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]

[chrisxp]

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@wotusaw wrote:

crispxp

This is my broadband graph. It's always like this....as you can see it's about 2x worse than yours. You do seem to be fortunate with location and wotnot. I am in yellow hell at present.

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Hi, I can't see your graph?

Also, in the fine print for the 300 vivid gamer package is this:
Remedies: If you have experienced a problem with Virgin Fibre caused by Virgin Media’s failure to exercise reasonable care and skill in providing Virgin Fibre to you then legal remedies are available including the right to require a price reduction by an appropriate amount. For more information about when legal remedies are available to you visit https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Does this not mean if you suffer from horrendous latency problems, you get money off your bill?

Source: http://www.virginmedia.com/shop/broadband/vivid-gamer.html

[wotusaw]

chrisxp:

Thanks for the info. I suppose it's possible to ring up and try to get them to knock off a few quid. I may try this. Although rather like that episode in Cheers where Chandler tries to leave the gym.....I usually end up upgrading!

What you will possibly find is someone will post to say that latency is no reason to make a claim because Virgin don't promise etc, etc. I suspect these 'ordinary postees' actually work for Virgin. Alegedly. But what do I know.

You know, personally I don't blame Virgin so I'll wait to see what happens when the fix arrives. Virgin cocked up...it happens to us all. They haven't handled it well but they are by the looks of it going through a bad time at present on a few fronts. At some point it just has to get better...it's a law of the universe.

Someone posted the fix was out for testing so possibly should be here in 4/6 weeks?

You can't see the 'graph' because for some odd reason it just takes time to clear. I think they check it for accidental inclusion of address/whatever etc. You should see it later and will be absolutely shocked to your socks....it's horrendous!

Your a gamer so I'm giving you an invite to my clansite mainly because youv'e been so helpful....it's a reward. There's also lots of stuff about this subject there. I am the great and powerful Necessitor, btw.

http://thenitwitts.enjin.com/forum/m/28206608/viewforum/5250475

You'll also see what the HUB3 has done to my gaming life as frankly I've whinged a bit. You must have really good reaction times to not be effected by this problem. I'd be interested to know what your results are on this test if possible....You'll see mine on the clansite.

https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime

Ok, this is way off subject now. I shall shut uppa my face.

[falconevo]

How has this not been resolved yet?  I have moved to the 300M package but simply won't activate my SH3 until its resolved, SH2AC is suitable at the moment and gaming/voip is mostly what the connection gets used for so having latency spikes and packet loss is a big no no.

Pinging the SuperDud3 device in modem mode on its local IP 192.168.100.1 with no connection or activity gives a 5-10ms delay on average.  Completely unacceptable for a locally accessible device on 1Gbit wired to have a latency of that kind.

Do we have any information to confirm that all protocols are going in to hardware acceleration or are VM just going to put ICMP into hardware accell to make graphing pretty and let everyone suffer TCP/UDP delays via the device.

[funkyphil]

As i said in a previous post since i switched back to windows 8.1 from windows 10 and a lot of my latency issues seem to my fixed! Very little in the way of pops & crackles now from YouTube video`s and i deffo noticed a significant drop in lag issues on my Xbox One when playing online! I know this cant of been solved with a pc change but something somewhere has been sorted for the better! Fingers crossed it stays that way!

[shanematthews]

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@chrisxp wrote:

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@wotusaw wrote:

crispxp

This is my broadband graph. It's always like this....as you can see it's about 2x worse than yours. You do seem to be fortunate with location and wotnot. I am in yellow hell at present.

---

Hi, I can't see your graph?

Also, in the fine print for the 300 vivid gamer package is this:
Remedies: If you have experienced a problem with Virgin Fibre caused by Virgin Media’s failure to exercise reasonable care and skill in providing Virgin Fibre to you then legal remedies are available including the right to require a price reduction by an appropriate amount. For more information about when legal remedies are available to you visit https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Does this not mean if you suffer from horrendous latency problems, you get money off your bill?

Source: http://www.virginmedia.com/shop/broadband/vivid-gamer.html

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That legal fluff is more likely due to them not providing the right speeds, latency isn't guaranteed anywhere so you would have a hard case trying to prove its an issue, i mean you could try giving them a call but i wouldn't expect much and even if they did offer a discount its likely not to be anything significant and probably under the agreement that once the fix is rolled out they will remove the discount

[smcgirr]

I was refused a SH2ac today, basically told there are none to give out.

After pressing I was also told the latest estimated fix from the manufacturer is May 1st.

[wotusaw]

May 1st 2018? Nooooooooo!!

[donniem]

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@smcgirr wrote:

I was refused a SH2ac today, basically told there are none to give out.

After pressing I was also told the latest estimated fix from the manufacturer is May 1st.

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Next year? Hahahaha oh my, no way am I waiting till then

[dcwt2010]

If it has been this long and there's still been no fix then they are just simply stalling for time. Personally, I think there is no software fix; it is a hardware fault and if they admit to it then there will be a huge uproar. I'm disappointed that they hadn't posted a warning to all customers about the issues regarding the Superhub 3. I would rather they be honest and tell me there is a known issue than stick their fingers in their ears and go lalalaalala.

[steelysteph]

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@wotusaw wrote:

May 1st 2018? Nooooooooo!!

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There's no mention of the actual year 🙂

A very apt date though - Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!