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.
