response to service request "why does my node suck"

Hi Aaron,

Thank you for your support request with Internode. Below is a list of standard
troubleshooting techniques that may help you identify the source of your connection
speed problems. If you are still having problems, even after trying all the options
below, please call the Helpdesk on 1300 788 233 and we can run through some further
troubleshooting with you.

Step 1: Shutdown all programs using your Internet connection and check for viruses
and spy ware.

Close down all of the following programs that may be running on your computer. These
programs may be running in the background using up your bandwidth causing general
speeds to be much lower:

- Peer to Peer or file sharing programs.
- Instant messenger services such as MSN, ICQ.
- Online Games
- IRC clients
- Email programs such as Outlook Express.
- Streaming Audio/Video applications.

Perform a virus scan of your system. You can run an online scan from the following
page that will scan your computer for the latest viruses:

http://www.trendmicro.com.au/free_tools

Check for Spy ware that may have been installed on the system. A great utility for
this is a program called Ad-Aware which is available from the link below:

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware

Step 2: Download a file from our mirror servers to test your maximum download speed.

Visit our mirror site and download a file from our mirror server. You should always
get full speed from our mirror server. Note down your speed.

http://mirror.internode.on.net

Step 3: Check all other devices on the same phone line as your ADSL modem.

The following can cause interference on an ADSL line:

- Phones (eg Telstra Touchtone 200, Cordless phones etc)
- Fax Machines
- Answering Machines
- Long phone extension cords (between the modem and wall socket)
- Double adapters
- FOXTEL Digital boxes
- Monitored alarm systems.

All devices on the same line as your ADSL modem MUST be filtered. This includes
FOXTEL Digital boxes and monitored alarm systems. Phone extension cables and double
adapters can weaken the strength of an ADSL signal. The longer the phone cable
connecting the ADSL modem to the wall socket, the weaker the ADSL signal will become.

If you have an alarm system on the same phone number as your ADSL service, you will
need to have an AUSTEL approved technician install a splitter at the entry point to
the premises. ADSL will not function properly on a line with a back to base alarm
system installed.

Make sure you do not place a filter on the ADSL modem itself as this may cause
dropout and speed related problems.

If the devices outlined above are properly filtered but you are still suffering from
speed problems, try isolating your modem from all other devices on the line.
Basically this means removing every single device from the phone line except the modem.

It is possible that another device may be adding interference to the line that the
modem is picking up, causing the ADSL signal to be interrupted periodically. If
removing all devices fixes the problem then place devices back onto the line one by
one until you identify the device causing the interference.

Step 4: Contact our Helpdesk to arrange further troubleshooting.

If the above steps fail, please contact our Helpdesk on 1300 788 233 with your
username and ticket number of this job. We will be able to run through some further
tests with you over the phone. If we identify a possible problem with your ADSL line,
we can arrange for your ADSL line and exchange port to be tested for errors by Telstra.

Kind regards,
Mark Lillywhite
_________________________________________________________
Internode Technical Support Team
Phone: 1300 788 233 for all support
Fax: 0882356911
Web: http://www.internode.on.net
_________________________________________________________

whats wrong with your connection exactly :P

Sounds like a fair request. At least it's better than some other providers who just say "it's not us".

Have you checked all of that yet?

not having a go at node (yet).

the response was good and reasonable, i had already checked most of the list, fact that people in my area are having same issues i didnt go to much further than what i had already done

Just got off the phone to support

while the response was reasonable and timely thay still havnt fixed it and have now palmed me off th IGN

telstra tech support shits me.
for some reason ie no change to my comp, the net decided to die. i call up tech support and they say that b/c the orange light on the modem is solid orange, then i have a networking problem and should call this o-so-helpful toll number. decided **** that, disconnected router, same problem, after jumping though hundreds of hoops, telstra is sending a tech to fix up thier end whenever they can be bothered to do so

I have taken to TELLING Telstra what the problem is and asking to be put onto someone else until someone will listen to me.

Quote from swamp rat:
telstra tech support shits me.
Telstra shits everyone why would their support be any different

i had a churn request in for internode so i thought that might have been the problem but noooo... telstra just decided to flick the "no more internet" switch

starting tp get frustrated with node now, trying to palm me off to IGN now, how is ign going to fix the fact that my ping is crap?

its just as crap outside of games as it is in

Did you have the change to ask
" what is/(or can they help me with) IGN going to do about my ping rates that just change over night - ie NOTHING changing at this end "

or

are they sure that its just us, and everyone living in karama has just decided to whinge for the hell of it cause we have nothing better to do

My ping to servers still hasnt come back down below 50 again yet :(
sad panda

Telstra Smelstra. Hope the bastards get sold off to a fish food canning company in Northern Alaska. Sons of beeches.........

the story to date, node agrees that my ping sucks but telstra dont recognise slow pings as a fault, they have logged a fault with telstra anyways and we are waiting the outcome

telstra tech coming out tomorrow

ping internode.on.net

Pinging internode.on.net [203.16.214.17] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=60
Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=82ms TTL=60
Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=60
Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=79ms TTL=60

Ping statistics for 203.16.214.17:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 55ms, Maximum = 83ms, Average = 74ms

please pretend im an ultra noob and tell me this is a good thing....
am with node and live just opposite sanderson hi in malak just behind karama

are you on 512 or 1500

If you are on 512 - was around what i was getting.
On 1500 NOOOOOOO, well maybe - depends on what internode reckon a good ping should be for 1500, as our pings were half that last week

nah it's gone again by the looks of it wot suburb are you in ?

My ping didn't change from 512 to 1500, just my download speed. always been approx 50ms

No real diff in ping between any ADSL speeds on the same line. Just pipe width :)

Read the old posts. Have a problem with node. Post what they want. Ping and traceroute to nodes servers.

Do this and the TESLSTRA fault is usually fixed in 2 - 5 days.

Look before you complain......

Quote from OverDrive:
No real diff in ping between any ADSL speeds on the same line. Just pipe width :)

That's not quite true - when I lived in town and got put onto adsl2 ping when from 50ish to a constant 80ish. Others I know on adsl2 experienced the same increase in latency after the upgrade.

That's why I said ADSL and not ADSL2 - but even then, thats a iiNet prob in the darwin area - not symptomatic with the technology in general.

So there... ;)

Yeah a lot of ppl on Whirlepool have complaied about the same thing, which is why Internode introduced differant profiles for ADSL2/+, which most of the time fixed the problem, In a small number of cases it was the modem/router that was causing the problem

Quote from Lataf:
Read the old posts. Have a problem with node. Post what they want. Ping and traceroute to nodes servers.

Do this and the TESLSTRA fault is usually fixed in 2 - 5 days.

Look before you complain......

Look at the old posts here or on the node site for current complaints.??

As for ping ratio i was getting roughly 70ish-90 ping to Node source servers on 512, when i upped to 1500 all server ping dropped accross the board down to 45-50. I would have thought that that was what should have happened to everyone.....Ida been a tad unhappy to pay for the greater speed and connection and still have a crap ping rate

correct me if i'm wrong but wouldn't ping have more to do with the amount of hops and once you got above a certain "speed" there could be no better ping. a better upload speed would help as well I would have thought.

All I know is that I have always had 45 - 50 ping on 512 and 1500

/slightly off topic but mentioning it re: tech support

If you're calling a call centre of any kind for anythign at all if you want results demand to speak to a supervisor at the first opportunity. Trust me I work in one. The supervisors are always very busy but they always have to take the calls. They will do anything for you to shut you up and get you off the phone.

Quote from Longtom:
correct me if i'm wrong but wouldn't ping have more to do with the amount of hops and once you got above a certain "speed" there could be no better ping. a better upload speed would help as well I would have thought.

All I know is that I have always had 45 - 50 ping on 512 and 1500

i agree, there must be a point where it wont go the path any quicker, but last week i was getting half the time that i am getting now

From Whirlpool.net.au

Darwin Pings have shot through the roof again :( what do I do?

Why does this happen?

Unfortunately due to the way Telstra route their data from Darwin to Adelaide, this happens sometimes.

How do we get it fixed?

All you need to do is log a support request here: cgi.internode.on.net/cgi-bin/support and tell us that Darwin Pings are high again, post us a traceroute to games.internode.on.net and some pings if you don't mind.

The real nitty gritty as to why this happens: courtesy of Mark Newton

Ok, a bit of background is needed to answer this.

Firstly: Inside the deep, dark innards of Telstra's ADSL network, there's a protocol called ATM. ATM is used (grudgingly) by ISPs to talk to Telstra's IGR aggregation routers. It's also used INSIDE the ADSL network to connect each individual ADSL customer to their DSLAM, and each DSLAM to the aggregating IPSN (Shasta, ERX, whatever). The Ethernet frames which your ADSL modem transmits and receives are essentially bridged over ATM.

Secondly: As blackcoffee says, there's no ADSL aggregation point in the NT, so all ADSL traffic (for all ISPs) is carried back to Adelaide. As far as Telstra's ADSL network is concerned, Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs don't exist in their own right, they're just suburbs of Adelaide. So the ATM PVCs which link NT DSLAMs to the aggregators are interstate.

Thirdly: ATM uses a protocol called SDH for long-haul transmission. SDH is old-school telco technology. Among other things, an SDH node can detect a link failure in less than 50 mSec. SDH is usually based on a "ring" topology, so you can get from any node to any other node by going clockwise or anticlockwise around the ring. Usually it's set up to prefer the direction which hops through the fewest number of SDH nodes to get to the destination (so in a ring through Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin and Alice Springs, traffic will ordinarily flow from Darwin to Adelaide via the "direct" anticlockwise path).

If SDH detects a link failure, it'll shunt traffic in the opposite direction around the ring to work around it. So, in the example ring described above, if the hop between (say) Darwin and Alice Springs was interrupted, within 50 mSec SDH would work out that it can go to Adelaide via Cairns, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and on to Adelaide. The fact that that path involves several thousand extra kilometers, many extra SDH "hops", and an extra 100 mSec of latency doesn't matter; Having packets arrive late is better than not having them arrive at all.

The ATM cells being carried by SDH are completely unaware when this happens. They know they've left Darwin and are going towards Adelaide; They don't care how they get there, as long as they arrive. So ATM doesn't think it's a fault when this occurs.

When the fault which caused the reversal of the ring is fixed, SDH does nothing. Traffic continues to flow in whatever direction it was flowing in before the fault was rectified.

All of this means that if the direct path from Darwin to Adelaide is interrupted for more than 50 mSec, all NT ADSL traffic flows the "long way around" the ring, and will continue to flow the long way around even if the fault is corrected until someone notices and manually flips the traffic back in the other direction. SDH doesn't consider that using the long path is a bug, because SDH is primarily used to build voice services, and as long as the latency is less than the maximum permissible latency for a voice telephone call everyone is happy.

Anyway, what this all means is that occasionally traffic for all ISPs to/from the Northern Territory is slow; When one ISP complains to Telstra about the extra latency, Telstra manually reverts the links and all ISPs get magically quicker again. SDH can be configured to do that automatically, but in this instance it hasn't.

Also, good and bad news if you want Internode ADSL2+ in the NT

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=487003&p=40#r782

So all we gotta do is get some cheap backhaul installed between Darwin and Adelaide...

Or has anyone got a few thousand kilometres of spare fibre laying around? :p

Jeats - complain and then telstra does stuff doesnt quite work that way. The tech i spoke to said that this has been an on going issue with Tel$tra for over an year and that we need numbers b4 telstra will listen to them, and that was no qurantee to get it fixed as high latency is not seen as an fault.

My / our issues seems to be limited to Karama, and the tech that checked out Insidious place, chopped out the alarm system that wasnt been used, found no lost packages, and from what i understand went "my work here is done see ya"....we still have crap latency which they dont care about as adsl still works....

As for tracert - i am 4 hops away from destination protocol unreachable

not just limited to Karama, Moil is the same as far as Internode goes ;)

Im in Northlakes and have the same problem.

Is it seriously just a matter of them flicking the switch at the exchange? ...

Why dont these guys put some effort into customer service, they can get ****ed imo.

since it seems people are still interested here

i called node again yesterday for my weekly whinge and they have telstra having another look at my place in the next 48 hours, they may have persuaded them to look at the trace to see what route we are taking

in the mean time i shall pray to the gods of CS: S and BF 2 in the hope that the solution is coming

Trace internode.on.net; Start time 05/31/06 09:57:17
Tracing route to 203.16.214.17
50 bytes from 203.16.214.17: time=92 ms
Hop Avg Diff Address
1 1 1 x.x.x.x
2 94 93 203.16.215.216 loop0.lns1.adl4.internode.on.net
3 95 1 203.16.213.172 g0-2-13.cor2.adl2.internode.on.net
4 95 0 203.16.215.86 gi0-2-2.cor2.adl2.internode.on.net
5 91 -4 203.16.214.17 corp.internode.on.net
End time 05/31/06 09:57:27
host reached

"Pings"

Ping internode.on.net 20/5000/56/1; Start time 05/31/06 10:01:57
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 1 round trip time = 96 ms. successful
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 2 round trip time = 94 ms. successful
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 3 round trip time = 93 ms. successful
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 4 round trip time = 91 ms. successful
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 5 round trip time = 93 ms. successful
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 6 round trip time = 95 ms. successful
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 7 round trip time = 90 ms. successful
ping 203.16.214.17 packet 8 round trip time = 92 ms. successful
8 packets sent; 8 packets received; 0% lost. Round trip times (ms): Minimum: 90, Maximum: 96, Average: 93
End time 05/31/06 10:02:10

that was on my connection to node "Telsl#t" are supposed to be doing some testing now! yeah right

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms x.x.x.x
2 45 ms 44 ms 45 ms loop0.lns2.adl2.internode.on.net [203.16.215.224]
3 44 ms 47 ms 44 ms vl8.cor3.adl2.internode.on.net [203.16.212.165]
4 45 ms 46 ms 45 ms corp.internode.on.net [203.16.214.17]

Trace complete.
Pinging internode.on.net [203.16.214.17] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=61
Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=61
Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=61
Reply from 203.16.214.17: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=61

Ping statistics for 203.16.214.17:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 42ms, Maximum = 45ms, Average = 43ms

all seems fine here from palmerston

thats it im moving to north katherine (palmerston)

It's ok in wulagi too, don't make such a harsh decision as to move out to palmerston!!

ok, internode have given up

their equipment is not at fault and telstra are only interested in my downlad speeds not my latency

telstra wont talk to me coz i am a node customer and node wont talk to telstra

anyone know any good isp's

send an email to Internode Feedback this is read by Internode upper managment. It is repeated over and over again on the whirlpool forums that if you are having problems with a ticket and it not getting resolved, to email them at that email, quoting the ticket number and as much info as you can give them and of course tell them u are not HAPPY with whats been done so far, a lot of ppl get results following this path :) as it goes direct to upper managment.

i will try that, is any one in karama and getting good pings on any provider?

its not just Karama - I'm in Wagaman and still getting shitty pings

what isp james?

iinet

Well it seems node rang me while i was at uni doing CCNA 1 and told me that telstra did a test and evrything is ok ...latency is still fuxored Grr

Nope ping outa my place in Karama was still fuxored and double wot it should be last night.

e.g 100 ms when it should and has been 50 ms in the past.

/me figures I should really log that fault to build up zee numbers ;)

Hey Pash,

How goes it ?

Who's your ISP ?

I'm sitting at Rip's at the moment and looking at the pings and they are fine via iinet from here in Moil ????

My joint in Karama was still fuxored when I had a look last night. If I recall Knight and Brain Dance are still suffering this fault in Karama also. This stinks of an ATM issue that will affect customers with simular ISP and config on the Exchanges and not other ISP's even though they may be going through the same exchange :(

The Whirlpool qoute posted by Jeat's is a good description of what happens.

ffs how many more times does this fault have to appear without timley resolution ??? Time for some Telscum Network Architects to get going and get this sorted to prevent future occurances. Some "Decent" Network design and "optimisation" wouldn't hurt right about NOW ! :P

I LOVE TELSCUM !

NOT !

is anyone on bigpond experiancing this?

yep im with bigpond..

110+ pings on everything .. :o

i guess its better then dialup, by about 50ms.

I have an interesting problem to throw in the circle. I have 40-50ms ping to internode servers but 80-90ms on Game Arena servers.

Quote from South:
yep im with bigpond..

110+ pings on everything .. :o

i guess its better then dialup, by about 50ms.

have you logged a fault with bigpond?

ive done it about 100 times before, they dont listen or give a shit :o

basically they can send out a tech, if the tech finds nothing, i get charged for him coming around.

they can do a speed test, but if you download @ over roughly 40k's per sec they dont care either, its considered as fine by them.

the guys on the help desk dont know shit, and think im a ****en idiot because they dont understand what im complaining about.

Telstras service doesnt exactly revolve around computer games and latency etc. If you can view webpages and download at a reasonable speed, the service they are providing you is 'fine'.

people who live 300odd meters away from me have no problems at all.. and we all pay the same ammount for our internet connections, a bit of an issue i think.

i wouldnt be whinging if it was this way from the start but to double my latency overnight and be told there is no faults is starting to shit me

one of my funnier convos with telstra, i called tech supprt and she didnt know what ping or latency meant so she put me thru to sales, who didnt know what ping or latency meant, so she put me thru to tech supprt and she didnt know what ping or latency meant, so she put me thru to sales who didnt know what ping or latency meant, so she put me thru to tech support and i gave up and hung up

im starting to get the impression that most of the Tel$tra people are (*&(ing idiots......

Am in the process of replying to my helpdesk ticket asking again what can be done, when it can be done, and if they dont know - who we have to pwn to get something done in this lifetime

Quote from Longtom:
I have an interesting problem to throw in the circle. I have 40-50ms ping to internode servers but 80-90ms on Game Arena servers.

Sounds like normal pings for an iinet customer - that's what I have always had which is why I only play cod2 on the node servers.

Quote from Longtom:
I have an interesting problem to throw in the circle. I have 40-50ms ping to internode servers but 80-90ms on Game Arena servers.

geography owns you.

node servers = adelaide (darwin -> adelaide)
game arena servers = sydney (darwin -> adelaide -> sydney)