Vodafone Sure Signal

[pdc]

Please Help.

I have a v2 Sure Signal, serial # 40113703306. I run it on ADSL through a Netgear DG834G v5. Line speed is consistently 2.8Mbps down, 380kbps up. It is capable of working perfectly for anything up to around 12 hours, or maybe longer. Seemingly randomly it will go down. Tthe service light will go off and then they will both begin to flash. After a while only the red light shows. Sometimes it will come back on by itself. I can often coax it back to life by turning it off for a bit and then back on.

If I go to 'Attached Devices' in the Netgear's admin panel I can see the Sure Signal and its IP. I have noticed that when it stops working it is no longer visible in this panel, indicated that the device is no longer connected to the network. It is set to a reserved IP.

Please advise, bearing in mind the following...

I have read the 'Troubleshooting' thread but none of these issues apply. The device is capable of working correctly.

Immediately after going down I have checked the ADSL speed and it is still normal.

I have done a traceroute and get the same result whether SS is up or down. See below.

Tracing route to 212.183.133.177 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    41 ms    64 ms    41 ms  lo0-central1.ptw-ag01.plus.net [195.166.128.226]

  3    41 ms    41 ms    41 ms  gi1-2-111.ptw-gw01.plus.net [84.92.6.96]
  4    44 ms    44 ms    41 ms  po4.ptw-gw02.plus.net [212.159.1.135]
  5    44 ms    51 ms    53 ms  LNDGW2.arcor-ip.net [195.66.224.124]
  6    47 ms    46 ms    43 ms  85.205.116.10
  7     *

Thanks,

pdc.

[James]

Hi pdc,

Thanks for your post here.

To be honest it is a bit of a strange on as your speeds and your traceroute both show excellent results.

However, can you confirm what ISP you are using?

Also can you confirm that the MTU is set to 1500 in your router admin panel?

Have you tried to assign a static IP address to the Sure Signal via your router?

If you can let me know I can advise you further.

James

[pdc]

Hi James, To answer your questions... I am on PlusNet as my ISP. The MTU is set to 1458. The Netgear blurb says this is standard for PPPoA connections. Shall I set it to 1500? What difference does it make. Yes, as stated I have reserved an IP address for the Sure Signal on the LAN. It is set to 192.168.0.2. The router is 192.168.0.1. Thanks, pdc.

[Lee]

Hi there pdc,

Although setting the MTU to 1500 isn't required, it may reap benefits as packets are handled in different ways from ISP to ISP and we've recently seen great results when changing MTU to 1500.

It's definitely worth a shot.

If this fails to rectify the dropouts, then I'd recommend you perform a traceroute test the next time you're without service from the device.

Cheers,

Lee

[pdc]

Hi there.

Since my last post the device has been working **ALMOST** flawlessly. There has been such a dramatic improvement I can only assume that you must have done something at your end when investigated my post? What did you do? It may be of help to other users. Nothing has changed my end.

I tried to up the MTU to 1500 but the Netgear router wouldn't let me and insisted the maximum permissible is 1458.

The device did drop once that I noticed. As before, it ceased to be listed on the 'Attached Devices' tab on the router. I switched it off and on again after a few minutes and it came up within five minutes and appeared instantly on the 'Attached Devices' list. Whilst it was down I did another trace route as requested. Still seems ok to me...

Tracing route to 212.183.133.177 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    41 ms    44 ms    43 ms  lo0-central1.pcl-ag03.plus.net [195.166.128.238]

  3    43 ms    39 ms    40 ms  gi1-9-312.pcl-gw02.plus.net [84.92.6.66]
  4    41 ms    41 ms    42 ms  po4.pcl-gw01.plus.net [212.159.1.128]
  5    41 ms    39 ms    40 ms  ae3.pcl-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.40]
  6    62 ms    39 ms    47 ms  ae1.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.0]
  7    44 ms    64 ms    43 ms  LNDGW2.arcor-ip.net [195.66.224.124]
  8    42 ms    41 ms    41 ms  85.205.116.10
  9     *

What do you think?

pdc.

[pdc]

I must have spoken too soon. Came down this morning and it was down!

pdc.

[Dave]

Hi pdc,

The traceroute looks fine, and looking at the system I can see that the Sure Signal connected to the network last at 21:24 last night, so can you confirm if you're still having issues for me?

Dave

[pdc]

Hi,

After my post of 31st May the Sure Signal worked almost flawlessly for 10 days. The very next day after my post of 10th June it has reverted to it's old ways of going off and staying off until I switch it off and back on.

It has something to do with it losing its IP address from the router. The router lights will show that something is plugged in on that port but when logged into the router the MAC address is not shown on the IP table.

pdc.

[Dave]

Hi pdc,

This sounds like it is likely be down to a router issue.

Are you able to test the device on an alternate router to see if this resolves the connection fluctuation?

Dave

[pdc]

Right. I was able try try another router for a week or so. It was a Draytek Vigor 2830n. Guess what... Perfectly stable Sure Signal.

At the same time I used another Netgear DG834GV5 at work and low and behold the Sure Signal down there starts playing up.

So it looks like the problem is with the Netgear routers. Now this is probably where the Vodafone support people will take their leave and tell me how they don't do router issues, which to be fair I can partly understand.

So does anyone else have any experience of the problem?

Thanks,

pdc.

[DaveCD]

Hi pdc

Thank you for your post.

Unfortunately we are unable to support routers as there are thousands out there, but we have seen that with this manufacturer it is often required to assign a static IP address for your Sure Signal and to ensure that the ports are open as MTU 1500 as mentioned above.

You can find information around port forwarding here.

Let me know how you get on.

Many Thanks

DaveCD

eForum  Team

[pdc]

After my last post I tried a few different things and now seem to have a stable Sure Signal. It has been on constantly for perhaps a week or so now. This is what I did...

I was confused by the way that the router would apparently 'lose sight' of the Sure Signal. When the Sure Signal was on, the MAC and IP address would be shown in the router 'Attached Devices' tab. When it wasn't working it would dissapear from the list. I had set the Sure Signal with a static IP so that it shouldn't be bothered by the DHCP side of things but just wondered if this might be the problem since you can't tell the Sure Signal what IP it is meant to have unlike most devices. So I tried turning static IP off and it has stayed up since then.

On a lot of routers you can select a IP address 'lease' time to 'forever' which does almost the same thing as static IP. The Netgear DG834G does not appear to have that option so perhaps it is set to 'forever' by default.

In addition to the above I have no port forwarding rules enabled but UPNP is set to on. I think the one I have running at work however has UPNP switched off as well.

I will continue to monitor the situation and report back if I find anything else in case this is of help to anyone.

pdc.