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email stops working frequently

mw8523
4: Newbie

I've notcied since I switched to Vodafone broadband that my email frequenlty stops working thorughout the day.

 

I tried with different clients on my iMac (Mail and Thunderbird). I have 6 different email accounts with 5 different providers and when the issue happens all accounts go offline. I have a 2nd iMac wich uses 3 email accounts from 3 different providers. The accounts go offline there when they go offline on my first iMac. The iMacs are wired into the Vodafone router. Also, it doesn't matter if I switch to another device like an iPhone or iPad. Email just doesn't work when the accounts have gone offline.

 

The issue is clearly with the broadband connection which can be proven by doing the following:

  1. Wait until email accounts have gone offline
  2. Go to my iPhone which is connected vie WiFi to the same Vodafone broadband and check email - as expected, no emails are coming through
  3. Switch off WiFi on my iPhone and use the mobile phone network for data - emails are coming through

I also noticed that my VoIP devices go offline frequently throughout the day. This can happen when in the middle of a call and happens at the same time when the email account go offline.

 

It can take 30 min or so before all is working again.

 

It's not affecting other Internet activities, however. For example, I can still browse the Internet and also syncing of files to and from OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box continues to work.

 

Anyone else seeing this as well?

13 REPLIES 13

mw8523
4: Newbie

I realised that the outage is taking longer than 30 min; the current outage for email and VoIP is now lasting well over 1h already.

 

Another thing I notcied is that whenever the outage happens, the builtin diagnostic "Connectivity Test" in my router fails - see attched diagnostic-fail-170507.jpg.

 

All other tests succeed - as can be seen in the attached PDF

 

 

I think I figured out what's going on.

 

I'm using OneDrive to sync a large amount of data. Something went wrong with the syncing and so I had re-upload all my data - some 150GB. The OneDrive upload process uses about 850 KB/s which is about 6.8 Mb/s.  My VF Connect router reports an upload connection speed of 7.7 Mb/s which means that OneDrive pretty much uses all of my upload bandwidth. I have just limited OneDrive to use max 384 KB/s or 3 Mb/s and email and VoIP are back online.

 

The reason why it worked intermittendly is because OneDrive itself keep getting stuck which means there are periods when OneDrive doesn't upload anything which then means there is plenty of bandwidth for other stuff.

 

So the real issue seems to be that the VF router has no concept of QoS.

 

My 2nd iMac also has over 100 GB to transfer to OneDrive which means when that is on I will need to throttle the OneDrive upload process even further on each iMac.

Alex
Moderator (Retired)
Moderator (Retired)

@mw8523 I'm glad to see you were able to get to the route of the problem and that you've found a resolution. 

Thanks for letting us know and keeping us updated. :smileyhappy:

@Alex - thanks; I wouldn't call it a solution though; more of a workaround. I'm pretty sure, when I first started using OneDrive and then uploaded a similarly large amount using a different router, I didn't have these bandwidth issues. I had the same real connection speeds as with Vodafone now. Therefore this makes me think that the issue with the router not being able to prioritise traffic.

Or do you think the issue is with Microsoft's OneDrive? But I would have thought an app like that shouldn't be able to control bandwidth use. That, in my mind, should be down to the router.

Can you confirm if the VF router has any QoS or prioritisation functionality and if so how does it work?

If it doesn't, then I need to replace the router with a more controllable one. But for this I need to know what connection parameters I need to use. Can you confirm those please?

Carly
Moderator (Retired)
Moderator (Retired)

@mw8523

Thanks for getting back to us.

This is not something that I've come across before, however it may be something that the router does has enabled. Check out our Vodafone Broadband router specs for more information.

If you do need anything else, please let us know.

@Carly - thanks; I was aware of the specs doc before but it doesn't answer of my questions:

 

Can you confirm if the VF router has any QoS or prioritisation functionality and if so how does it work?

If it doesn't, then I need to replace the router with a more controllable one. But for this I need to know what connection parameters I need to use. Can you confirm those please?

 

Carly
Moderator (Retired)
Moderator (Retired)

@mw8523

Are you refering to prioritising certain devices on your router? If so, we've got features such as beamforming and boost available on the router to do this.

With beamforming you can set your router to follow a certain device around your home wherever you are. Boost is providing certain devices with more bandwidth than the others, such as gamers or laptops when working from home.

If you're referring to something else, please explain this for us.





 

 

I'm talking about WAN bandwidth not LAN bandwidth. And from my first post it should be clear that I noticed the issue first on my 2 iMacs which are wired into the router and therefore beamforming doesn't play any role in this.

 

Really don't know what else to explain. I just want an answer to these questions:

  1. Can you confirm if the VF router has any QoS or prioritisation functionality and if so how does it work?
  2. If it doesn't, then I need to replace the router with a more controllable one. But for this I need to know what connection parameters I need to use. Can you confirm those please?

Speak to someone on the live chat thing.. They will give you your username/password.