[NCLUG] ISP suggestions

J. Paul Reed preed at sigkill.com
Sat Aug 3 19:53:10 MDT 2002


On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Frank Whiteley wrote:

> Some routers are capable of delaying pings as lower priority.

Yeah, but we're talking on the order of ms, there... here, we're talking on
the order of 10s of seconds (into the minutes).

> Are you doing anything else during this time?  If you are using the pings
> to keep this connection alive, this is against FRII's AUP as dedicated
> access <> unlimited access.

Yup... I'm doing normal surfing/pulling email down/etc. I keep the ping up
in a remote window so I can see if it's Internet slowness, or if the
connection's totally been lost.

I'm running a ping inside of a 'script', so I can capture the output and
attach it so you can see what I'm talking about; it's a very odd condition
which I've never seen before.

(update: it happened while I was reading this email and doing nothing
else... so, see attached/annotated file for details; so, could this be
modem 'retraining'? I never had this problem with my trusty 28.8, but that
was on a different line (same house, though) and was 4 years ago.

> The techs can see some of the reasons for connectivity issues, e.g. lost
> carrier, remote terminate, idle out, ppp drop channel (load based) on
> multilink.  However, they can't see retrains or renegotiations on dynamic
> IP circuits as they are using ICG ports.

Yeah, I noticed that... another "win" for their customers... selling us
ports they don't even own/maintain/are capable of debugging.

> Try dropping your max speed by 1.3-3.9k and see if it doesn't disappear.
> I've found that tuning for a 'sweet spot' does a lot for connection
> reliability and overall throughput.

I'll try that... I started doing some tuning of my own before I had to
leave, but I didn't get very far... and it's hard with an intermittent
problem like this.

Later,
Paul
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  J. Paul Reed                 preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
  Wait, stop!  We can outsmart those dolphins.  Don't forget: we invented
  computers, leg warmers, bendy straws, peel-and-eat shrimp, the glory
  hole, *and* the pudding cup!  -- Homer Simpson, Tree House of Horror XI
-------------- next part --------------
Script started on Sat Aug  3 18:38:41 2002
[preed at moby preed]$ ping -i 2 -n 170.147.45.138
PING 170.147.45.138 (170.147.45.138) from 204.32.203.144 : 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=198 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=179 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=179 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=289 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=189 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=209 ms

...
<normal ping times>
...
<now, let's load a webpage... normal...> 
64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=73 ttl=255 time=159 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=74 ttl=255 time=2499 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=75 ttl=255 time=509 ms

...
<at this point, I wasn't using the connection at all... I was typing this 
email>
...

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=183 ttl=255 time=149 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=184 ttl=255 time=169 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=185 ttl=255 time=139 ms

<... nothing; connection is dead...>

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=186 ttl=255 time=49299 ms


<49 seconds later, the connection is flooded by this response and 
all of the responses below; note that no packets are dropped, but
their times are huge>

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=187 ttl=255 time=47449 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=188 ttl=255 time=45589 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=189 ttl=255 time=43729 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=190 ttl=255 time=41859 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=191 ttl=255 time=39999 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=192 ttl=255 time=38019 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=193 ttl=255 time=36119 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=194 ttl=255 time=34149 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=195 ttl=255 time=32269 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=196 ttl=255 time=30279 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=197 ttl=255 time=28399 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=198 ttl=255 time=26419 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=199 ttl=255 time=24539 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=200 ttl=255 time=22549 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=201 ttl=255 time=20559 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=202 ttl=255 time=18670 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=203 ttl=255 time=16679 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=204 ttl=255 time=14719 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=205 ttl=255 time=12789 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=206 ttl=255 time=10829 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=207 ttl=255 time=8859 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=208 ttl=255 time=6919 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=209 ttl=255 time=4949 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=210 ttl=255 time=2959 ms

<... the above show up in the space of about 2 seconds...>

<... and we're normal until it decides to die again...>
64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=211 ttl=255 time=999 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=212 ttl=255 time=159 ms

64 bytes from 170.147.45.138: icmp_seq=213 ttl=255 time=159 ms



--- 170.147.45.138 ping statistics ---

213 packets transmitted, 213 received, 0% loss, time 425928ms

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 139.824/3259.076/49299.939/9683.460 ms, pipe 25

[preed at moby preed]$ 
Script done on Sat Aug  3 18:46:34 2002


More information about the NCLUG mailing list