RCS Partial Service and Sync Timing Failures (Again)

[SmithyMan]

Hi there.

Last year I had this same issue and it took two months to get it resolved. Details here:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Networking-and-WiFi/Constant-Connection-Dropouts-RCS-Partial-Se...

This started last Friday and after multiple attempts with the "lovely" Phone Support team who are still using the suggestion of WiFi Range Extenders when it's the entire internet (wired/wireless AND the TiVo) dropping. Being told there is nothing wrong with my connection and having to get retentions to send out an engineer for me, an engineer came out today and attempted repairs.

I can't fault the engineer here, this one seemed to understand the issues I was having and checked the Supply Box, and moved my connection over to another cluster and also called someone at the Network Team I think to check something out who said they'd check at 3pm on their way home. This I've not heard anything back about, however unfortunately the issues still seem to be happening.

Link to the live graph for dropouts.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/4c35bb8818ffdae367ff513b9715e54c340d3acd

It's been better today after the engineer visit, but unlike last year's issues, this one does seem to happen a lot more at night and all day weekends. Sadly at about 9pm today the issues have restarted and I'm getting packet loss and being unable to connect to any website while the blips are happening, the TiVo also freezes when this happens as well.

Many resets of the router have been done including pinhole. The router was also restarted today when the engineer swapped my connection to the supply box at 9:30am this morning, below is the list of Downstream and Upstream.

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) SNR (dB) Modulation Channel ID

1	203000000	1	40	256 qam	9
2	211000000	0.9	38	256 qam	10
3	219000000	1	40	256 qam	11
4	227000000	1	38	256 qam	12
5	235000000	1	38	256 qam	13
6	243000000	1	40	256 qam	14
7	251000000	1.2	40	256 qam	15
8	259000000	1.2	40	256 qam	16
9	267000000	1.5	38	256 qam	17
10	275000000	1.5	38	256 qam	18
11	283000000	2	40	256 qam	19
12	291000000	2.4	40	256 qam	20
13	299000000	2.9	39	256 qam	21
14	307000000	3	40	256 qam	22
15	315000000	3.2	38	256 qam	23
16	323000000	3.2	38	256 qam	24
17	331000000	3.2	40	256 qam	25
18	339000000	3.2	38	256 qam	26
19	347000000	3.2	38	256 qam	27
20	355000000	3.2	38	256 qam	28
21	363000000	3.2	38	256 qam	29
22	371000000	3	38	256 qam	30
23	379000000	2.7	38	256 qam	31
24	387000000	2.2	38	256 qam	32

Downstream bonded channels

Channel Locked Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors

1	Locked	40.3	2887	6772
2	Locked	38.9	3577	6408
3	Locked	40.3	2755	6905
4	Locked	38.9	1792	9098
5	Locked	38.9	1777	7148
6	Locked	40.9	1716	7134
7	Locked	40.3	1641	6537
8	Locked	40.3	1439	6787
9	Locked	38.9	1676	10312
10	Locked	38.9	1604	10627
11	Locked	40.3	1939	10335
12	Locked	40.3	1692	10048
13	Locked	38.9	4036	10267
14	Locked	40.3	1894	6024
15	Locked	38.9	1800	10606
16	Locked	38.9	1882	5514
17	Locked	40.3	1496	10137
18	Locked	38.9	1760	4870
19	Locked	38.9	1559	11858
20	Locked	38.9	1714	11480
21	Locked	38.9	1802	4956
22	Locked	38.6	1441	4258
23	Locked	38.6	2126	3487
24	Locked	38.9	2135	5640

As you can see, lots of RS Errors.

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID

1	46199946	45.3	5120	64 qam	3
2	39400000	45.3	5120	64 qam	4
3	25800000	46.3	5120	64 qam	6
4	32600000	46	5120	64 qam	5

Upstream bonded channels

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

1	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
2	ATDMA	0	0	1	0
3	ATDMA	0	0	3	0
4	ATDMA	0	0	3	0

The lights on the superhub do not change when this happen and I get no indication on Windows that I've lost connection when this happens.

Please tell me I'm not going to have to endure this for 2 months again to get this resolved...

[SmithyMan]

Further details: Examples of the error messages when I get connection issues:

07/06/2021 21:10:0 Warning! RCS Partial Service;CM-MAC=<MAC ADDRESS>;CMTS-MAC=<MAC ADDRESS>;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
07/06/2021 21:09:59 critical SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Loss of Sync;CM-MAC=<MAC ADDRESS>;CMTS-MAC=<MAC ADDRESS>;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

Examples of how bad the connection can get from BQM.

This past Sat & Sun:

Sunday 6th June 2021Saturday 5th June 2021

[lotharmat]

Power levels look Ok - but the postRS errors look horrendous - could be noise ingress!

I'd say that VM need to do some serious work in the box. Do you know if any of your neighbours on VM are getting the same issues?

[SmithyMan]

Not aware if the neighbours are unfortunately, they aren't the easiest people to get a hold of (ironically work night shift!).

The engineer said I was the only one reporting this, however he did concede my point that others may be affected but either don't fully realise or are being swatted away by the telephone helpline like they tried me, I had to really fight just to get an engineer sent out, when I got a message asking to call in to book an engineer the "lovely" person at the call centre actually yelled at me telling me there was nothing wrong with my connection so he wouldn't be sending anyone out... So I do wonder if they've done that to me, what have they been doing to the others.

The engineer who visited yesterday did show me a photo of inside the supply box and there wasn't too many connections in there, I'd say possibly 10-15 lines were connected in that box at most.

The call centre, not even once haha. Appreciate your input lotharmat, here's hoping the VM team catch what the issue is like last year.

RS error count as of speaking (So about 10 hours since last checked)

Channel Locked Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors

1	Locked	40.3	10363	18102
2	Locked	40.3	10897	19486
3	Locked	40.3	9388	18300
4	Locked	40.9	7679	18582
5	Locked	40.3	7687	17784
6	Locked	40.9	7703	18365
7	Locked	40.3	7321	16523
8	Locked	40.9	6405	13872
9	Locked	40.3	6324	18550
10	Locked	40.3	6743	19887
11	Locked	40.3	6969	18457
12	Locked	40.3	6081	16955
13	Locked	38.9	8136	16932
14	Locked	40.3	6001	13139
15	Locked	38.9	5980	18791
16	Locked	38.6	5970	12855
17	Locked	38.9	4876	16894
18	Locked	38.6	5517	12205
19	Locked	38.9	5634	20016
20	Locked	38.9	5777	19980
21	Locked	38.9	5394	10772
22	Locked	38.6	4822	10011
23	Locked	38.6	5956	9879
24	Locked	38.6	5789	11791

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID

1	46199961	44.8	5120	64 qam	3
2	39400000	44.8	5120	64 qam	4
3	25800029	46	5120	64 qam	6
4	32600000	45.3	5120	64 qam	5

Upstream bonded channels

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

1	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
2	ATDMA	0	0	1	0
3	ATDMA	0	0	3	0
4	ATDMA	0	0	3	0

Seems like it has increased more.

[Zak_M]

Good afternoon @SmithyMan

Welcome back to the forums and thank you for taking the time to post. 

I am sorry to hear that you have had some issues with your services.

I have just taken a quick peek over your account and can see that you have another engineer booked to come and take a look over things. 

Do let us know how this goes. 

Kind regards,

Zak_M

[SmithyMan]

@Zak_M Thank you, unfortunately the issues are still occuring after Scott the Engineer's visit yesterday. He removed the splitter and replaced the cables to my superhub and told me my Upstream Power Levels should be much lower, but unfortunately 30 mins after his departure the Upstream levels shot up to 51/49/50/51

Upstream bonded channels
Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID
1 53700000 51 5120 64 qam 2
2 46200000 49 5120 64 qam 3
3 39400000 50 5120 64 qam 4
4 60300224 51 5120 64 qam 1


Upstream bonded channels
Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts
1 ATDMA 0 0 0 0
2 ATDMA 0 0 1 0
3 ATDMA 0 0 1 0
4 ATDMA 0 0 0 0

Downstream bonded channels
Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) SNR (dB) Modulation Channel ID
1 387000000 3.7 37 256 qam 32
2 203000000 -1.4 36 256 qam 9
3 211000000 -3.7 35 256 qam 10
4 219000000 -3.2 35 256 qam 11
5 227000000 -1 35 256 qam 12
6 235000000 -0.5 37 256 qam 13
7 243000000 -0.2 37 256 qam 14
8 251000000 0.7 38 256 qam 15
9 259000000 1.7 38 256 qam 16
10 267000000 1.7 38 256 qam 17
11 275000000 1.5 38 256 qam 18
12 283000000 1.9 38 256 qam 19
13 291000000 2.2 38 256 qam 20
14 299000000 3.4 38 256 qam 21
15 307000000 3.4 38 256 qam 22
16 315000000 2.7 38 256 qam 23
17 323000000 3 38 256 qam 24
18 331000000 3.5 38 256 qam 25
19 339000000 3.2 38 256 qam 26
20 347000000 2 37 256 qam 27
21 355000000 2.7 37 256 qam 28
22 363000000 4 38 256 qam 29
23 371000000 4.8 38 256 qam 30
24 379000000 4.5 37 256 qam 31


Downstream bonded channels
Channel Locked Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors
1 Locked 37.6 986 12899
2 Locked 36.6 225 8060
3 Locked 36.3 1497 8124
4 Locked 35.7 1657 8338
5 Locked 35 2673 8450
6 Locked 37.6 394 8386
7 Locked 37.6 423 8414
8 Locked 38.9 132 8343
9 Locked 38.9 259 8425
10 Locked 38.9 373 8385
11 Locked 38.6 162 8423
12 Locked 38.9 161 8536
13 Locked 38.9 136 346
14 Locked 38.6 467 6720
15 Locked 38.9 445 14926
16 Locked 38.6 428 15266
17 Locked 38.6 459 6673
18 Locked 38.6 660 15161
19 Locked 38.6 552 6688
20 Locked 37.6 364 15488
21 Locked 37.6 438 6664
22 Locked 37.6 683 14907
23 Locked 37.6 788 9655
24 Locked 37.6 730 15316

The router was reset yesterday at about 10am but we're already into 5 digit RS Errors.

He did mention that six other properties were reporting this issue nearby as well too but what the next steps are now has not been communicated, so this issue has not been resolved. Please can you advise what will happen next as we're now entering Week 2... (Here we go again...)

Quick edit: The engineer who visited yesterday just texted to say that a bunch of us just reported the issue so he's contacted the Networking Team who are dispatching someone to look at the Cabinet today as they believe it's a network issue. Fingers crossed.

[SmithyMan]

A further update, not sure what the result of the cabinet visit yesterday (Or if it even happened) but alas, this issue is still ongoing 😕

[Steven_L]

Thanks for coming back to us @SmithyMan.

I have looked into your account again and can see that the upstream power levels of your connection are too high and would need an engineer visit to book this.

I would need to book a technician visit but need to confirm a few details to get this on our system, I will send over a private message in a moment to confirm these details.

Regards,

Steven_L

[Steven_L]

Thanks for your details @SmithyMan

I have arranged for the appointment and you can find all the information that you need about your appointment on your online account and clicking My Account and Track Your Order.

Regards,

Steven_L

[SmithyMan]

That's great and all but what about the area issues that the engineer reported? And the issues with the street's cabinet?