On your local network

[asfreestone]

Hi,

Thanks.

Agent ID 127995. I’m with Zen internet having changed 6 months ago because of constant dropouts. At the moment I’ve moved back to the Fritbox supplied by the ISP to try and track down the cause of dropouts. The last month or so has been better but the Fritbox is not good at actually detailing when there’s been a crash. This is the 3rd of 4th router I’ve tried to resolve the issue but all the engineers say is there’s no line fault.

Hope this helps.

Andrew Freestone

[OutagesIO_Support]

Hi,

I'm looking at your agent details right now. Let's see what we can figure out from the information we have and get some more while we're at it.

You don't mention which model of the gateway that you have but I assume it is the only device in the house/building and that it offers both LAN connections on the rear and WiFi as well.

How is the service being provided, I assume it's either DLS or a cable company modem since it's a Fritbox. It's interesting that they go straight to public IP's right out of the router. Do you have a static IP that you pay for or that they automatically give you?

I am making the assumption that it's the only router in the house because I can see that you have one private IP which is your gateway and the very next hop is a public IP which means your provider. It's possible that you are paying for a static IP however, you'll have to confirm please. This is a pretty typical setup but many people buy their own routers which they then connect to the providers provided device.

You are running the OutagesIO software on a PC but how is that PC connected, is it wireless or wired via Ethernet? If it is not hard wired then the first thing I suggest is that you connect the PC with the agent running on it directly to your router using an Ethernet cable to eliminate (and possibly confirm) wireless as an issue.

According to your agent stats, you are experiencing 85.9% of the problems at the gateway which would make this your local network side of the router.

The speed test results are truly all over the place, from Mbps per second down to as low as 26.86 Kbps per second. Getting to such low speeds, I pretty much have to think that there are some severe signal level issues.

Do you have access to the router? Can you get to the status screen so see how your signal levels are doing?

The part that has me a little stumped at the moment is that even if there were signal level issues, the router's LAN side should not become unavailable as it shows. Even if the WAN side could be down, you should still be able to ping the gateway. Have you done any searching on the net to see if these routers act this way? If there is a problem on the WAN side, does the LAN side become unavailable too?

If you can let me know these details and make sure the PC is hard wired for a while if it isn't already, I have some ideas on what might be going on but would prefer more information before making more assumptions.

As you mentioned the provider already says everything looks good, you are basically being forced into spending time having to prove you are experiencing problems which is unfair to the consumer but is the industry practice. It's easier (and cheaper) for providers to deny there are problems until there are too many complaining that they have to fix them.

That said, it's also possible they simply don't see the problem. We have a few testimonials around the site which are exactly that. The provider wasn't able to see the problems and when they looked at the OutagesIO details, it all came together.

BTW, providers are usually obligated to give you exactly what you are paying for and that's usually from your house to the street. In this case, since this is the providers own router which you are probably renting no less, it definitely is wrong that you are suffering such service extremes.

Also, if you could find a neighbor using the same provider that would be willing to install OutagesIO, depending on the corroborated info, it might be impossible for the provider to keep telling you there is nothing wrong when multiple people can show proof otherwise. They don't even have to learn anything, we can help you decipher the results but having more than one location in the same area would make the facts undeniable.

[asfreestone]

The Fritz box is a Fritz box 7530 running FRITZ!OS 07.27. It is a combined DSL modem/router with 4 LAN gigabit ports plus WiFi.

At the moment to track down the dropout issue this is the only router connected although I normally run a Unifi system based on the UDM. The UDM is turned off and disconnected from everything. My ISP provides a fixed IP as part of the service.

You are correct in that I was running the OutagesIO software on a PC connected via WiFi. To test I bypassed the Unifi switches but the PC was a long way from the re-positioned router. However I have now made up a long patch lead and the Outages software now runs on a PC connected by cat 5e. The speed and signal levels now seem to be stable and near what is expected ie 21mbs to 27mbs.

Sadly I live in a rural area and although I have several immediate neighbours their internet use is very low and they use all different providers. I have however carried out some research with one neighbour over a few days and can confirm that although he has a few outages these are rare, not as frequent as mine and don't usually coincide. There are 5 of us in a small cul de sac all connected by separate underground cables to a sub connecting box just for the 5 of us. The signal then goes up over poles then back underground to the main FTB cabinet about 900 m away.

My ISP has produced data for my connection showing many disconnects but simply says that BT Openreach (Line owners and managers) can find no fault on the line. Each time (4 so far) they simply come stick their test kit on the line say its fine and disappear. This issue has been going for at least two years through three providers and at least 6 different routers.

Logic doesn't seem to hold sway.

I hope that all helps. Many thanks for your assistance.

AF

[OutagesIO_Support]

Hi, just checking in, is it still better now that the PC is hard wired?

[asfreestone]

Hi

After cabling on the test PC the internet seemed stable but this is what normally happens. It has a blitz then stutters for a few days seems OK for a short while then the cycle starts again. It's going down again, several times over the last two days. Outages shows providers on these occasions, so it seems clear. Am I reading this correctly?

[OutagesIO_Support]

Looking at your reports, this is how I am interpreting things.

The first hop is your LAN, the seconc hop you said is your provider.

You have one router, theirs and the problem is between the router and their network.

Pings all the way back to our network in the USA aren't all that bad, on average around 140ms. Keeping in mind that the pings aren't done against something close to you but something more real world and mainly to establish a consistent source/destination.

Once you moved your PC to wired, you could see that the LAN side problems pretty much went away and now (since the 22nd at least), ALL of the outages are on hop2, the provider side of the router.

In addition, there is a hidden stat that I can see which shows when your connection went down, back up etc. You have 981 evens in this stats.

What this means is that if you keep an eye out, see if you can notice if there are some or a lot of inactive/disconnected evens where there aren't any outages at those times. What this implies is that there is something else going on that is not TCP/IP related but most likely, signal level related. The agent cannot know about signal levels in your devices but it definitely knows when there are outages.

By looking at the information you can see and especially the information you cannot see (inactive/disconnected), this gives clues on what might be going on.

Either way, from what I see, you should not even be paying for this service until they fix it. It is their responsibility to give you reliable service and what you are paying for, at least to the street and you're not even getting that.

It's too bad you cannot find someone else in the area to monitor as we could really help to confirm some details for you.

[asfreestone]

Hi

Excellent. Really pleased with outages. For the first time I can speak to the ISP without them giving the usual its your side of the router. I plan to keep this going for a while longer and get more evidence. What extra features would the subscription model give me that would help.

Thanks so much for your help.

AF

[OutagesIO_Support]

I'm glad you might be able to find help using the information you've been able to gather. Keep in mind that many providers will dismiss any information you might provide, at least initially. This seems to be the pattern in our experience. You might luck out and if not, persist.

Try posting your shareable report on your providers social page/s, this could help a lot if they don't censor.

In terms of additional options, you can take a look at our demo which has everything enabled. Also, this page shows and explains all of the options.

Please do give us an update on how things are going or if it gets fixed, what happened. We'd love to know about it.

[asfreestone]

Will do, thanks a lot. 😎

[asfreestone2]

@asfreestone Agent ID 127995 Continuing on from above: I have just re-installed my UDM and I think, thanks to the agent, I have established the fault lies with the provider. Am I correct in saying that as I now have separate modem and router (the PPOE is configured on the router so the modem is a pass through) this still counts as 1 hop.

I have asked for a copy of outages from my provider and although in their information some drops coincide the agent shows a greater number. Their data also show two outages for several hours which never happened.

Once I confirm the above I intend to use the extended reports as evidence to take the complaint up the food chain.

Thanks

Andrew Freestone

[OutagesIO_Support]

@asfreestone2 said in On your local network:

@asfreestone Agent ID 127995 Continuing on from above: I have just re-installed my UDM and I think, thanks to the agent, I have established the fault lies with the provider. Am I correct in saying that as I now have separate modem and router (the PPOE is configured on the router so the modem is a pass through) this still counts as 1 hop.
I have asked for a copy of outages from my provider and although in their information some drops coincide the agent shows a greater number. Their data also show two outages for several hours which never happened.
Once I confirm the above I intend to use the extended reports as evidence to take the complaint up the food chain.
Thanks
Andrew Freestone

Hi Andrew,

For some reason, we didn't get a notification about this post. Sorry for the delay.

I looked at your reports and this is what I see.

Hop 1 192.168.178.1
Hop 1 192.168.1.1
Hop 2 xx.xx.72.24

I see that your hop 1 either alternates or changed between the two IPs above so I assume that when you changed the device, that changed the IP but as you said, one is just a pass-through.

You seem to have had a lot of problems with the 192.168.178.1 IP on 2021-05-22 then it seems to settle. Now, you seem to have a lot of problems with hop 2.

The hop 2 IP appears to be your provider on that side of the hardware and you can see that their IP changes now and then.

To me and IF that hop 2 is confirmed as your provider side, meaning to the street etc, then yes, your provider is experiencing problems.

To be fair, it depends also on what that hop 2 side is. If it's something you configured, you'll have to make a stronger case but if it's their side, their configuration, then I would say they need to fix the problem.

[asfreestone2]

@outagesio_support Thanks, I'll tread lightly and give it a go. Will post how I get on.

AF