Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Bad Cabling Causes Bad Internet Here

Ever since the local SnrInternet service was installed several years ago I have had periodic outages ranging from a few seconds or minutes or longer slowdowns to a few days. I pay about $45 a month for cell hotspot services to fill the gaps when service is down..

As other factors have been ruled out by the process of elimination, it is now clear that the cabling system in this community (Willow Valley North) very probably is not suitable for resident Internet here, especially with internet dependency growing.  Whereas earlier computers accessed internet only now and then, iPads and tablets work continuously interactive with the cloud.

Willow Valley actively promotes such internet dependent use of computers by residents by offering courses in iPads, which increases resident dependence upon internet.   But even much normal printing nowadays goes via the internet cloud.

Worse, the Amazon all-voice Echo, invaluable to the less mobile seniors, must transfer voice patterns to the cloud and send instructions back instantly.  It cannot work with timeouts.  

The provider of our internet service, Senior TV, has established, however, that frequently signals from our computers do not reach the cloud and their server.

That results in waiting times and delay. That condition explains the many complaints I have heard over the years and the problems I have had myself.

The problem is the cabling.

The old cabling system is coax, which was never designed for Internet. In new areas Willow Valley universally installed Ethernet which was specifically designed for Internet.

Worse, the old cabling is RG6 which loses signal as opposed to RG11.

SeniorTV found a drastic 27db drop in signal from my connection.   The technician was surprised that it worked at all.   Coax was designed as a one-way medium.

(Would it not be simpler and cheaper to put everybody on WiFi as already in the public areas?)

Here is a comparison of the two cabling systems:

Ethernet vs. Coaxial (RF) Comparison






 
Source: eVideon for hospital patients health systems

Sample of error logs from my modem as this was written....

Feb 24 2016 13:07:443-CriticalR02.0No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 24 2016 13:07:423-CriticalR06.0Unicast Maintenance Ranging attempted - No response - Retries exhausted;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 24 2016 13:07:423-CriticalR03.0Ranging Request Retries exhausted;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 24 2016 13:07:413-CriticalR02.0No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 24 2016 13:07:343-CriticalR06.0Unicast Maintenance Ranging attempted - No response - Retries exhausted;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 24 2016 13:07:343-CriticalR03.0Ranging Request Retries exhausted;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 24 2016 13:07:333-CriticalR02.0No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 23 2016 11:09:585-WarningZ00.0MIMO Event MIMO: Stored MIMO=-1 post cfg file MIMO=-1;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 23 2016 11:08:113-CriticalR04.0Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 time out;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 23 2016 11:08:065-WarningT202.0Lost MDD Timeout;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 23 2016 11:08:033-CriticalR04.0Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 time out;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 23 2016 11:07:433-CriticalT05.0SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Loss of Sync;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Feb 22 2016 21:28:073-CriticalR02.0No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=20:3d:66:04:64:f8;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:03:4f:87;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

Bear in mind that errors are not even shown until 16 attempts have been made to connect over a 4 second delay.

Footnote:    Earlier WiFi was blamed for the above problems---which IT here does not support but does have serious overcrowding of the 2.4 spectrum with everyone having their own WiFi, increasing fast.   However, the same problems do not occur with cell tower based hotspots which use the same frequencies.   They also occur using the uncrowded 5.0 band.

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