Frage
Antwort
Lösung
Hi
I have a 250 Mbps coaxial cable internet connection.
The connection has been unstable for months, and it's due to packet loss.
The issue manifests itself in many ways, such as:
- while in video calls, the connection freezes for about ten seconds then goes back to normal
- while browsing the web, pages load quickly but all of a sudden you click a link and it hangs on loading for about 10 seconds, then it goes back to normal
- while streaming, the feed gets stuck on buffering for a few seconds then goes back to normal
I'm sure you can imagine how infuriating it is to have this sort of unstable connection for months.
My networks setup is straightforward:
- I have the Vodafone Station modem/router (the gray one with a foot that looks like a metal tube), set to bridge mode. The modem is right next to the only coaxial cable outlet in my apartment, and is connected to it via a very short (0,3 m) very high quality (gold plated plugs, 135 dB) satellite coaxial cable (the ones with the F-plugs you screw onto the outlet). This means on my end there should be zero signal losses caused by the cable, since the hardware situation is basically ideal.
- A single Cat6 ethernet cable connects the Vodafone Station to my router (Ubiquiti). The entirety of my home network then connects to the Ubiquiti router, all through ethernet cables (I basically don't use WiFi except for phones).
With a 100% wired network, using high performance hardware, I should expect to have rock solid internet with a super stable connection. However both people who live in this apartment notice the issues I mentioned often, in different PCs, laptops, and even phones.
Before I figured out the issue was caused by packet loss, I contacted Vodafone (around September) and had the Vodafone modem/router replaced. This didn't fix the issue.
Once I had the thought that packet loss could be the reason for the issues (a week and a half ago) I started running pingplotter tests.
Reading around these forums I stumbled upon a thread in which it was mentioned that to fix high packet loss, one should contact tech support and request that the connection be set to IPv4. I did this, and it helped a bit (packet loss used to be around 5,5% and now it's "only" around 1,6%), but it didn't fix it completely.
Yesterday I called tech support again to ask what could be done about this. At this point I must admit my German is OK, but not good enough to discuss tech over the phone. The lady on the line basically told me to wait an hour and power cycle my Vodafone modem. The internet connection went down for several minutes, so I assume she remotely triggered something like a software update, but I am not sure. I power cycled the modem as instructed, but the issue remains unchanged.
I am losing my mind here. How on earth can I fix this??? There has to be a way, otherwise I 100% must find an alternative internet service. Even DSL would be better, what use is it to have high speeds if the connection is super unstable?
Here are a few pingplotter results:
before switching to IPv4:
after:
here's a longer one I ran today:
(I have no idea what caused that big red patch at the end, the internet just went down for about 70 seconds, randomly)
I still have the test running as I type this. Packet loss at the final hop is at 2% right now.
To be very clear: all those times when packet loss happens, we clearly notice it, I don't think this a case of "servers ignoring ICMP"
Please help, we are losing our minds.
A technician visited me this morning. This technician did a much more thorough check of the signal strength. He found some upstream channels had a weak signal. He replaced an old connector in the building's basement that was causing some issues with signal quality, then spent a very long time tweaking the building's signal amplifier until he believed the signal had perfect quality. We were in the basement for almost 2 hours.
I am very satisfied with the technician's work, he clearly knows his stuff and made a huge effort to fix the problem.
Unfortunately, the situation is actually much worse now than it was before. I don't know why.
Right after the technician left I started a pingplotter, here are the results after 3 hours (bridge mode off😞
The technician told me to call again if the situation was not resolved. Since I was not the one that called/contacted him, I have no way to do it myself. I need someone to please reopen the ticket or open a new ticket, ideally with the same technician (since he already knows the basement setup so well). Please do it as soon as possible so I can schedule a visit as soon as possible, the situation is worse than it was yesterday!
UPDATE: I managed to schedule a new technician appointment by calling Vodafone's support phone number (got lucky and talked to someone who speaks English). No need for you to request the technician.
The technician is coming tomorrow morning, let's see what happens this time.
Hello GuiMR,
another ticket was opened for you here yesterday after your message. The technician will look at it again.
Please let us know what happened. 
Regards
Jens
I had my third technician visit yesterday morning.
Here's what the technician did:
- tested the outlet (Steckdose?) in my apartment, as well as the cable, no problems there.
- down in the basement room, noticed that one of the cables coming out of the splitters after the signal amplifier was feeding noise back into the rest of the building's coax cable network (basically, one of the other apartments has some issue with their coax cable installation and this was causing signal noise that would travel back along the cable and "contaminate" the signal for the other apartments). The technician did not detect any cable internet activity on that cable, so he installed a special filter plug on it to block out the noise (I believe the filter basically blocks the cable internet frequency channels to and from that apartment, leaving only the TV frequencies untouched, but that's just an educated guess).
- the technician once again fine-tuned the configuration of the signal amplifier to optimise the signal quality to the building.
After all this he could still detect some noise in the signal, however this noise is actually coming into the building from the main cable itself. The technician explained to me that the coaxial cable installation in my building is now "clean" and that there's nothing else to fix/improve here, and that the remaining signal noise is coming from outside.
I don't know if this is standard or normal, but the main coaxial cable that supplies my building doesn't connect directly to a "station" or a "node" (not sure what the terminology is). The cable actually comes from a neighboring building, so it seems multiple buildings can be "daisy-chained" in a single line.
At this point in the conversation my limited German made it difficult to 100% understand what he was telling me, but I believe he said he would need to report the issue to Vodafone themselves, and they would have to send a team to the nearest "station" or "node" to try and figure out the source of the noise. So basically there's nothing else a technician can do in my apartment or building to eliminate the signal noise.
I hope this issue is adressed soon. Do you have any way to check if steps are being taken?
On the other hand I am still left with the bridge mode issue. I don't really understand how some noise in the cable signal could explain the fact that the packet loss issue almost doubles when bridge mode is on.
The reason I didn't post this reply yesterday was that I wanted to run pingplotter tests:
bridge mode OFF:
bridge mode ON:
This leads me to believe there's two simultaneous problems: the remaining signal noise which causes some packet loss, and a problem with the Vodafone Station modem/router that causes a huge increase in packet loss when using bridge mode. Am I wrong? What other explanation could there be for such a huge difference in packet loss between both modes?
I have to assume that even after Vodafone fixes the signal noise issue in the network, bridge mode will still suffer from packet loss issues.
Is there any way for me to replace my modem with a different model or something? This can't be normal.
So, last Saturday I had my 4th technician visit.
Appatently Vodafone made some tweaks to their signal repeaters in my area, so the technician had to come and re-adjust the amplifier in the building, since the signal was now too strong on a few channels.
Additionally, the technician replaced my Vodafone Station modem/router, with another unit (same model).
It took a few days for me to regain access to the online settings to switch bridge mode on/off, which is why I'm only replying now.
Long story short, the packet loss with bridge mode off is now very low, but turning bridge mode on continues to cause a huge increase in packet loss.
Bridge mode OFF:
Bridge mode ON:
If I had the same amount of packet loss with bridge mode off and on, I would consider the issue solved.
0,2% is not perfect, but I can live with it.
However my suspicions were correct and I was indeed suffering from two simultaneous problems: the signal noise situation that was almost entirely fixed with the multiple technician visits, and some sort of problem with the Vodafone Station modem/router that causes bridge mode to have much higher packet loss for some reason.
At this point my Vodafone Station modem/router has been replaced twice in the past six months. There is still a clear and significant increase in packet loss with bridge mode on.
After a month and a half of troubleshooting, and four technician visits, the bridge mode problem remains unchanged. The only remaining solution that might fix this issue is replacing the Vodafone Station modem/router with a different modem. I am not interested in using a third-party cable modem, as this would leave me in a very difficult situation if I need tech support in the future. I believe Vodafone operates multiple different models of modems, would you guys be able to replace mine with a different model?
