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]

[boltedenergy]

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The "not noticed any issues" is more to do with the actual network rather than the device thats connected, yes the hub3 has issues however that doesn't actually mean VM is rubbish for gaming, it means the hub3 is rubbish for gaming, i mean if you're going to point blame do it properly, where are these random spikes you seem to think exist because i've spent hundreds of hours gaming on a DOCSIS connection and not noticed any spikes, a functional cable connection isn't going to suffer from spikes the same as a functional DSL line wouldn't

Yes in games you do want the lowest latency but at a certain point it becomes moot, yes 2ms is 2 times the amount of latency of 1ms but you're never going to actually notice the difference, so yes 30ms is still 1.5 times more than 30ms, but we're talking trying to tell the difference between 0.02 and 0.03 of a second, which you're not going to notice, so yes while DSL connections do have lower latency you're talking in figures that really don't matter much unless you're trying to play on NA servers while living in the EU, i get about 30ms ping to most EU hosted games which is more than acceptable by anyones standards, getting 20ms to the same servers really isn't going to make any noticeable difference

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Shane:

Why do you post on this thread when you don't even have an SH3 to start with?

Furthermore your posts describe to me that you lack compassion for others as you belittle people and yet don't have the same issue they experience with the SH3 as a point of reference.

Consequently you don't have a dog in this race & when you don't have anything useful to contribute its best to stay out of it.

[dcookster]

Shane:

Why do you post on this thread when you don't even have an SH3 to start with?

Furthermore your posts describe to me that you lack compassion for others as you belittle people and yet don't have the same issue they experience with the SH3 as a point of reference.

Consequently you don't have a dog in this race & when you don't have anything useful to contribute its best to stay out of it.

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Shameless WUM mate, don't feed the troll.

[boltedenergy]

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@dcookster wrote:

Shane:

Why do you post on this thread when you don't even have an SH3 to start with?

Furthermore your posts describe to me that you lack compassion for others as you belittle people and yet don't have the same issue they experience with the SH3 as a point of reference.

Consequently you don't have a dog in this race & when you don't have anything useful to contribute its best to stay out of it.

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Shameless WUM mate, don't feed the troll.

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The troll feeds himself that's the damn problem!

[shanematthews]

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@boltedenergy wrote:

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@dcookster wrote:

Shane:

Why do you post on this thread when you don't even have an SH3 to start with?

Furthermore your posts describe to me that you lack compassion for others as you belittle people and yet don't have the same issue they experience with the SH3 as a point of reference.

Consequently you don't have a dog in this race & when you don't have anything useful to contribute its best to stay out of it.

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Shameless WUM mate, don't feed the troll.

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The troll feeds himself that's the damn problem!

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I love how kids these days think anyone who disagrees with them is a troll, its hilarious 😛

Please point me to any place in this thread where i have actually trolled

[shanematthews]

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@boltedenergy wrote:

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The "not noticed any issues" is more to do with the actual network rather than the device thats connected, yes the hub3 has issues however that doesn't actually mean VM is rubbish for gaming, it means the hub3 is rubbish for gaming, i mean if you're going to point blame do it properly, where are these random spikes you seem to think exist because i've spent hundreds of hours gaming on a DOCSIS connection and not noticed any spikes, a functional cable connection isn't going to suffer from spikes the same as a functional DSL line wouldn't

Yes in games you do want the lowest latency but at a certain point it becomes moot, yes 2ms is 2 times the amount of latency of 1ms but you're never going to actually notice the difference, so yes 30ms is still 1.5 times more than 30ms, but we're talking trying to tell the difference between 0.02 and 0.03 of a second, which you're not going to notice, so yes while DSL connections do have lower latency you're talking in figures that really don't matter much unless you're trying to play on NA servers while living in the EU, i get about 30ms ping to most EU hosted games which is more than acceptable by anyones standards, getting 20ms to the same servers really isn't going to make any noticeable difference

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Shane:

Why do you post on this thread when you don't even have an SH3 to start with?

Furthermore your posts describe to me that you lack compassion for others as you belittle people and yet don't have the same issue they experience with the SH3 as a point of reference.

Consequently you don't have a dog in this race & when you don't have anything useful to contribute its best to stay out of it.

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Last i checked, owning  ahub3 wasn't a pre-requisite for posting in this thread, even if i did have a hub3 i would still be posting the same because unlike some, i can look at the bigger picture, sure i would be annoyed but i would be annoyed at the right people while understanding how and why this happened rather than just sitting here with a misplaced rage boner aimed at VM who have no power to fix this in a manner that doesn't potentially compromise the security of the network, i mean if i have to be the voice of reason then i will, you would see the same if you took a step back and looked at it objectively rather than though the annoyance glasses most people in this thread seem to be looking at the problem

[funkyphil]

Just checked my ratings on dsl report. Bufferbloat is a lovely grade F. Download speed 40mb upload just over 6mb i`m on 200mb speed! So bad tonight i` cant even have facebook open in one window and music playing on youtube without it popping and farting i didn`t have these issues when i was on dial up with AOL all those years ago.If this issue persists much longer i`ll be cancelling everything nevermind just the internet my current bill is now over £135 a month! One seriously fed up virgin media customer!

[BrokenFibre]

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@GMAN73 wrote:

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@RidingTheFlow wrote:

I don't think email is reliable way - they always can pretend it went to spam inbox 😉

Official complaint letter sent by recorded delivery is the better way.

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I emailed him on Thursday evening and I also sent a letter SF yesterday.  I received an email in my inbox this morning.  Though by the look of the name it could have been an Indian drone that replied instead of someone who actually works in the CEO office.

Hi GMAN73,  We would like to thank you for taking the time to contact us today. We are very sorry to hear that you are unhappy and we will endeavour to resolve your issues as soon as possible.   Tom is currently not available to deal with your complaint personally, however we have passed your email onto a member of his team, and they will be in touch with you as soon as possible in order to assist you with your queries. We look forward to discussing this matter with you in the future. Kind regards,  Debashish Nagrale On behalf of Tom Mockridge.

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yep,  had exactly the same email.

@dcookster wrote:

@BrokenFibre wrote:

@dcookster wrote:

Finally got my SH2-AC today after consulting the Broadband Specialist.  The performance is night and day, won't be switching back anytime soon.

Nice, I myself have now hit a brick wall.  The tech team did leave me a voicemail but never came back to me after I called them regarding the voicemail.  I did today find out that a note had been left on my account stating that my area manager did respond and that my area does not have any SH2AC's and that they now do not send them out, which looking through this thread is rubbish.

Not sure what to do now whether to try the CEO email or just drop virgin altogether (luckily I only took the 30 day plans).  Like having the speed to download games and stuff but my online MP is starting to suffer now that I am online a lot more.

Hi mate, follow this process.

Ring VM and go via the moving house > thinking of leaving Virgin Media option, this will get you through to retention's.

Tell them you want to leave due to the high latency issue from the SH3 and want a replacement SH2-AC.  Refer them to this thread and ask for a callback from Tristan, the Boardband Specialist.  He along with a couple of other people as authorised to ship the SH2.

It might take a couple of days for him to call you back but he knows about the issue.

I'll give it a couple of more days for them to respond then try this.  The technical support guy I spoke to knew about the issue but after he left me a voicemail and I called him back he never got back to me and then the next time I tried calling the next technical support just flat out said you'll have to wait for them to patch the firmware

[fat4l]

And what do in case I have SH 2AC at home from the previous address we moved from?
What to do?
Should we call them, thinking of leaving, reduce the speed from 300 to 200 and ask them to activate my sh2ac? Will they do it?

[shanematthews]

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@fat4l wrote:
And what do in case I have SH 2AC at home from the previous address we moved from?
What to do?
Should we call them, thinking of leaving, reduce the speed from 300 to 200 and ask them to activate my sh2ac? Will they do it?

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You can ask them, if the hub was on the same account then it could be done, you would also, as pointed out, need to downgrade to the vivid 200 service, and this may well incur a new minimum term contract, its worth giving them a ring, the worst they can say is no really

[deviousiphone]

Finally have the CVE's published with Virgin Media mentioned by name, a good result.

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=Puma