work or won't. Nothing else to change. You'll see VC/MUX automatically change to Link/Snap in the settings but you don't need to do anything else except wait for the router to reboot.
 
Don't forget, BT's existing Network IS ATM based, so unless you are on AOL LLU or BT's 21CN network, then your PPP over Ethernet LLC connection is encapsulated in ATM cells, so you are actually connected using PPPoEoA which has higher overheads than PPPoA VC mux (depending on the packet size PPPoE may require an extra ATM cell per packet). With PPPoE you are also limited to an MTU of 1492.

I've not found any advantage in using PPPoE in preference to PPPoA, and from looking at my router's ppp log, it connects pretty instantly.
 
Hmm when it next occurs I might try setting PPPoE in the setup to see if that triggers the connection to establish and then swap back to PPPoA. Interesting topic.
 
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Being a simple soul, I'd have thought that if you try & connect to your local exchange using a protocol it doesn't understand, or expect, the thing would just fail?

Once the connx to the local exchange has been established, it may well do clever stuff from then on, but that's beyond any effect on my router.

To encapsulate one protocol inside another, over a link, would surely require co-operation from hardware at both ends. I can't see this mickey-mouse router being that smart.

maybe its just weirdness with my Voyager 2091 router then, but its deffo far more reliable & quicker to reconnect than the ATM protocol. Definitely not any slower. If anything a shade faster.

If you connect using PPP_o_E and change to PPP_o_A your router will want a re-boot, which kinda defeats the object doesn't it?

This BT voyager isn't a hacked BT-only one, its a legit 'open' version. PCWorld were flogging em cheap at one time, in a box with a laptop adapter & 2 microfilters. As I was new to broadband it was everything I needed in one £39 box.

Don't know whether Sutton Coldfield's exchange is on 21cn, but my mate says that PPP_o_A deffo doesn't work at all over there.
 
On our LLU we run a ethernet backbone not dislike what BT will be using for the CN21 and we still use PPPoA with no changes needed to the EU's settings on the equipment, with what is happening then it sounds like something on the DSLAM or MUX is playing up and needs to be looked in to by BT.
 
>>>>>needs to be looked in to by BT<<<

Best of luck ;)

If BT consider the fault threshold on an 8MegMAX link to be 400k its hard to see how they'd be interested in subtle faults.
 
Being a simple soul, I'd have thought that if you try & connect to your local exchange using a protocol it doesn't understand, or expect, the thing would just fail?

Once the connx to the local exchange has been established, it may well do clever stuff from then on, but that's beyond any effect on my router.

To encapsulate one protocol inside another, over a link, would surely require co-operation from hardware at both ends. I can't see this mickey-mouse router being that smart.


see {page 13} section 4.4.2.10 "PPPoE aspects" of the following BT document
http://www.sinet.bt.com/386v3p0.pdf (sorry can't cut and paste - well not without scanning it as it is 'protected')

A quick google found this http://www2.ipsec.org/email/pppoe/2001/0826.html which explains the relative overheads of PPPoA Vs PPPoE over ATM
 
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>>>>>needs to be looked in to by BT<<<

Best of luck ;)

If BT consider the fault threshold on an 8MegMAX link to be 400k its hard to see how they'd be interested in subtle faults.

Not being able to connect while using PPPoA Vcmux which is the suggested settings for most ISPs (ie ISPs other than AOL) isn't really a 'subtle' fault just tell them you can't connect and only mention PPPoE works if their support department is better than the norm. Unless your with AOL of course who will insist you reconfigure the router to use PPPoE if you report a fault.
 
On our LLU we run a ethernet backbone not dislike what BT will be using for the CN21 and we still use PPPoA with no changes needed to the EU's settings on the equipment, with what is happening then it sounds like something on the DSLAM or MUX is playing up and needs to be looked in to by BT.

As I understand on AOL LLU connections even thought they recommend PPPoE, you can still use PPPoA and their DSLAM will unpackage it. It is only the script based AOL support that can't handle both :rolleyes:
 
Ta for all the info.

what can I say........despite all info to the contrary, PPP_o_E is shed-loads better for me than PPP_o_A.

Neither F4 or BT had any inkling & both reckoned 'no probs' and/or 'my router'.

I've tinkered with the various advice on MTU settings (which recommended MTU at or below that stated in BT docs) & that didn't make any difference (on either protocol). My line is allegedly set for 7150, but I've never had more than 5.6 out of it on o_E and around 5.2 max on _A. Speeds are far more consistent on o_E, but maybe that's because the damn thing keeps dropping connx on o_A.

Maybe its my router, maybe its my exchange, maybe its both.

.....maybe it'd work for someone else too, despite what comms theory says.

Its a quick, reversable, tweak so its gotta be worth a try.
 
Sweet, it worked.

The problem cropped up for me again this morning so I switch the router to PPP_o_E, allowed it to reboot and it connected. I'll switch it back to PPP_o_A for tomorrow, but it's good to know that I don't have to keep swapping devices to trick the line into connecting.

It’s certainly an odd solution, but if it works..
 
Sweet, it worked.

The problem cropped up for me again this morning so I switch the router to PPP_o_E, allowed it to reboot and it connected. I'll switch it back to PPP_o_A for tomorrow, but it's good to know that I don't have to keep swapping devices to trick the line into connecting.

It’s certainly an odd solution, but if it works..

True enough, but I wonder what is causing it.

Have you tried connecting using the bt_test_user@startup_domain and bt_test_user@your_ISP_domain logins when you have connection problems? If those work it would presumably eliminate the DSLAM and BT's radius server as the cause :shrug:
 
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