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#638061 08/29/20 12:18 AM
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ChrisRR Offline OP
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Let me start by saying, if this post should be in a different category, mods- feel free to move it. I didn't see anywhere it really belonged, and it's borderline within the scope of these forums anyway...

As many of you know, I do the maintenance for a local bar. This is the site where the trouble is.

About a month or so ago, when we had our internet service from Consolidated un-suspended, we started having all kinds of issues with the DSL. Prior to the human-malware shutting down the world, this connection was relatively trouble free for the better part of a year. When the bar was forced to close, we put the internet on suspension (They shut it down, charge you a little under half price, and with a phone call it's back on in a day... in theory)

Like I said, before the plague hit, this thing worked almost flawlessly for a year.

After we reopened, the thing is down almost every day.

When I say "down" this may be an important clue... The two circuits stay synced up. The lights on the modem for DSL1 and DSL2 stay orange (meaning vdsl, as green means adsl) The "internet" light goes out and we have zero connectivity to the public internet. The LAN seems to stay up, but whoopee do...

The details:
40/10 Bonded VDSL, 2 "dry loops" ; I put dry in quotes because Consolidated actually puts battery on the pairs and a repeating message telling you the circuit phone number (To help prevent people cutting wires they think are dead, and damn handy too)
Nothing on our side had changed; same network topology, same router/modem, same connected devices, same everything. It was like a 4 month time capsule.

First service call:
Tech finds a couple bad pins on a 66 block and a bad "A" side, since it was basically operating on 1/2 a pair. When he left, pairs were good, system stayed up a day and a half... then kaput
I go to the cellar and check everything. Decide I don't like the looks of some of the pins on the blocks and swap us over to some new pairs in the house cable. Line sounds clean, modem syncs up, works for 2 days, kaput.

Second service call:
This tech was about as useless as they come. Because it was working correctly when he showed up, he wouldn't do anything. Except talk, and talk is cheap. He explained it seems like a loss of rout, not sync (duh) but because it was working, NTF.
If stupid customer service didn't have me reboot it as the first part of the call, it would still be out.... Then again, I can't run a bar with no internet, so either way I HAVE TO REBOOT THE GODFORSAKEN THING.

Third service call:
This tech is a cool dude... He is quite done with the company getting angry calls from me about my modem being down. He goes to the basement, tests the pairs in the terminal back to the CO with his sidekick, they look good. Goes to the bar office, checks the pairs at the jack. They seem perfect. He takes the modem, tosses it in the trash and installs a new one, new phone cord and all. Goes back to the CO, puts us on a different port on the OCCAM blade DSLAM, comes back out, runs some tests, declares us all good and leaves. Quite thorough, and more so than I've come to expect from CCI employees. 2 days later it's down again. A day after that it's down again.... and so on, and so on...

Every time its the same condition. Modem appears to be still synced up, but no routing. DSL lights are on solid, internet light is out. Reboot and it all comes back to life till it does it again.

Aside from bailing and going to the competition, anyone have any clues what the problem could be?

Tech #2 was convinced I have "too much on the network". I call BS, but sure... There's a tablet for a POS terminal, a Roku for the TV, and a laptop in the DJ booth. We also have a camera system which he was CONVINCED was the problem, so I pulled the ethernet cord out of it and the thing continues to crash. So, sorry try again. It uses about 1.5 Mbps upload and about nothing for download... so not even close to taxing the connection. And for the previous year it was connected and never had an issue.

I've tried isolating everything on the network, and nothing seems to be a cause. Any ides would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Chris

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ChrisRR #638062 08/29/20 06:21 AM
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Not knowing how CCI does their bonded dsl, I can take a few guesses... the first would be that they're using multilink PPPoE (or whatever they want to call it, PPP over the dsl line) and that the ppp server on the CCI end is crashing, puking, getting enough bad packets to go walkies. Not everybody does PPP, though, some actually stuff IP directly on the line, so...

A thing to try... can you get internet with only 1 pair connected? (it should, if it's set up right) If you can, does it stay up more than a day? does pulling 1 pair and replacing it make it re-sync and be happy? This all sounds like a networking thing, not a physical hardware thing. You're getting dsl sync to the dslam, you're just not getting any IP traffic. Do you know anybody else who uses CCI dsl out of the same CO? are they having similar problems? If they are, that points more toward a problem in the CO itself... losing the connection to the radius server, losing the connection to the outside world from the CO...

Just a few guesses, CCI's more a phone company than a network company, so getting the right person to troubleshoot may take... a lot of work. if it's something in the CO, it SHOULD be sending alerts to their NOC, but they may get so many low-level alerts that they just ignore them... "oh, it alerted, but an hour later when I checked it, it was working" (because the customer rebooted the modem, which forced a sync and a new request for an IP)

Good luck!

ChrisRR #638063 08/29/20 12:39 PM
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This all sounds like a networking thing, not a physical hardware thing. You're getting dsl sync to the dslam, you're just not getting any IP traffic.

^^^This^^^

-Hal


CALIFORNIA PROPOSITION 65 WARNING: Some comments made by me are known to the State of California to cause irreversible brain damage and serious mental disorders leading to confinement.
hbiss #638064 08/29/20 12:52 PM
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The only thing remotely close to this scenario I've seen is when one of my radio station clients thought they could speed up their computer by turning on the built-in WiFi connection on their desktop PC, while it was still connected via Ethernet. A few hours later, they complained they lost the Internet, rebooted the DSL modem, got service back, speed got slowly worse until it was dead again, etc. Told them to disable the WiFi in the desktop PCs, which fixed the problem. I explained to them in broadcasting terms they understood, that they had created a feedback loop by doing what they did.

ChrisRR #638066 08/29/20 08:56 PM
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We've run into almost this same problem in the past with some of our DSL customers. The DSL sync would never drop, but the Internet light would. Came to find out our IP pool was completely saturated and we had no IP's to spare. I imagine with Covid and everyone working from home, that there have been all sorts of new installs and that this is the issue. Once we added IP's to the pool, the problem went away. Sounds to me that is what CCI needs to be looking at.

ChrisRR #638068 08/29/20 09:20 PM
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What happens when you connect a laptop straight to the modem?


Patrick T. Caezza
Santa Paula, CA 93060
C-7 - Low Voltage System Contractor - Lic# 992448
ChrisRR #638069 08/30/20 03:15 PM
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Chris
DSL is very old technology. Move them to the local cable company and put a end to these
problems.
Ken

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Originally Posted by hitechcomm
Chris
DSL is very old technology. Move them to the local cable company and put a end to these
problems.
Ken
Yet it's all I can get, except for pricey and slower satellite. I'm in the country, but close enough to town I can get 12meg, which after many years of 1.5 seems great.


Retired phone dude
ffej010 #638086 08/31/20 06:33 AM
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Originally Posted by ffej010
We've run into almost this same problem in the past with some of our DSL customers. The DSL sync would never drop, but the Internet light would. Came to find out our IP pool was completely saturated and we had no IP's to spare. I imagine with Covid and everyone working from home, that there have been all sorts of new installs and that this is the issue. Once we added IP's to the pool, the problem went away. Sounds to me that is what CCI needs to be looking at.

this could easily explain it... DHCP gets a lease for an IP, it lasts until it hits it's timeout... 24 hours is a common DHCP timeout...

Skunky #638103 08/31/20 05:10 PM
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Originally Posted by Skunky
Originally Posted by ffej010
We've run into almost this same problem in the past with some of our DSL customers. The DSL sync would never drop, but the Internet light would. Came to find out our IP pool was completely saturated and we had no IP's to spare. I imagine with Covid and everyone working from home, that there have been all sorts of new installs and that this is the issue. Once we added IP's to the pool, the problem went away. Sounds to me that is what CCI needs to be looking at.

this could easily explain it... DHCP gets a lease for an IP, it lasts until it hits it's timeout... 24 hours is a common DHCP timeout...

That's something my clients haven't experienced...they all have static IP's.

One of the offices now has fiber, and we're switching them over soon.

I also have glass at home. Other than service loss during a week-long power outage (until they got generators deployed to the cabinet across the street), it's been very good.

Last edited by grich; 08/31/20 05:13 PM.
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