Hub 3 / Compal CH7465-LG (TG2492LG) and CGNV4 Latency Cause

[Datalink]

Good Day Ladies and Gentlemen,

Greetings from the other side of the pond, so to speak.  Over the last few weeks I've been perusing various user forums across North America and Europe for issues related to Intel Puma 6 modem latency.  Of those forums, your Hub 3 stands out as yet another Puma 6 based modem where users see continuous latency no matter what site is used or what online game is played. Considering all of the problems that are on the go, the following information should be of interest to all Hub 3, Compal CH7465-LG and Hitron CGNV4 modem users.  There is much more to post regarding this, so this is a start, to alert VM users as to the real cause of the latency and hopefully engage the VM engineering staff, via the forum staff, with Arris.  I am surprised to see that there has been no mention on this board of users from other ISPs who are suffering the exact same issues with their modems, so, this may come as a surprise to some, and possibly old news to others.

So, the short story ........

The Hub 3 / Compal CH7465-LG (TG2492LG) & Hiton CGNV4 modems are Intel Puma 6 / 6 Media Gateway (MG) based modems.  These modems exhibit high latency to the modem and high latency thru the modem.  The latency affects all IPV4 and IPV6 protocols, so it will be seen on every internet application and game.  The basic cause is the processing of the data packets thru a CPU software based process instead of thru the hardware processor / accelerator.  It appears that a higher priority task runs periodically, causing the packet processing to halt, and then resume.  This is observed as latency in applications and in ping tests to the modem and beyond.  For the last several weeks, Hitron, along with Intel and Rogers Communications in Canada have been addressing the latency issue within the Hitron CGNxxx series modems.  To date, only the IPV4 ICMP latency has been resolved.  Although this is only one protocol, it does show that a Puma 6MG modem is capable of using the hardware processor / accelerator with good results.  Currently Rogers is waiting for further firmware updates from Hitron which should include an expanded list of resolved protocol latency issues.  For Arris modems, "Netdog" an Arris engineer indicated last week that Arris was onboard to address the issue for the Arris SB6190 modem.  That should be considered as good news for any Arris modem (read Hub 3) user as Arris should be able to port those changes over to other Puma 6/6MG modems fairly quickly.  This is not a trivial exercise and will probably take several weeks to accomplish.  Note that there is no guarantee at this point that it is possible to shift all packet processing to the hardware processor / accelerator without suffering from any packet loss side effects.  Time will tell if all of the technical issues can be resolved with the current hardware included in the Puma 6/6MG chipset.  Last night, Netdog loaded beta firmware on selected test modems on the Comcast Communications network.  As this was only done last night, it's too soon to tell what this version resolves and if it was successful or not.  Netdog has contacts with staff at Comcast, Rogers, Charter and Cox Communications to fan out beta versions and modifications for testing.  I'd say its time to add Virgin Media and/or Liberty Global to that group as well.

Recent activity:

Approx three weeks ago a DSLReports user, xymox1 started a thread where he reported high latency to an Arris SB6190 and illustrated that with numerous MultiPing plots.  This is the same latency that I and other users with Rogers communications have been dealing with for months so it came as no surprise.  As well as reporting via that thread, xymox1 took it upon himself to email several staff members at Arris, Intel, Cablelabs and others.  The result of that campaign was Netdog's announcement, last week, that Arris was fully engaged at resolving the issue.  That has led to last nights release of beta firmware, although as I indicated its too early to determine what the beta firmware resolves, if anything.

The original thread that xymox1 started is here:

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31079834-ALL-SB6190-is-a-terrible-modem-Intel-Puma-6-MaxLinear-mis...

Yesterday, DSLReports issued a news story covering the thread:

https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Arris-SB6190-Modem-Puma-6-Chipset-Have-Some-Major-Issues-138...

Today, Arris responded:

https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Arris-Tells-us-Its-Working-With-Intel-on-SB6190-Puma6-Problems-1...

That response was also picked by Multichannel.com

http://www.multichannel.com/news/distribution/intel-arris-working-firmware-fix-sb6190-modem/409379

This is more news likely to appear in the next few days as additional tech and news staff pick up on this issue.

Hub 3 observations:

Like many others using a Puma 6/6MG modem, Hub 3 users are experiencing latency when they ping the modem, or ping a target outside of the home, game online or use low latency applications.  The common misconception is that this is Buffer Bloat. It's not. Its most likely a case of the packet processing stopping while the CPU processes a higher priority task.  The packet processing is done via the CPU no matter what mode the modem is operating in, modem mode or router mode and no matter what IPV4 or IPV6 protocol is used.  Normally, the latency is just that, latency.  The exception are UDP packets. In this case there is latency and packet loss.  The result of that is delayed and failed DNS lookups, and poor game performance for games that use UDP for player/server comms or player/player comms.

Can this be fixed?

So far, it appears that the answer is yes.  Rogers Communications issued beta firmware to a small group of test modems in October.  This version shifted the IPV4 ICMP processing from the CPU to the hardware processor / accelerator, resulting in greatly improved performance in ping latency.  At the present time we are waiting for the next version firmware which should shift other protocols over to the hardware processor / accelerator.  That can be seen in the following post:

http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/forums/forumtopicpage/board-id/Getting_connected/message-id/369...

The details and results of last nights beta release to the Comcast group have yet to be seen.

At this point there is enough reading to keep most staff and users busy.  My intention is to post some of the history leading up to this point and instructions on how to detect the latency and packet loss.  This is not thru the use of a BQM.  I had hoped to post this all at once but events are moving much faster than I had thought they would.  For now this should suffice to get the ball rolling.

Below is a link to a post with a couple of HrPing plots from my 32 channel modem to the connected CMTS.  This shows the latency that is observed and reflects what others have posted in this forum using Pingplotter and HrPing.

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31106550-

HrPing is one of the freebie applications that can be used to monitor the latency to and thru the modem. 

Pingplots with Pingplotter which show the latency from my modem to the CMTS can be found in the first two to three rows of my online image library at Rogers Communications, located below.  They are essentially what the BQM would look like if you were able to zoom into the plot to the point where you could see the individual ping spikes.  Those ping spikes are common to Puma 6 and Puma 6MG modems.

http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/media/gallerypage/user-id/829158

 [MOD EDIT: Subject heading changed to assist community]

[robbiekhan]

Going by previous posts in this thread, so I guess it's pretty much a given that the modem in the SH3 is indeed crap compared to the SH2.

Will we get a fix for this? I'm not paying a substantial monthly fee to receive a worse service than what I used to have on the non 200Mb gamer package otherwise.

[bambamboyo]

Totally agree. Virgin please make some response to this issue?

[mitch84]

Without reading this entire thread, does this problem reported here effect just the 200 gamer package with the hub3?

I was going to get the standard 200 speed with a hub 3.0 soon, I do game online occasionally but was going to get the standard 200.

Thank's

[Fishpan]

Affects pretty much everyone that is using a Hub 3.0 - regardless of package. 

[bambamboyo]

Mitch, it affects everyone on a hub 3 at the moment, at any speed package.

[Datalink]

As I indicated previously:

The latency problem is seen:

A.  in both router and modem mode;

B.  when running a direct connection to the modem with the modem running in either mode or;

C.  when connecting thru a router with the modem running in either mode.  

D.  It effects all IPV4 and IPV6 protocols, including VPN and IPSEC.

It is present regardless of the download and upload speeds of your internet plan, is seen for low channel counts, ie: 12 channels down, and will be worse for higher channel counts.  

This appears to be the same for all Puma 6/6MG based modems. 

[robbiekhan]

Has anyone contacted VM about this in regards to getting a discount per month until it's fixed? Because quite frankly we can't use our connections for real time services properly until it's fixed, so we are not getting the service we are paying for and I'm surprised VM QC passed the Hub 3 considering the issue has been going on with these modems for quite some time.

[bambamboyo]

Robbie, virgin have not yet acknowledged the problem in any way yet, so a fix is probably a long way off. I think it's disgusting service to their customers to just ignore the problem. So many people using hub3 are posting about bad gaming experience and poor latency and pings yet virgin are asking them to do pointless things to try and supposedly fix the issue which will of course not work so just wasting everyone's time. The problem was widely reported in the media and on here over a week ago but no response from VM.  If anything virgin should be putting pressure on arris and intel to get a new firmware tested and released whilst updating customers as to progress.

[robbiekhan]

bambamboyo

Agreed! I got off the phone to tech support earlier this evening and the guy genuinely didn't have an idea as to what I was talking about when mentioning latency issues with the SH3. He said my area code was undergoing upgrade works (which I assume is to cure the over-utilisation during peak hours) and that this would solve my problem, to which I responded that this would not.

I requested to be dropped back onto the 200Mb service with SH2 and he said this was not something he can do. I asked about compensation for the time that the issue remains unresolved, to which he said he would send billing a note to apply a 50% discount to my monthly bill and agreed that this should be active until the issue is resolved.

I suppose having the service for half the price is a decent deal, but the latency spikes will remain of course, and that is annoying.

[Datalink]

That unfortunately is a classic example of what customers usually face when they call into tech support. Tech support staff have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about. Hopefully they didn't blame your equipment or run you thru the normal routine of rebooting the modem, switching modes from router to modem mode, etc, etc, all of which have no effect on this. The forum members are usually way ahead of tech support or the forum staff on this one. And so, it becomes s a challenge to get thru to the engineering staff who can really understand what this is all about. If you look around other ISP forums you will see the same thing, over and over. So, if anyone has any contacts with the engineering staff, make use of them to the best of your abilities.