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]

[RidingTheFlow]

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@MonteXMat wrote:

However, she also said that "they want all customers to convert to Hub 3" which doesn't make sense, as they know that there are serious issues with it.

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No, it makes perfect sense - they have no new stock of SH2, so only option to get them is from other people. So they try to trick as many people to give up their SH2 in exchange for SH3 as possible...

[MonteXMat]

@RidingTheFlow wrote:

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@MonteXMat wrote:

However, she also said that "they want all customers to convert to Hub 3" which doesn't make sense, as they know that there are serious issues with it.

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No, it makes perfect sense - they have no new stock of SH2, so only option to get them is from other people. So they try to trick as many people to give up their SH2 in exchange for SH3 as possible...

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Why do they need SH2s if they're not very happy with giving them out to people that have issues with SH3?

[RidingTheFlow]

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@MonteXMat wrote:

Why do they need SH2s if they're not very happy with giving them out to people that have issues with SH3?

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They have to give them up to people who cry loud enough as far as I can see (and for long enough). They try to avoid making it look too serious (e.g. having regulatory bodies involved).

[Guybrush85]

The impression I get both from this thread and friends who work on installs is they don't have any stock of 2ac's (2's should be long gone). I know that in my area at least that the staff have no idea about the hub 3 issue and most of them have one themselves, so there's not much use in taking it out on them. 

Latency is a funny thing and it's not as noticeable for the majority of users as other things would be. I know people who think I'm making it up when I tell them the issues it suffers with.

I'm assuming somewhere there is a limited supply of them if someone has been lucky enough to get one, but I don't think it's as simple as calling support and asking to get your hands on one. I can't say this enough, but don't be tempted to get one 2nd hand and try and play the stubborn game, they will not activate it. The only option I can see if what has been suggested and to go through the complaints process.

[RidingTheFlow]

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@Guybrush85 wrote:

I can't say this enough, but don't be tempted to get one 2nd hand and try and play the stubborn game, they will not activate it. The only option I can see if what has been suggested and to go through the complaints process.

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You know, from what I've seen now, I am pretty sure they *can* activate it. At least as long as they have somebody from Virgin to be present and actually verify personally that you are activating SH2 (and not some dodgy one, possibly hacked). Most engineers appear to have special direct line to techs who can activate any mac address for them - they very commonly use it if their automated activation system does not work for some reason.

They just kind of arbitrary decide if they want to do it. And most commonly they just try not to do anything which is not on standard checklist.

[mobculture]

I think that's what happened with mine. They called up as it had failed on their PDA and it was approved.

[RidingTheFlow]

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@mobculture wrote:
I think that's what happened with mine. They called up as it had failed on their PDA and it was approved.

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TBH I don't even think there is any "approval" at this point (except maybe some basic checks that hub they activate has standard Virgin administrative backdoor). Its entirely engineer responsibility to proceed with activation or not - exactly that's why they try to avoid this responsibility if its some non-standard situation, just because they scared to get into trouble for it.

[Drewley]

Approval / Activation, Potato / Potato 😛

[Guybrush85]

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@mobculture wrote:
I think that's what happened with mine. They called up as it had failed on their PDA and it was approved.

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Is yours a new modem though that had not been used? I've just spoken with someone on installs and he said he doesn't have the power to register a used modem.

[RidingTheFlow]

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@Guybrush85 wrote:

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@mobculture wrote:
I think that's what happened with mine. They called up as it had failed on their PDA and it was approved.

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Is yours a new modem though that had not been used? I've just spoken with someone on installs and he said he doesn't have the power to register a used modem.

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Pretty sure this is an excuse to not to do it. I've heard almost any imaginable excuse now.

They can activate any modem, nothing preventing them except their own will. In fact, they activate *used* modems when they give people SH2 nowadays, simply because SH2 production stopped and new stock ran out ~year ago.

 I beleive mobculture had his modem brought by engineers. Who most likely taken it from somebody else (like me, on pretext "lets upgrade you to new awesome SH3").