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Author Topic: AA DSL Misery  (Read 11090 times)

tubaman

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #45 on: December 14, 2022, 08:50:36 AM »

I’m going to ask AA if I can bond DSL and L2TP, provided I sort out MTUs properly.

If 4G can give you a decent service I'd have thought you'd be better using that and having perhaps one DSL line as an emergency fallback?
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g3uiss

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #46 on: December 14, 2022, 09:35:05 AM »

I would agree surely a good 4G will be better service than 3x ADSL lines so bonding it seems worthless. The DSL backup would be a good solution. No need for expensive kit to do this.

I would suspect @weaver might not like the stats however from a 4G service !
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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #47 on: December 14, 2022, 06:17:53 PM »

I suspected the bonded DSL will still be needed for any live video conferencing, normal traffic will probably be okay over 4G.

I mean in all honestly I did GAME over 4G and 5G which normally was fine, but its those days/weeks where it suddenly wasn't that were an issue.  Especially in an area where 4G is the only fast connection, I'd be surprised if it performed well at peak hours and I was literally seeing ping spikes to 2000ms on those bad days (may be inflated by ping traffic being lowered in priority due to the contention).

Bonding over 4G when it has one of those bad hours/days/weeks would be a disaster.  IMO policy routing latency sensitive traffic over DSL is a must.  The way I currently use 5G is as failover and load-balanced for bandwidth heavy traffic, such as Steam download servers.  I originally was going to use it for video streaming too but I wasn't getting consistently good bitrates on that.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2022, 06:22:12 PM by Alex Atkin UK »
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Chrysalis

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #48 on: December 14, 2022, 07:33:14 PM »

I would agree surely a good 4G will be better service than 3x ADSL lines so bonding it seems worthless. The DSL backup would be a good solution. No need for expensive kit to do this.

I would suspect @weaver might not like the stats however from a 4G service !

Would solve all his packet ordering problems.
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Weaver

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #49 on: December 14, 2022, 10:23:29 PM »

I don’t know how much packet ordering misery I may be getting. It doesn’t seem any worse with more lines than fewer and the downstream speed is superb in terms of n times the expected rate. Upstream speed is normally really rubbish in terms of n times rate but in the past, as I have noted in old threads, there have been periods when it was excellent. Goodness knows how or why. You would the the FB2900 has the same code for packet scheduling upstream as the AA 6000/9000 series routers do for downstream; the latter are great, the FB2900 may possibly be rubbish in this respect. I would think that good design if the router could avoid packet reordering but if it occurs further down the path then there’s only so much that you can do about it without dodgy compensatory tweaks that could make things slightly slow in certain scenarios. By that I mean scheduling a ‘later’ packet in the flow to be really late, so that it will arrive suitably late, rather than sending it up link 2 in parallel straight away. It should take notice of the packet lengths at least and use that in the ordering, but perhaps a lateness tweak configurable parameter should be an option.
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aesmith

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #50 on: December 26, 2022, 06:05:44 PM »

We're in a somewhat similar position, AA and BT reached deadlock on our DSL with BT declining any further action on high error rates or PPP lockups on the basis that these are supposedly caused by an electric fence. That's an electric fence alongside a 50 pair cable, which apparently affects our line but nobody else. Honestly I was quite wound up about this at the time, but I am now over it.

On the plus side BT have in fact cleaned up the line, knocked a couple of dB off the attenuation and increased synch speed by around 15-20%. AA on their part have completely disabled DLM so an error rate of 2800 ES/hour doesn't actually slow the line down at all. The lock ups are still a real nuisance, sometimes only once every few days but sometimes constantly for hours on end.

The solution for me is 4G, and that works perfectly well for video conferencing as I've found working from home since Spring 2020.  As a matter of fact Webex doesn't use that much bandwidth, MS Teams is more needy and really needs more than ADSL upload in any case. I'm using Three on Band 20 giving around 20meg down and 10 up.

The only 4G issues I experienced were with Smarty where some services including my employer's CRM objected when we started getting second by second IP address changes.  Smarty never owned up to any changes in their CGNAT, but moving to Three with a real IP put that problem behind me.
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Weaver

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #51 on: December 26, 2022, 06:18:46 PM »

Wow, thanks for that recap. I suspect that that puts Smarty out of the running. A normal Three data SIM that is unlimited usage or practically so is something I can ask Meritez about, our deals and 4G guru.
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aesmith

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #52 on: December 26, 2022, 07:00:04 PM »

Yes indeed.  One thing I forgot to mention is that until about a year ago Three's coverage checker said we couldn't get 4G at our address. I tested with free PAYG SIMs from Three. Even without putting any credit onto them they give 200meg, topped up every month so each SIM good for a few tests. On the back of those speed tests I went ahead with Smarty that's a month by month commitment. Initially I held off taking a committed contract for a service that Three themselves said we couldn't receive. I was on Smarty from March 2019 until sometime in 2021 when I jumped ship to Three direct.

ADSL is currently retained and configured as backup using Mikrotik's "recursive routing". This configuration allows me to selectively configure some traffic to prefer DSL, with failover to 4G should I so wish. I don't pass through, the WAN IP address terminates on the SXT which does NAT and firewall for 4G.

This has all reminded me that I keep meaning to post for comment about my failover configuration and topology, but I'll really need to create a drawing before I do that.
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meritez

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #53 on: December 27, 2022, 12:40:47 AM »

Wow, thanks for that recap. I suspect that that puts Smarty out of the running. A normal Three data SIM that is unlimited usage or practically so is something I can ask Meritez about, our deals and 4G guru.

@Weaver, you would be looking at a 24 month commitment at £12 a month for a three business unlimited data SIM.
https://www.scancom.co.uk/pages/search-results-page?q=december&tab=products&sort_by=price&sort_order=asc&page=1

You may be better on EE depending on speed tests carried out locally.
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Chrysalis

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #54 on: December 27, 2022, 01:49:52 AM »

We're in a somewhat similar position, AA and BT reached deadlock on our DSL with BT declining any further action on high error rates or PPP lockups on the basis that these are supposedly caused by an electric fence. That's an electric fence alongside a 50 pair cable, which apparently affects our line but nobody else. Honestly I was quite wound up about this at the time, but I am now over it.

On the plus side BT have in fact cleaned up the line, knocked a couple of dB off the attenuation and increased synch speed by around 15-20%. AA on their part have completely disabled DLM so an error rate of 2800 ES/hour doesn't actually slow the line down at all. The lock ups are still a real nuisance, sometimes only once every few days but sometimes constantly for hours on end.

The solution for me is 4G, and that works perfectly well for video conferencing as I've found working from home since Spring 2020.  As a matter of fact Webex doesn't use that much bandwidth, MS Teams is more needy and really needs more than ADSL upload in any case. I'm using Three on Band 20 giving around 20meg down and 10 up.

The only 4G issues I experienced were with Smarty where some services including my employer's CRM objected when we started getting second by second IP address changes.  Smarty never owned up to any changes in their CGNAT, but moving to Three with a real IP put that problem behind me.

How did AAISP disable DLM I thought it was a Openreach thing?  Also glad you confirmed how well 4G can work as I felt I was really the only one in this thread who could vouch for how good the tech has got. No issues with video calls, browsing, streaming (download streaming as well as me streaming out to the internet), downloads (including single threaded as can see in my VDSL single threaded issues post) and VOIP.

To weaver if Three 4G isnt great, remember you can try another provider like EE as an alternative.  EE probably have the best 4G in the country still.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2022, 01:53:04 AM by Chrysalis »
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Weaver

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #55 on: December 27, 2022, 02:02:57 AM »

AA can disable DLM for me and AESmith because we’re mere ADSL users, not FTTC.
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Chrysalis

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #56 on: December 27, 2022, 02:07:32 AM »

Ok thanks for that, so the ISP has been given control for ADSL, thats interesting.
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Weaver

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #57 on: December 27, 2022, 02:38:04 AM »

I didn’t know that at all until AA disabled DLM on one of my lines too. That has its downsides, I have to say. Having been frustrated with it when it was here, I am perhaps almost missing it now DLM is gone on that line. I can’t believe I just said that.
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aesmith

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #58 on: December 27, 2022, 06:26:47 AM »

To weaver if Three 4G isnt great, remember you can try another provider like EE as an alternative.  EE probably have the best 4G in the country still.
As far as I know Three are the only provider who give a real IP address, rather than CGNAT. I'm referring to IPv4 though.
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Chrysalis

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Re: AA DSL Misery
« Reply #59 on: December 27, 2022, 07:15:49 AM »

As far as I know Three are the only provider who give a real IP address, rather than CGNAT. I'm referring to IPv4 though.

Thats true I couldnt find a way to not have CGNAT on EE, but if he uses L2TP would it matter?
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