Packet loss on modem only

[Davnell]

Good day all!

Having recently moved into a new property I have found myself setting up a mesh system in order to get adequate wireless coverage throughout, in order to do this I set my SuperHup 3.0 into modem only mode and configured the Netgear Orbi and we were good to go!

After a week or so I noticed frame drop whilst streaming and found that I was getting around 10% packet loss on the connection, it had been fine up until then (yesterday). I made a few calls to the customer support team and after a few "magic signals" which did nothing, I was advised to try a pinhole reset on the hub. Despite my doubts, this actually seemed to fix the problem, however as soon as I go back to modem mode it starts dropping again.

I have removed the Orbi from the setup and wired my desktop directly to the hub, I then switched to router mode and all is well, back to modem mode with just my PC connected and we have packet loss again.

Anyone have any idea what might be doing it, other than a VM fault of some kind? The latest advice from VM Customer Support is it is "a short term connectivity issue" which will be resolved "within 24h or more", but I am not holding my breath since that means absolutely nothing, so thought I would post here as well.

Cheers

[legacy1]

Its too bad you can't see the gateway MAC in router mode to compare in modem mode the only thing it can be is the IP your getting so change the MAC get a new IP list what WAN gateway MAC only in modem mode with PC and Wireshark or arp -a see if it changes.

You could also do a ping -t to the WAN gateway IP and see if you get any loss you can press ctrl + pause keys to get statistics as its running. 

and do the high ping test

Re: Packet loss on modem only - Virgin Media Community - 4844148

[Davnell]

Thanks for the further feedback.

Currently both my wife and I are working from home, so it's hard to just disconnect the connection to test on my PC alone. I will attempt what you suggest the next time she goes to the office, that way it only affects my work at least.

The BQM is such a strange pattern, random periods it seems fine and others (including overnight when no one is on!) it seems to really struggle.

[Lee_R]

Hi @Davnell thanks for getting back to us.

Please do keep us updated.  

Regards

Lee_R

[Davnell]

Here I am again, thinking it's time to revive the thread once more... I have still not had a chance to perform the tests as unfortunately things are just too busy at home atm.

Today while I had some spare time I grabbed PingPlotter and decided to give it a go, whilst updating a large game in Steam, the loss goes through the roof! I am suffering about 35-40% loss at the VM node 82.8.208.85, but next to none on the gateway device (orbi). I still need to deconstruct my network at some point and try it direct to my PC again, might get chance to do that tomorrow. 

You can actually see on the BQM when I initiated the download

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/c4e4ed73946416f49a11e01c957395579a850a3e-06-11-2021

to confirm it is not just my PC, I have tested from another device in the house at the same time as well and it also sees massive RTT increases and loss.

[Davnell]

Right, so the problem has now evolved into what seems to be just an Orbi problem, so now a new troubleshooting era begins! When I now go to direct connection to my PC I no longer get loss, hurrah! But back on the Orbi and it seems that it can't handle the load (1 PC downloading a game on Steam with a 200M cap on download speed, my connection is 350M)

Guess I am off to the Orbi forums! Thanks for everyone's help, shame we will never know the original fault, but now I have a new one to find!