SOLVED: Frequent brief disconnects

johnmeyer

I have 1 gigabit cable connected to docsis 3.1 one year old modem and 1 year old ax 3000 dual band router.
I am getting frequent brief disconnects. Cable tech tells my I'm getting 1,024 mpbs at cable connecting point and can't identify source of my frequent brief disconnects.
My agent has been up for several days and here's what I've observed so far:

I have received email notifications of outages but they don't show up on dashboard.
I have so far only one 2 minute outage of undetermined cause on my dashnoard.
I show many spikes in my pings, several at 3,373; 2,206; 1,538 and 2,723.
I have dozens of ping spikes over 100 and then long periods of low pings in between.
Our disconnects increase between 11 pm and 3 am but nothing changes in our bandwidth use at that time. Our waking hours are noon to 4 am so we are up during those increased disconnect hours but doing nothing differently.

I am just trying to figure out whether our disconnects are caused by
a) our cable provider
b) our modem
c) our router
so I can fix the problem. I'm paying a lot for 1 gig bandwidth and not getting what I'm paying for,
What can my dashboard figures tell me to help me determine cause?
Thank you.

OutagesIO_Support

Hi, happy to help. Can you share the agent ID please so I can take a look at the reports.

OutagesIO_Support

Ok, let's go through the data we have so far.

I have 1 gigabit cable connected to docsis 3.1 one year old
modem and 1 year old ax 3000 dual band router.

To confirm, you have your own dual band wireless router connected to your providers cable modem. Can I assume the PC/laptop that is running the OutagesIO agent is hard wired into your wireless router then and not via wireless?

1: I see that you have everything enabled in your notifications so you are receiving emails mainly about Inactive (disconnections) and one logged TCP/IP outages. Keep in mind the difference between disconnections and outages as this is an important fact.

but they don't show up on dashboard

This is because they aren't TCP/IP outages, they are something else. The agent will always log outages which are IP based.

The single outage that you've had can be seen in your dashboard, in the Outages section. This is what I see.

Based on the fact that you are experiencing a lot of disconnections, this leads me already to think you have either a wireless problem or a signal level problem. It's also possible others in the area are experiencing the same and don't know that others are. But, one step at a time.

2: The single TCP/IP outage was between 6:30am and 7am, starting at 2022-01-22 06:39:35 and lasting 2 minutes and 5 seconds. The hop that was reported as being down was 192.168.50.1.

The agent is running on a PC at 192.168.50.222. This means that the agent was not able to contact the next hop, meaning, the next device that is at the above IP, 192.168.50.1. Do you know if the 192.168.50.1 is your own router or your providers?

Now we get to something unusual. As part of some of the testing the agent does, it checks the hops from your location all the way to OutagesIO.
Your reports show that hops are being sent but none from beyond 192.168.50.1. Because of that, the agent cannot determine where your LAN starts and where your providers network starts.

This happens when there are many private IPs in use from the LAN into the providers network. I don't know for sure but it almost seems like your provider is trying to make sure nobody can diagnose this kind of problem. Not something we commonly see as ICMP is one of the most common and basic testing tools for anyone trying to see what's going on.

I'll have to ask one of my high level techs but he's down with Covid-19 at the moment and hoping he will get better.

3/4: You definitely have some very long delays happening on this connection. The longest one was over 3300ms in the last 48 hrs and there are a fair number of others which are long. Pings don't tell the story, they just add to the available info to try and figure out what might be going on.

5: It's hard to know the problem is yet in this case because your provider appears to be blocking basic diagnostics testing from its own customers. I suspect signal levels but there is not enough data to confirm this yet. However, keep the agent running and we'll see what we can get.

From your PC, can you run this test please.
Open up a command prompt, then type; tracert twp.outages.io

Let it run until it ends then please share the results. There should not be any personal info in the result to worry about since you don't have a static IP.

One more option is to find a neighbor that is willing to install an agent too. Just the Community version would be fine as we can use multiple locations to correlate what is going on.

johnmeyer

@outagesio_support

192.168.50.1 is my wireless router

johnmeyer

@outagesio_support
How do I open a command prompt in Windows 7?

johnmeyer

@outagesio_support
Yes..... my PC is hardwired to my router and not running wirelessly.

johnmeyer

@outagesio_support
Here is what I got when I typed in that command:

Unable to resolve target system name twp.outages.io

johnmeyer

We had disconnects tonight at 7:50 pm and 8:56 pm.
I don't see any corresponding spikes in pings.

OutagesIO_Support

192.168.50.1 is my wireless router

That one outage is because the PC could not reach your router so this caused a local outage.

Here is what I got when I typed in that command:
Unable to resolve target system name twp.outages.io

Looks like I made a typo there. It's tpw.outages.io.

Can you try again and post the results.

johnmeyer

here is trace report:

C:\Users\John>tracert tpw.outages.io

Tracing route to tpw.outages.io [66.85.130.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms RT-AX3000-E7A0 [192.168.50.1]
2 23 ms 16 ms 8 ms 10.75.64.1
3 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms 100.120.104.48
4 15 ms 7 ms 8 ms 100.120.104.16
5 22 ms 18 ms 31 ms chnddsrj01-ae1.0.rd.ph.cox.net [68.1.5.211]
6 19 ms 18 ms 19 ms 100.120.164.139
7 20 ms 19 ms 18 ms wsip-70-166-210-195.ph.ph.cox.net [70.166.210.19
5]
8 20 ms 19 ms 20 ms eth.14.1.cr1.phx0.phoenixnap.com [108.170.0.9]
9 * 21 ms 27 ms 10.222.24.20
10 20 ms 19 ms 21 ms 66.85.130.2

Trace complete.

C:\Users\John>

johnmeyer

We got dozens of disconnects last night after 11 pm

Seems worse at late night and early morning

OutagesIO_Support

For agent ID 128681, I do see one new outage with the same device again.

Since you are able to get a trace from the PC but the agent cannot, it looks as if the installer didn't have full permissions to add the firewall rule while you were installing the agent.

That usually happens if you install the agent while not being logged in with full administrative permissions or, something on the PC blocked the installer from adding the rules it needs to the firewall.

It might be worth re-installing the agent and making sure that you are logged in with all administrative permissions.

Just go to the dashboard of the agent, then click on Manage, then click on Re-install and install as you did before.

Please be sure to uninstall the current version before re-installing the new one, just to be 100% sure it was removed. None of your reports will be lost when you simply re-install.

johnmeyer

@outagesio_support how do I uninstall?
And, after I uninstall, how can I then go to 'Manage' to reinstall.
Perhaps my Norton 360 is blocking something?

OutagesIO_Support

@johnmeyer said in Frequent brief disconnects:

@outagesio_support how do I uninstall?
And, after I uninstall, how can I then go to 'Manage' to reinstall.
Perhaps my Norton 360 is blocking something?

Yes, you can do it that way or you can go to the re-install function and just before you download and install again, you can remove the old version. Doesn't really matter, so long as you only use the re-install function and not the reset of course.

Yes, check for anything that could have blocked the install. Hopefully, this new one will still create the required firewall rule otherwise, you'll have to manually enter it.

johnmeyer

@outagesio_support

how do I uninstall - with Windows uninstall feature?
how do I manually enter the firewall rule?
Can't I do that with current install?
Do we have any clue by now, at all, whether the cable company, my modem or my router is causing these disconnects.
I am going to have to get a cable tech out here because the disconnects are too frequent but I was hoping to have some sort of information so he can't just say, again, it must be my equipment

OutagesIO_Support

@johnmeyer said in Frequent brief disconnects:

@outagesio_support

how do I uninstall - with Windows uninstall feature?

Yes, the usual way. Go to control panel the programs and uninstall the echo networks agent.

how do I manually enter the firewall rule?
Can't I do that with current install?

Let's see if the re-install will fix that first. It's the simplest way.

Do we have any clue by now, at all, whether the cable company, >my modem or my router is causing these disconnects.
I am going to have to get a cable tech out here because the >disconnects are too frequent but I was hoping to have some sort >of information so he can't just say, again, it must be my equipment

Yes, at the moment, it looks like your own router is the cause BUT that's because we don't have enough data yet.
They will always say that before they admit to any problems unless the problems are very obvious. This is why I also suggested that if you can find a neighbor to monitor also, we would correlate the data making it much harder for the provider to dismiss your complaint.

It's like anything else in life, if we don't have any proof when we complain, we will be dismissed because there's isn't anything to look at. You could still call them in but just don't bother mentioning you are monitoring just yet so that you can gather some proof of problems.

The two things that seem possible right now are that your own router is experiencing a problem or your provider is experiencing a lot of signal loss.

I can tell you that the only signal loss a provider will ever admit to is if it affects your modem directly. They typically never admit to anything outside of your premises, on the street unless they know that many in the area have complained. Not being cynical but that's just a fact after many years of fighting ISP's to fix problems.

BTW, you might want to disable the Inactive alerts since you are already aware of them. Inactive notices are typically used while actively working on something or needing to know quickly if a circuit is acting up. You know for sure something is wrong already so those notifications have little value.

The more important ones are outages if they come in.

johnmeyer

I uninstalled old version and reinstalle.
Now when I go to Dashboard I get "agent is inactive".

I have to tell you...... this is pretty frustrating. I don't have the time for all of this.

How do I finally get this program up and running properly and determine the cause pf my consistent disconnects, without becoming a full time technician?

Sorry if I sound frustrated - but I am.

johnmeyer

Wow.
I followed your advice and uninstalled and reinstalled and now I've got an inactive account since doing so.
I have wasted enough time now - over an hour - and have to go get my mind off this because right now I am truly frustrated.
I have absolutely no idea what I am dealing with with this program nor what I have learned, if anything, since installing it.
And now I'm told my paid account is inactive.
I'm gone!!

johnmeyer