Hardware/Software agent experience

[lklawrie]

Long story short.

At end of last year (2020), we had a month where we basically had no internet service. Got a refund but little help from the provider except that our flag was interfering with the line of sight we needed. (Visionary - www.vcn.com) - Relay station. (reported high speed was 10MB down/ 2-4 MB up) -- we were getting much less.

Used the outages software agent and then hardware agent to try to catalog for ourselves the outages.

Fast forward to June 2021 -- got hooked to a different tower. Their speed tests showed 30MB down/5 MB up. Okay. Hardware agent showed it back online. Then, nothing until a few days ago when the hardware agent notified that the connection was back online. (though we'd had many problems connecting).

The outages people took a look and said we were getting almost constant disconnects. pointed to various parts of the connections. hooked the agent directly to the router -- that seemed okay for a little while and then started again.

It was worse this morning -- but it rained last night? I'm beginning to suspect the connection into the house. (could it be affected by humidity). I know they didn't lay a new one for the new Visionary connection (they did a splice from the new cable to the old) -- and wonder if they did when they first put in the Visionary connection or just piggybacked on the DSL connection that was here. (no idea what the previous owners had). I think we got DSL in about 2003 when we first moved in. Very dissatisfying. I'd have to see when we got the Visionary (pre-owned business - Skywerx) but it's probably been close to 15 years.

Oh, I also rebooted their connection this morning -- again, things seemed to get better after that. Before had had trouble connecting for speed tests.

We're in a very small, very rural community (Pagosa Springs CO). Few of our neighbors are tech savvy. OTOH our household has a gazillion things hooked up to our connection. Mostly retired two tech people in large house.

Had TPLink AX6000 router -- Visionary people had me change it to an access point (which dumbs out a lot of the router features). I have now changed it back to a Netgear 6700 -- also access point -- because it seems more reliable.

No real question here except kudos to the outages support people who spent a lot of time trying to help diagnose the problems. Just laying the problem for later questions.

[lklawrie]

Some minor update. Called the Visionary tech support people and they verify they can see the disconnects. So we may be on the road to a solution.

[lklawrie]

After 1.5 hours on the telephone with Visionary Support, I have now factory reset the router (Netgear 6700)
set it back up as an access point and (I think) managed to get it working again.

next, if this doesn't do it, they suggested possibly going to a PPPOE connection -- but I said it could simmer for a day or two.

They did verify that there were disconnects happening.

[OutagesIO_Support]

@lklawrie

Hi Linda,

Really not sure why they are 'suggesting' anything at all, they should be fixing it and giving you reliable Internet, not suggestions of what you should be doing. It is their job, not yours to be doing all this troubleshooting.

Reviewing the dozens of emails we've exchanged before you posted this, we can also add that the agent is not even online long enough to function correctly.
It can barely complete speed tests when enabled, it doesn't find any IP outages either. We cannot even send it simple commands like run a ping test to some location.

Because it doesn't find any IP outages, this points us to signal level or other problems which aren't specifically IP based.

OutagesIO is a tool and the results need to be correlated at times. As suggested, you should find a few neighbors using the same provider to install agents so that you can correlate the problems.

We confirm that the disconnects are still pretty constant. Here is what we see in the last while at least. There are over 70K up/down entries.

Is Up / Date time

Yes	2021-08-17 09:15:59
No	2021-08-17 09:15:58
Yes	2021-08-17 09:15:58
Yes	2021-08-17 09:14:51
No	2021-08-17 09:14:44
Yes	2021-08-17 09:12:52
Yes	2021-08-17 09:12:52
No	2021-08-17 09:12:42
Yes	2021-08-17 09:11:51
Yes	2021-08-17 09:11:51
No	2021-08-17 09:11:42
Yes	2021-08-17 09:09:52
No	2021-08-17 09:09:51
Yes	2021-08-17 09:09:51
Yes	2021-08-17 09:07:53
No	2021-08-17 09:07:51
Yes	2021-08-17 09:06:52
No	2021-08-17 09:06:49
Yes	2021-08-17 09:04:56
No	2021-08-17 09:04:52
Yes	2021-08-17 09:02:52
No	2021-08-17 09:02:50
Yes	2021-08-17 09:01:53
No	2021-08-17 09:01:52

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support Thank you for continuing to monitor. I've done some fiddling (suggestions of my own) this morning. Probably outside the realm of what most would consider appropriate.

In any case, if somehow you can continue monitoring the disconnects with my new setup (I did things about 9am MDT), then I can relay that to them and not try more things.

As I've said before, the local neighborhood does not have a lot of tech-savvy people using this provider (nor probably the heavy use that this house does).

Thanks for continuing....

[lklawrie]

Talked to another local a little bit ago -- not in my neighborhood but he says he sees similar things in his neighborhood -- particularly playing YouTube videos and such.

I have downloaded a internet connectivity monitor -- maybe it will convince the ISP to do something

[OutagesIO_Support]

@lklawrie

No need to manually monitor, the logs show everything that's going on.

In terms of neighbors, it does not matter if they are technical or not, you just need a few to agree to have you install an agent so you can correlate your findings. Surely they must be experiencing similar problems and just don't know it.

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support said in Hardware/Software agent experience:

No need to manually monitor, the logs show everything that's going on.

Yes, but I don't have access to those logs?

[OutagesIO_Support]

@lklawrie
It's a dev log only.
We posted a snippet of it above, a section of over 70K entries.

None of this is going to help you until you find some others to monitor as well so you can correlate. I know this sounds repetitive but there isn't much else anyone can do unless you can gather more information. The one location is simply not enough at this point.

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support

True but with a manual monitor, I can be testing/illustrating it here. (Found a Java applet -- not sure if it bogged down my computer or not).

In any case, the ISP/Visionary is going to send out techs to resolve the problem. And I can test it when they are here with whatever they do -- not having to rely on your good natures.

[OutagesIO_Support]

@lklawrie We all just hope they find and fix the problem. It's not fair to have the customer doing all this work and having to experience all this stress over a very badly needed service these days.

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support

It's probably not a common problem for most folk, but might be a useful statistic to add to your "views"? # of disconnects in a x hour period?

FYI, my manual monitor is running since late yesterday afternoon ("pinging" google.com and facebook.com) and so far it's almost 900 disconnects. google every 5 seconds, facebook every 10.

[lklawrie]

Seems better today (though still pretty constant) -- rained last night so humidity?

Watched one yesterday where the tech just tapped on the ethernet connection on the computer and it failed. But running a new cable solved that, we think. (Not our site)

Still no word from their dispatch.

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support

Is it improvement if the disconnects only show once per minute? (joking)

[OutagesIO_Support]

@lklawrie Unfortunately not.

As always, we say that OutagesIO is just a tool and other factors must be used to come to some conclusion.

Hard to believe they have not fixed this yet. I suspect this will continue for a long time unless you gather up some neighbors to monitor with.

If you could correlate that others are having problems, you could start posting on their social pages or contact something like the better business bureau to file a case if they won't fix it.

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support

Fortunately, or unfortunately, their tech support is on my side (they have observed the disconnects) and put in a work order to get it done. Called again yesterday and he switched me to their scheduler -- who said "we will schedule it ASAP".

It may not help that their main office is in Wyoming and we are in Colorado.

I'm about to put it on "Nextdoor" with link to my connectivity monitor to see if others might be having the problem. Also may investigate if local companies might try to solve the problem.

Thanks, as always, for your response. I should have entitled this "venting".

[OutagesIO_Support]

You can share your basic report on your providers Facebook or Twitter or you can also download an image of it from the Light dashboard view that you can then upload into a post.

It's the area that shows 'Breakdown of my Internet problems' and 'When my Internet was down'. You can also download an image of that if you want to share it.

Posting about what you've been experiencing might be a good way to find others using the same provider so you can pool your findings.

Happy to read that you have some help on the way. It's been quite the experience for you.

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support

Unfortunately, the dashboards show no outages since 6/7 (which was about when they installed to the new tower).

I'm hearing from others though, similar problems. I'm trying to get them either here or to install a connectivity monitor.

I installed a connectivity monitor on another site and !!! no connection problems.

[lklawrie]

@outagesio_support

They came, replaced all the connections and it looked pretty good for about 5 minutes.

Have my little manual monitor running right now.

[OutagesIO_Support]

@lklawrie
Keep in mind, you'll only see 'outages' logged if there are in fact IP outages that the agent can report. If there are no IP outages, then the problem is either something else or the agent is not able to remain online long enough to get the outage and it gets lost.