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]

[tonycv51]

dont think I’ll bother with the pin hole reset wild goose chase.....

[hammic]

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@spikey673 wrote:

Here’s me getting all excited about the update and I bet it’s only rolling out to the rest of the 350 group.

im on 200 so I expect a long wait ( unless anyone can put there hand up who’s not 350, and has the firmware )

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I did the the pinhole reset today and did not get the new firmware, and I'm on 200MB.

[ILuvNips]

I really don't understand the logic that they are limiting a fix to only their 350mb customers unless they are using the 350mb customers a guinea pigs but that also makes no sense as surely people here who see the problem would be better to test a potential fix?

Certainly people here would be more clued up or maybe that is what they are afraid of in case the emperors new clothes turn out to nothing more than a disguise?

[philjohn]

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@ILuvNips wrote:
I really don't understand the logic that they are limiting a fix to only their 350mb customers unless they are using the 350mb customers a guinea pigs but that also makes no sense as surely people here who see the problem would be better to test a potential fix?

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It makes perfect sense. A far smaller % of customers are on 350, so if you're rolling out based on tiers, it's the one to pick.

Remember they can't just trigger a massive firmware rollout if there turn out to be problems, for example, if it caused the modem to not connect to the internet after a few weeks they then have to send out brand new hubs to everyone because it can't connect to grab an updated firmware.

Whenever it comes to a large rollout, slow and steady wins the race. I know it's not nice if you're on a lower tier and haven't got it yet, but these things need to be managed carefully.

[astrohominis]

Slow rollouts can suck if you are the one waiting. 

However as someone that has worked in an ISP before I can tell you,  it’s very easy to overload the call center.  Slow support is bad for the ISP and bad for other customers

[ILuvNips]

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@philjohn wrote:

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@ILuvNips wrote:
I really don't understand the logic that they are limiting a fix to only their 350mb customers unless they are using the 350mb customers a guinea pigs but that also makes no sense as surely people here who see the problem would be better to test a potential fix?

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It makes perfect sense. A far smaller % of customers are on 350, so if you're rolling out based on tiers, it's the one to pick.

Remember they can't just trigger a massive firmware rollout if there turn out to be problems, for example, if it caused the modem to not connect to the internet after a few weeks they then have to send out brand new hubs to everyone because it can't connect to grab an updated firmware.

Whenever it comes to a large rollout, slow and steady wins the race. I know it's not nice if you're on a lower tier and haven't got it yet, but these things need to be managed carefully.

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From a risk point of view rolling out to your top tier customers makes no sense at all. These are the people that are paying the highest prices and therefore from a Virgin point of view they have a lot more to lose if their top tier customers are impacted or affected.

I'm not suggesting that it be rolled out en-mass but people here certainly would make better testers. It must be possible for Virgin to put together a list of testers from a spread of speeds that they can target, they've certainly done this for other products/updates where they have asked if people are interested on being part of a trail.

[Adduxi]

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@ILuvNips wrote:

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@philjohn

<snip>. It must be possible for Virgin to put together a list of testers from a spread of speeds that they can target, they've certainly done this for other products/updates where they have asked if people are interested on being part of a trail.

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There is already an ongoing trial at the moment.

[Greenpalmer]

FYI I'm on 200mbps service tier and am testing the 608 firmware so it's not only the 350mbps tier.

AFAIK if you're not involved in testing the new firmware you won't get it until it's generally rolled out and resetting your hub will result in the production firmware i.e. 116 until (if) the 608 firmware is moved into production.

[cje85]

There are some trialists such as yourself on lower tiers, but anyone upgrading to 350Mb will get the new firmware without being a trialist.

[JitterBitter]

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@astrohominis wrote:

Slow rollouts can suck if you are the one waiting. 

However as someone that has worked in an ISP before I can tell you,  it’s very easy to overload the call center.  Slow support is bad for the ISP and bad for other customers

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Amen Astro.

With cheap ISP gear flashing failure rates can be between 0.1 and 1%. Doesn't sound like much. But when you push a new build to a fleet of 500k+ units (more with UK/US ISPs) and that results in a few thousand paper weights.... contact centres don't like that. And thats for a flawless firmware. After one or two bad deployments they tend to learn to batch at 10k units per night until done.