[Wylug-discuss] Network outages, the wrong kind of snow

[Anne Wilson]

On 03/02/2016 19:07, Andrew 'Leny' Lindley wrote:
> From: Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com> Subject: Re:
> [Wylug-discuss] Network outages, the wrong kind of snow Date: Wed, 3
> Feb 2016 09:38:59 +0000
> 
>> On 03/02/2016 03:04, Andrew 'Leny' Lindley wrote:
>>> I had difficulties at that time.  But I'm on ADSL2+ (all copper
>>> to the exchange) which was doing one of it's periodic retrains of
>>> the line then.  It does these between 20:00 and 23:00 then again
>>> around 01:00 several days a month.  I assume they're exchange
>>> maintenance slots.
>>> 
>>> See this
>>> 
>>> http://aaisp.net/broadband-office1.html
>>> 
>>> For guidline costs for more reliable Internet.  "You get what you
>>> pay for" I'm afraid.
>>>> 
>> Not directly relevant, since I'm not in Leeds and not online at
>> that time, however....
>> 
>> My normally reliable FtC connection has been very flakey every time
>> that high winds and lashing rain occur - and at 800ft in the
>> Pennines that has been quite often lately.  I found it difficult to
>> believe that the weather could be causing it, but it has happened
>> so often lately, in an exact pattern, that I've come to accept it
>> as true.
> 
> Mine isn't in sync with the weather and I'm with A&A so I get to see 
> the line logs from the exchange in their control pages.  That's the 
> advantage of the small number of additional pennies for 'the 
> propeller heads ISP'  :).
> 
> Yours could be the copper between you and the cabinet.  Which you 
> might be able to work out if your router &| modem has the right 
> blinken lights (i.e. carrier / [V]DSL goes off).  However, it's also 
> the case that more people stay in and so use the Internet more
> during bad weather.  So it might be something like your provider's
> contention at your exchange or e.g. they don't pay for decent network
> priority for your service in their backhaul provider's MPLS network
> zone. However, if it was this depending on your provider/exchange's
> customer demographic I'd expect you to also notice the problems on 
> e.g. 'homework nights' sometimes (i.e. Sunday eve, end of school 
> holidays) or e.g. odd Saturday afternoons when people are streaming 
> sports coverage.
> 
> Leny

Things to think about :-)

I can't see any relationship to the heavy-usage times you mention.
Typically the VDSL light is steady.  Pinging the router gets a very fast
reply, but pinging my DNS provider gets "unreachable".  Rebooting the
router makes no difference, and the connection returns of its own free
will when it's ready.  There was just one day when I couldn't keep the
connection for more than a few minutes at a time, and I had to abandon
it altogether.  Mostly, though, it hasn't been anything like as bad as
that.  It's just that I've never seen this problem before this winter.

Anne