Seeking Tweaking/Repairing Advice/Guidance

ComradeGeneral · Post by **ComradeGeneral** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 9:27 am

Hello,
I have a complicated situation. I have quite a lot of data available. It mostly speaks for itself, so I will attempt to be brief.

Over the past 18 months or so, I have noticed a considerable degradation in my internet connection. I have made numerous calls to my ISP over this period. They have sent technicians to my house several times. They cannot find any problem with the line or their equipment. They are saying this is merely traffic congestion, and there is nothing that can be done. (Outside of upgrading the local dslam. Which my ISP is not inclined to do.) However, I find this odd. Mainly because I have latency/bandwidth issues during both peak AND off-peak hours. So I looked for a solution, and I found this site.

Here's some general info on my connection:

The advertised speed is 1.5 Mbps down. (Not sure about up.)
My download speeds vary from 0.10 to 0.33 Mbps.
My upload speed stays around 0.22 Mbps most of the time.
Before I had issues, my latency was between 50 ms and 150 ms most of the time.
Since the issues began, my latency is rarely below 350 ms. (Most recently it stays over 600 ms!)
ISP is Frontier
Connection is a PPPoE DSL
NIC: Killer e2200 Gigabit Ethernet Controller. (Set-up with only the standalone driver. I completely uninstalled all the bandwidth software.)
Netgear 7550 with Frontier branding. (Which is really a Verizon Versalink... which itself is actually a Westell 7500.)
I have not replaced the modem/router firmware. (I would like to do so, but I understand this is not allowed by the ISP.)

I've been reading a lot on this site (and others). I've learned a lot. (And I took I.T. classes! lol ) It turns out, the uh... "dslam" is right next to my home. Literally next door. So I checked my signal db and attenuation and such.

Check it out:

US SNR: 20.0 dB
DS SNR: 31.7 dB
US Attenuation: 5.0 dB
DS Attenuation: 8.4 dB
US Power: 11.9 dBm
DS Power: -2.5 dBm

If I understand correctly, this is awesome. (...or should be.) According to my ISP, they cannot offer me a higher speed. They say they are giving me as much speed as they can. It appears to be the case. In the modem/router settings, it indicates that my "Down Stream Path" is 1792 Kbits/Sec and my "Up Stream Path" is 448 Kbits/Sec. That should be sufficient for my needs. I should even be able to max-out at 1.5 Mbps without worrying about the 10% overhead right? (I mean, potentially... theoretically speaking.)

In an attempt to fix the problem, I tried-out the SG TCP Optimizer. After trying a number of settings, I found that I was able to restore my speed. It returned to around 1.0 Mbps down, and reached around 0.25 Mbps. Respectable values. With further tweaking I eventually hit an impressive 1.6 Mbps down and 0.33 Mbps up. (A speed record for my connection!) However, the speeds gradually returned to their dial-up speed over the course of 24 hours. I'm not sure what the problem is. The only way to fix it seems to be resetting everything to Windows Default in the SG TCP Optimizer, then uninstalling the network adapter, rebooting, reinstalling the network adapter, then modifying the settings in SG TCP Optimizer, and finally rebooting again. Obviously, this is less than ideal. Update: I have found a better way. I can simply reset the TCP/IP settings through SG TCP Optimizer's File menu, then reboot. This seems to restore speed issues. However, repeat speed tests show that it continues to degrades over time. Forcing me to reset several times per day. I think this means I have set something wrong with the TCP settings, but I'm not sure what that is yet. Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm here to learn. Teach me.

Despite my efforts, (or perhaps, because of them) my latency quickly grows out of control. During non-peak hours, I can reset the TCP/IP settings, and all is fine. During peak hours, I have latency to the point the connection is unusable. When this occurs, any tracert I run (to anywhere) is bogged-down on the second hop. They all look something like this:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dlsrouter [my ip address]
2 800 ms 904 ms 761 ms aa.bb.cc.frontiernet.net [frontier ip address]
3 804 ms 639 ms 708 ms dd.ee.ff.frontiernet.net [frontier ip address]

Based on everything I'm reading... This indicates a problem. However, I'm not sure how to fix it. I'm not sure what setting I can change. I realize that a certain amount of latency increase is to be expected, but this is ridiculous.

EDIT: There are a number of daemon warnings and errors in the modem/router logs.

Here are a few I generally see together:

daemon.warn radvd[1678] sendmsg:Operation not permitted
daemon.info cwmpd[941] CWMP:Final Return Code = 0
daemon.info cwmpd[941] CWMP:Inform (0). The following events are true:2 PERIODIC
daemon.err cwmpd[941] cwmpDoInform:Unable to decode InformResponse
daemon.err cwmpd[941] CWMP:Inform Cannot be Sent

The first entry occurs roughly every 5 minutes. The others occur together at least once per hour. I think this indicates that my ISP is using a Linux server for the local dslam. I believe it also shows that my modem/router cannot handle the server's requests. Would upgrading to a newer DSL modem/router fix this?

Here's another I'm seeing:

daemon.info cwmpd[941] CWMP:SSL Status = SSL Connection not requested,TCP Status = TCP Not Connected,Authentication Type = None

I have no idea how to fix any of those errors listed in the modem/router logs. No idea at all.

The sticky asked me to post the following:
« SpeedGuide.net TCP Analyzer Results »
Tested on: 2016.03.01 09:03
Client OS/browser: Windows 7 - 64 bit (Firefox 43.0)

TCP options string: 020405ac0103030801010402
MSS: 1452
MTU: 1492
TCP Window: 66560 (NOT multiple of MSS)
RWIN Scaling: 8 bits (2^8=256)
Unscaled RWIN : 260
Recommended RWINs: 63888, 127776, 255552, 511104, 1022208
BDP limit (200ms): 2662kbps (333KBytes/s)
BDP limit (500ms): 1065kbps (133KBytes/s)
MTU Discovery: ON
TTL: 49
Timestamps: OFF
SACKs: ON
IP ToS: 00000000 (0)

Let me know if there is any further information I can provide.

Post by **Philip** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 8:16 pm

Please excuse the delay in getting back to you, looks like I missed this thread.

From all the information you provided, seems to me that the problem lies either with the line (your ISP), or the modem. Still, to pinpoint the issue you can always try one or more of the following:

1. Try to test with another local client (Phone/tablet/PC/Laptop), both when your connection is close to the advertised speed, and when the issues/slowdown/latency occurs. If all clients are getting similar results, the problem is not local tweaking. I would try with wired connections for both. There are a number of resources on the main site for tweaking your network card and TCP/IP, as you've already tried some, but it is more likely the modem or the line.

2. Modem issue - if it is the modem, and it is provided by your ISP, you can ask them to swap it for you because of the issues. If all local clients are getting the issues, it is worth to try changing the modem. Does rebooting the modem fix the issue by any chance ?

3. ISP issue - if you are getting 800ms to the first hop (your ISP), that is definitely not normal - they should be able to correct the issue, or you must look for an alternate provider. No amount of tweaking will change it.