PPPoE drops connection randomly

[connect4]

Basically, the connection drops out all the time, I can't determine if the problem is on the ISPs end or mine.

The first time they set this connection up it was in much worse condition, the line kept dropping every hour or even less, sometimes the link was up for no more then 5 minutes then I lost connection again. Then I tried all kinds of troubleshooting to no avail. I called customer service, they eventually came, checked the wires on the poles outside, and in our house. They wired me to the master directly. Had the exact same problem, not even the slightest improvement. So naturally and pissed I called them again, this time they replaced my slave modem, and even the master outside, this provided a noticeable improvement but still didn't fix the problem. Now the internet goes out after 6 or 5 sometimes even up to 16 hrs of usage. I could sort of live with this, but let's be honest I cannot control when the connection can drop because it's completely random, sometimes the link went out every 30 seconds for instance. For playing online this is not the ideal connection either so I have to do something.

The ACT led on the slave modem goes off for 2-10 seconds, I lose connection, the led lights up again and after waiting sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes, the connection comes back. Sometimes the router realized that I don't have internet access and the light turns amber, even though the ACT on the modem is already solid green. This is where it gets weird, this type of connection drop happens rarely but still does happen. The modem shows the link is up, but I still cannot connect to the internet, the wifi doesn't work either.

I've tried bypassing the router as well when this happens and with a solid green ACT led, the windows troubleshooter sometimes showed me Error 651 or "Your computer appears to be correctly configured, but the device or resource (DNS server) is not responding" . I've tried bypassing the router in general and that didn't fix the problem either. I also tried entering Google's public DNS but that didn't do anything helpful.

If I have to call them again it would be a bit embarrassing for me, and I guess also for them since they cannot fix the problem. At this point I don't know what else is possible to improve the situation.

 

 

 

 

Router PPPoE settings : 

Router : TP-Link Archer C50

Slave : AccEOC21

ISP : RCS & RDS or DIGI Romania (if it matters)

I'd like to clarify I do live in a small village in sort of the middle of nowhere but that shouldn't be an excuse.

EDIT : It seems that everytime the connection drops I have to unplug and plug in the slave modem for it to work again, before it reconnected on its own.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Does the modem have a DSL LED?  Does it go out?  If so, its likely a problem with the line from the pole back to the exchange.  Nothing you can do about that except keep complaining to the ISP.

Have you tried plugging the PC in directly to the modem and using the login details from the router to make the connection?  Does it still disconnect?

[connect4]

6 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Does the modem have a DSL LED?  Does it go out?  If so, its likely a problem with the line from the pole back to the exchange.  Nothing you can do about that except keep complaining to the ISP.

Have you tried plugging the PC in directly to the modem and using the login details from the router to make the connection?  Does it still disconnect?

The DSL led is the ACT on the slave I assume, the one that shows if the link is up or down. I've read that it's supposed to be blinking, but it's only a solid green for me.

And yes, I did try that, have the same exact issue sadly.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I'm a little confused what you mean by "master outside".

 

Does your router plug into another device or the telephone socket?

[Brian Furious]

Maybe the ISP doesn't let you have 2 connections through PPPoE. If you have a modem and a router, try to connect directly into the modem and see what's happening. If it works maybe you have to disable NAT from the modem and let the router only managing it.

[connect4]

12 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm a little confused what you mean by "master outside".

 

Does your router plug into another device or the telephone socket?

I assume its where the exchange happens. Its hung up on some of the poles outside and thats where the internet cable is coming from to a splitter, from that 2 coax cables ( one for tv i assume ) to my slave modem in my house.

[connect4]

10 hours ago, Brian Furious said:

Maybe the ISP doesn't let you have 2 connections through PPPoE. If you have a modem and a router, try to connect directly into the modem and see what's happening. If it works maybe you have to disable NAT from the modem and let the router only managing it.

Like I said before I did try connecting directly to the modem, it will still drop the connection and takes the same amount of time to recover.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Ah that changes things as everything up until this point strongly implied it was DSL, but COAX would mean its Cable, a whole different ball game. 

 

I'm kinda perplexed that anyone would use COAX from poles as its not very flexible, let alone two when the whole point is TV and Internet can go down the same cable.

 

I've never heard of Cable using PPPoE, but then I have limited experience with Cable overall.

Honestly I can't see anything we can look at here, its all down to your ISP to figure out what is going on.

[connect4]

21 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Ah that changes things as everything up until this point strongly implied it was DSL, but COAX would mean its Cable, a whole different ball game. 

 

I'm kinda perplexed that anyone would use COAX from poles as its not very flexible, let alone two when the whole point is TV and Internet can go down the same cable.

 

I've never heard of Cable using PPPoE, but then I have limited experience with Cable overall.

Honestly I can't see anything we can look at here, its all down to your ISP to figure out what is going on.

Yeah, well the problem is every time I called them to my house, they always said that they couldn't identify the root of the problem, it could've been the master or my slave modem, or maybe the wires outside now I guess? I dunno, as I said after they replaced them it got better. Now that I remember back though, the ISP guy told me that all master that they sent out to customers have this "thing" that they switch frequency after a while and that's when the internet goes out, they all are preconfigured to work like that apparently. I don't understand it, he wasn't really clear about it.

[Alex Atkin UK]

13 hours ago, connect4 said:

Yeah, well the problem is every time I called them to my house, they always said that they couldn't identify the root of the problem, it could've been the master or my slave modem, or maybe the wires outside now I guess? I dunno, as I said after they replaced them it got better. Now that I remember back though, the ISP guy told me that all master that they sent out to customers have this "thing" that they switch frequency after a while and that's when the internet goes out, they all are preconfigured to work like that apparently. I don't understand it, he wasn't really clear about it.

I don't understand it either, it seems they are using some very convoluted system that we would need to know specifics about to have any idea whats going on.

[connect4]

On 10/1/2018 at 12:48 AM, Brian Furious said:

Maybe the ISP doesn't let you have 2 connections through PPPoE. If you have a modem and a router, try to connect directly into the modem and see what's happening. If it works maybe you have to disable NAT from the modem and let the router only managing it.

It's a slave modem, I can only connect to the internet with it. No logs, no web interface, nothing.

[connect4]

On 10/3/2018 at 5:49 AM, Alex Atkin UK said:

I don't understand it either, it seems they are using some very convoluted system that we would need to know specifics about to have any idea whats going on.

On their site it states that my villages infrastructure type is FTTC for telephone, internet and for TV. And from the master there's only one cable going into a splitter so I guess this is the closest thing that would detail it. 

 

"For FTTC and FTTN, the combined internet, video and telephone signal travels to the building over existing telephone or cable wiring until it reaches the end-user's living space, where a VDSL or DOCSIS modem converts data and video signals into ethernet protocol, which is sent over the end-user's CAT5 cable."

 

It's probably something on the wires, but I have no clue at this point. It's sort of sad that they haven't done anything about this. All of my neighbours are saying the same thing, their internet is dropping out as well. And RDS has been in this village for years, so at this point you'd think they know what is causing problems or try to fix them.

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 hours ago, connect4 said:

On their site it states that my villages infrastructure type is FTTC for telephone, internet and for TV. And from the master there's only one cable going into a splitter so I guess this is the closest thing that would detail it. 

 

"For FTTC and FTTN, the combined internet, video and telephone signal travels to the building over existing telephone or cable wiring until it reaches the end-user's living space, where a VDSL or DOCSIS modem converts data and video signals into ethernet protocol, which is sent over the end-user's CAT5 cable."

 

It's probably something on the wires, but I have no clue at this point. It's sort of sad that they haven't done anything about this. All of my neighbours are saying the same thing, their internet is dropping out as well. And RDS has been in this village for years, so at this point you'd think they know what is causing problems or try to fix them.

As you already said you use coax and the AccEOC21 we know you are using DOCSIS.  I'm sorry I missed your mention of the modem (the slave) before, I was totally thrown by all the master/slave stuff as I have never known an ISP mention this.  Brushing up on DOCSIS (been a long time since I read anything on it) I can see what they mean now.

As for them using a mix of both VDSL and DOCSIS, that might explain why they are using PPPoE over DOCSIS which is completely none-standard AFAIK and a huge waste of resources.  Presumably as PPPoE is necessary for their VDSL customers, they just decided to use the same for everyone to simplify the connection to their network.

I do wonder if that is what is causing the problem though.  Cable broadband is usually plug and play, they have really over-complicated this IMO.

If the master is on the pole as you seem to suggest, you should be getting excellent performance.  There is such a short distance between you and the master by the sounds of it.  I can only presume as before, especially with mentioning your neighbours, that its clearly their problem.

Its kind of worrying as if the network is that unstable, does it cause your telephone and/or TV to drop out too?

[connect4]

4 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

As you already said you use coax and the AccEOC21 we know you are using DOCSIS.  I'm sorry I missed your mention of the modem (the slave) before, I was totally thrown by all the master/slave stuff as I have never known an ISP mention this.  Brushing up on DOCSIS (been a long time since I read anything on it) I can see what they mean now.

As for them using a mix of both VDSL and DOCSIS, that might explain why they are using PPPoE over DOCSIS which is completely none-standard AFAIK and a huge waste of resources.  Presumably as PPPoE is necessary for their VDSL customers, they just decided to use the same for everyone to simplify the connection to their network.

I do wonder if that is what is causing the problem though.  Cable broadband is usually plug and play, they have really over-complicated this IMO.

If the master is on the pole as you seem to suggest, you should be getting excellent performance.  There is such a short distance between you and the master by the sounds of it.  I can only presume as before, especially with mentioning your neighbours, that its clearly their problem.

Its kind of worrying as if the network is that unstable, does it cause your telephone and/or TV to drop out too?

You're right, I'm the shortest possible distance to the master. As of the first time they set the connection up I was wired to an extension of an extension (which was full of cables so they plugged this one in) to said extension which goes into the master. So naturally I thought that was the problem, I call them up, they came to my house, they wired to the master directly which is on a different pole and a bit further, but it's still a master and not some extension. After that they explained how they simplify this connection of theirs by using names like master/slave, they also said that the longer the cable the more of the stability and connection loss. So after that I thought problem solved. Yet as soon as they drove away my connection dropped. Back then it went out every 1hr 30minutes, it was driving me nuts, especially after all this, it made no difference, It looked like it was in worse condition actually but probably placebo at that point. So I waited one day, I didn't want to bother them too much, they replaced the master, and here we are today, I guess it's better then nothing. Sadly, it is a village, no one will really notice the connection dropping out because they won't use the internet as much as I do for example. So there won't be the amount of complaints that should be. If there's no other way, I'll call them up again and tell them to check the wires, or .. I don't even know what to say to them. As a customer it was a pretty hard job even getting a grasp of how the connection is even made, let alone tell them what the exact problem is because they can't figure out themselves. 

Also, I was also curious about the TV and phone. The TV was working, but at that point the modem was already redialing with the link being up probably. The ISP guys also asked if the phone is working or not when the connection goes out. I'll probably just wait for it to happen then tell them my findings, hopefully then they'll know what to do.