ADSL hates Monday nights

[nixon]

Evening,

Most of us hate Monday mornings however my father's ADSL hates Monday evenings!

We're both customers of ADSL24 however because it is Monday night, I said I would make a post for him describing his problem!

This problem has happened for maybe the last couple of years and with different ISPs - notably ADSL24 and Zen Internet. Every Monday night his internet connection fails. Everything seems to connect just fine (the lights on the router are all green), however he cannot browse any websites.

Tonight we had a chat and we found that he could ping www.google.com but he couldnt browse any sites.

Ive been over and we've made his speeds a bit better (removing those pesky extra wires from the telephone extensions) and checked all sorts of the other settings. His line quality appears ok (from memory) however when I see him again Ill post up some stats.

Im wondering if anyone else has had such specific problems around the day of the week? Im not 100% sure its the router as tonight we did have connectivity- it was almost like something had blocked port 80. He isnt running any software firewalls, just the regular SPI-type thats on his US Robotics modem. I also have a USR modem and havent seen any problems, although they are slightly different models.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated :)

~Nix

[srw985]

Try another router or PC if possible.

Or open a ticket?

[petrolhead]

I would certainly try a different modem as srw985 suggested (and if it's a USB one, it is always a good idea to buy a router instead).

Does it happen at exactly the same time of day every week? (though I suppose it's difficult to tell exactly as you would need to be browsing constantly :)).

I'm not familiar with USR models (apart from old dial-up modems;)) but does it have a built in firewall? If yes, check the schedules (and rules for that matter) and disable everything.

Have you checked Task Scheduler in Windows?

Have you done a full malware scan?

[James]

This sounds like an MTU issue maybe (why only Monday nights is another question though!)

Try setting the MTU on the router to 1400.

[nixon]

Thanks for your suggestions guys :)

Im over there on Saturday so I'll try the MTU first (as thats free!), then if we have the problems reoccurring I'll swap the router with mine and see how that goes.

Maybe the Monday night thing is a poisson rouge:D

[jamesybbz]

If i was mystic meg id say there was a spirit entrapped on your phone line!

[petrolhead]

Don't BT use that as one of their clear codes? :D

[James]

BT's clear codes are nonsense ;)

[nixon]

Im here right now and changed the MTU to 1400. Due over here again on Wednesday so we'll see if things are a bit better.
If it all goes wrong I have my router ready to try.

Thanks again for the suggestions :D

For completeness here are the latest router stats. Whilst I have a vague appreciation of what they all mean I havent yet got the experience to notice if any item in particular is too low/high.

Mode: G.DMT
Type: Interleave
Line Coding: Trellis On
Status: No Defect

Total ES: 0
Total SES: 0
Total UAS: 10

Downstream Upstream
SNR Margin (dB): 15.2 16.0
Attenuation (dB): 55.0 30.0
Output Power (dBm): 12.3 17.8
Attainable Rate (Kbps): 2624 896
Rate (Kbps): 2400 448
K (number of bytes in DMT frame): 76 15
R (number of check bytes in RS code word): 12 4
S (RS code word size in DMT frame): 2 4
D (interleaver depth): 16 8
Super Frames: 20171 20169
Super Frame Errors: 0 0
RS Words: 685846 342873
RS Correctable Errors: 56 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors: 0 N/A
HEC Errors: 0 0
OCD Errors: 0 0
LCD Errors: 0 0
ES Errors: 0 0

Another update to follow after Monday!

~Nix

[James]

SNR Margin (dB): 15.2
Attenuation (dB): 55.0
Rate (Kbps): 2400

are basically the ones you need to look at.

The attenuation of 55dB means the line is pretty long, around 3-4km at least in cable length. The noise margin at 15dB means there is room for a little more speed, but at the sacrifice of stability. Higher SNR is better for stability. The rate is simply the connection speed your router is connected to the exchange at, which is currently 2.4mb

[nixon]

Well we've got to the bottom of it!

The MTU was already at 1400 so I just did a "ping -t google.com" - frequent (maybe 1 in 4 or 5) pings were timed out. Very strange- i was expecting a long list of similar response times back. did the same ping but to 192.168.1.1 and it was fine- 100% returned.

Thinking it might be something to do with the phone line, I swapped routers- everything was fine.

Swapped back and the older USR modem wouldnt boot up properly although all of the lights were on, it just wasnt accepting connections. This is apparently "the monday night problem". Ok, so it could happen any day, lets face it :D

So Ive given Dad my decent router and everything is fine. Im using the old modem here and it really is compeltely screwed - slow speeds and it falls over given too many connections.

So there we have it - knackered hardware. I was thinking of getting a new router anyway, so im off to browse those threads that ask "whats the best router?!".

Thanks all, once again

Nix

[Michael]

http://www.dsldepot.co.uk/index.asp - Thomson ST-585v6 is a good router worth checking out.

[nixon]

£20?! wow i was expecting to pay out somewhere in the region of £60!

[artyman]

I bought a 585v6 from http://www.dsldepot.co.uk/index.asp a few days ago, excellent service.

[nixon]

Placed my order yesterday so I should get it tomorrow, thanks for the tip :D