Has anyone else run into about a 50-59 minute download limit cut off? (ATT DSL 6.5 Mbps).

[jmc111]

EDIT...

This is 3am east coast US. Not lunchtime at noon.

--------------------------

 

Last year or so I was able to start a download it would work for hours.

Now the download will work for about an hour and stop.

Then I have jump though hoops renaming and restarting files to get the DL to restart where it stopped.

 

A 5 hour DL will require me watching every hour and take me 6-7 restarts to finish.

If I had not figured out how to make them restart where they stopped I would not be able to DL a video at all.

 

Just hope that this is not a "thing" now.

 

Thanks

[kb5zue]

1 hour ago, jmc111 said:

EDIT...

This is 3am east coast US. Not lunchtime at noon.

--------------------------

 

Last year or so I was able to start a download it would work for hours.

Now the download will work for about an hour and stop.

Then I have jump though hoops renaming and restarting files to get the DL to restart where it stopped.

 

A 5 hour DL will require me watching every hour and take me 6-7 restarts to finish.

If I had not figured out how to make them restart where they stopped I would not be able to DL a video at all.

 

Just hope that this is not a "thing" now.

 

Thanks

What is it that you're trying to download?  How large is the original file?  What is the download speed?

[jmc111]

2 hours ago, kb5zue said:

What is it that you're trying to download?  How large is the original file?  What is the download speed?

14 GB 1080p H264.mp4 file

(ATT DSL 6.5 Mbps)...about 2.7GB/hr

[kb5zue]

A 14GB file is a very large file, especially for an .mp4.  I have a ton of movies in my library and none of them are over 5GB.  Whatever it is, I wish you the best of luck.

[NobleGamer]

I have the same type of internet & ISP with similar max speed, and I cant say I've downloaded a single file that large from my browser, but I havent had your issue with 50 GB Steam downloads that took many hours.

 

I don't think I happened to attempt a multi-hour download until after a tech came out and installed some kind of weather guard/shield for a certain connector in the DSL box outside. So I don't know if you have the same.

 

One thing I learned about recently was that a mismatch between your network's MTU and your ISP can cause reliability issues. Basically 1400 is the default for computers & networks, but some ISPs like my Tmobile 5G have a lower MTU. So there's ping tests you can run to confirm the max ping packet size, then do some math. Here's one guide with accurate math for MTU: https://forum.peplink.com/t/how-to-determine-the-optimal-mtu-and-mss-size/7895/

 

My MTU with ATT DSL wound up being 1400, but maybe its a shot in the dark that your area is different somehow.

 

I doubt a router setting could result in dropped downloads each hour, unless it's your PC losing or maybe renewing its IP every hour. Dunno what else to do short of trying a Wireshark packet capture and seeing what happens at the hour mark, but I'm no expert on packet level stuff.

 

ATT now offers 5G home internet in more areas including mine - Might be worth a shot unless low ping/latency really matters to you.

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 hours ago, NobleGamer said:

I doubt a router setting could result in dropped downloads each hour, unless it's your PC losing or maybe renewing its IP every hour.

This honestly seems the most likely candidate.  It shouldn't generally cause problems, but if the router is being a bit slow in reissuing the IP it could perhaps cause the client to lose access briefly which is almost guaranteed to break a browser download.

 

Its never been a good idea to use the browser to download large files, its why things like JDownloader2 exist.

[Smith6612]

On 11/3/2023 at 5:44 PM, NobleGamer said:

I have the same type of internet & ISP with similar max speed, and I cant say I've downloaded a single file that large from my browser, but I havent had your issue with 50 GB Steam downloads that took many hours.

 

I don't think I happened to attempt a multi-hour download until after a tech came out and installed some kind of weather guard/shield for a certain connector in the DSL box outside. So I don't know if you have the same.

 

One thing I learned about recently was that a mismatch between your network's MTU and your ISP can cause reliability issues. Basically 1400 is the default for computers & networks, but some ISPs like my Tmobile 5G have a lower MTU. So there's ping tests you can run to confirm the max ping packet size, then do some math. Here's one guide with accurate math for MTU: https://forum.peplink.com/t/how-to-determine-the-optimal-mtu-and-mss-size/7895/

 

My MTU with ATT DSL wound up being 1400, but maybe its a shot in the dark that your area is different somehow.

 

I doubt a router setting could result in dropped downloads each hour, unless it's your PC losing or maybe renewing its IP every hour. Dunno what else to do short of trying a Wireshark packet capture and seeing what happens at the hour mark, but I'm no expert on packet level stuff.

 

ATT now offers 5G home internet in more areas including mine - Might be worth a shot unless low ping/latency really matters to you.

On ADSL networks using PPPoE, 1492 is the max MTU that can be used. 1500 bytes for an Ethernet frame minus 8 bytes consumed by the PPPoE headers. AT&T U-Verse if OP is on an "IP-DSLAM" can pass a full 1500 byte MTU. Or if the circuit is REALLY old and uses PPPoA (Point-to-Point over ATM, ick) then it can also do 1500 bytes as ATM operates at a slightly higher MTU than Ethernet. When you start to get into lower MTU values, that usually means your ISP is cellular based, where 1420 tends to be the max MTU for 4G and 5G access since overhead within the cellular network itself chews up MTU.

 

Hope this helps! I used to have an issue where my PPPoE sessions would drop on DSL if I used an MTU of 1500 bytes and also blocked ICMP. Eventually the router itself would start missing PPPoE handshakes and the circuit would drop for a minute.

 

Honestly, when it comes down to DSL and the condition of the wiring in many areas of the US, perhaps the line has degraded. The next time the connection fails due to running a long download, it might be a good idea to log into the modem, and check the logs to see if the DSL is retraining.

[jmc111]

Thanks for all the thoughts!

 

My problem seems to have been a 2-3 day issue. (HOPE)

Today it's been fine downloading 2 hrs and 4 hrs at a time for 5 and 10 GB files.

 

Every time I've had a 10+ hr Download it will be interrupted

by the noon/lunch time or after 5pm crowd.

 

I'll look into the technical aspects of my connection and see what comes up.

 

I know that the ISPs want to get rid of landlines.

Just hope they are forced to replace it with optical fiber if that happens!

 

Thanks.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

12 hours ago, Smith6612 said:

On ADSL networks using PPPoE, 1492 is the max MTU that can be used. 1500 bytes for an Ethernet frame minus 8 bytes consumed by the PPPoE headers. AT&T U-Verse if OP is on an "IP-DSLAM" can pass a full 1500 byte MTU. Or if the circuit is REALLY old and uses PPPoA (Point-to-Point over ATM, ick) then it can also do 1500 bytes as ATM operates at a slightly higher MTU than Ethernet. When you start to get into lower MTU values, that usually means your ISP is cellular based, where 1420 tends to be the max MTU for 4G and 5G access since overhead within the cellular network itself chews up MTU.

 

Hope this helps! I used to have an issue where my PPPoE sessions would drop on DSL if I used an MTU of 1500 bytes and also blocked ICMP. Eventually the router itself would start missing PPPoE handshakes and the circuit would drop for a minute.

 

Honestly, when it comes down to DSL and the condition of the wiring in many areas of the US, perhaps the line has degraded. The next time the connection fails due to running a long download, it might be a good idea to log into the modem, and check the logs to see if the DSL is retraining.

None of that would cause a download to fail after a specific time limit.

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, jmc111 said:

Just hope they are forced to replace it with optical fiber if that happens!

Sadly no thats not whats going to happen. They will either stop servicing your area like they did to my neighborhood or they will force you on to a Cellular Home internet connection.

[Smith6612]

On 11/5/2023 at 9:17 AM, Alex Atkin UK said:

None of that would cause a download to fail after a specific time limit.

It can, actually. With PPPoE for example there are keep-alive timers where the authentication information is resyncronized to keep the connection up. When I was using PPPoE based DSL and accidentally ran the WAN with an MTU of 1500, I'd experience similar disconnects after about 10 minutes when running heavy transfers, although on the upload. This was because of IP fragmentation causing the authentication frames to not send properly (and they wouldn't re-transmit). Either my router or the ISP router at the central office didn't handle that correctly while the connection was loaded, and after 10 minutes the connection would drop/get torn down, and my transfer would fail.

 

Similar thing happens with VPNs if the MTU is too high. Which is why they have to figure out the max size for the whole path before bringing up the tunnel.

 

Just thought I'd offer that as a suggestion though!

[Alex Atkin UK]

24 minutes ago, Smith6612 said:

It can, actually. With PPPoE for example there are keep-alive timers where the authentication information is resyncronized to keep the connection up. When I was using PPPoE based DSL and accidentally ran the WAN with an MTU of 1500, I'd experience similar disconnects after about 10 minutes when running heavy transfers, although on the upload. This was because of IP fragmentation causing the authentication frames to not send properly (and they wouldn't re-transmit). Either my router or the ISP router at the central office didn't handle that correctly while the connection was loaded, and after 10 minutes the connection would drop/get torn down, and my transfer would fail.

 

Similar thing happens with VPNs if the MTU is too high. Which is why they have to figure out the max size for the whole path before bringing up the tunnel.

 

Just thought I'd offer that as a suggestion though!

I guess its worth looking into, but that would generally not suddenly happen out of nowhere as its a modem/router misconfiguration and as I understand it ATT do that remotely.

 

A friend of mine on ATT had a whole bunch of problem earlier this year when they suddenly re-provisioned his service with IPv6, changing his IPv4 subnet so it clashed with my network (I run a VPN so he can access files off my NAS).

Could that be what's happened here?  It was only resolved by ATT disabling IPv6 on his router.

[Smith6612]

15 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I guess its worth looking into, but that would generally not suddenly happen out of nowhere as its a modem/router misconfiguration and as I understand it ATT do that remotely.

 

A friend of mine on ATT had a whole bunch of problem earlier this year when they suddenly re-provisioned his service with IPv6, changing his IPv4 subnet so it clashed with my network (I run a VPN so he can access files off my NAS).

Could that be what's happened here?  It was only resolved by ATT disabling IPv6 on his router.

It's possible, but seems unlikely that a subnet collision would be involved here. Usually that causes a total loss of route that persists. Or drop-outs happen so frequently that the Internet is painfully slow.

 

I'm thinking more along the lines of a firmware update, which usually coincides with things like IPv6 being turned on. If I remember correctly, AT&T used some screwy 6RD/6to4 (yuck!) gateway to implement IPv6 on their ancient DSL and U-Verse DSL network rather than use prefix delegation. 6RD/6to4 is generally asking for problems.

 

Now in the past I didn't speak highly of the 2Wire gateways that AT&T would issue out for U-Verse, as they were quite flaky. Constant problems with them and work laptops with the Wi-Fi, and DNS issues galore with the internal DNS relay. I think AT&T uses Pace or Arris now, and I have no clue how good they are. My local DSL provider is Verizon, and when they switched from using Westell modems (which were arguably BULLETPROOF, never needed reboots and could run for years) to ActionTec and D-Link modems, service quality for customers stuck with those modems went downhill. The ActionTecs had really bad memory leaks in the wireless driver and DHCP daemon, and the D-Links were horrible at maintaining a connection to the DSL network.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 minutes ago, Smith6612 said:

It's possible, but seems unlikely that a subnet collision would be involved here. Usually that causes a total loss of route that persists. Or drop-outs happen so frequently that the Internet is painfully slow.

That's not what caused the problem, it was enabling IPv6 that caused his connection to become extremely unstable.

 

The subnet thing was just annoying because changing someones network configuration without their knowledge is plain stupid, given the ISP doesn't know if it will conflict with something the user is doing, as it did.