Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sun, 01 Dec 1996 12:37:02 -0700 (MST) | From | Rob Riggs <> | Subject | RE: PPP-Problem?! A short question... |
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On 01-Dec-96 root wrote: >A few days ago something mysterious happens with ppp-connections >to to my internet provider: > >While I am downloading software, the transfer rates starts at a >high point and slows down step by step until it reaches >0 bytes per second (or as netscape wants to say : "stalled"). > >At this point nothing work anymore. I have shut down the connection >and relogin. Then the play starts again... > >But this don't happen EVERY time. > >SO: Does anybody knows something about this effect? Or is it a known >problem of something inside my box (pppd-bug, kernel-feature??)
Can you see if the same thing happens under DOS/WIN or tell us if earlier versions of Linux exhibit this problem?
I had a simlilar problem last summer and pulled out lots of hair trying to figure out what was going on. I even wrote a rather long winded post to this list but got no response. I ended up setting up PPP under Windows 3.1 (Trumpet WinSock) and found the same thing occuring.
After many denials, I finally got my ISP to admit that it was a problem on their end. In their last correspondence with me they said that it was a known problem with NT 3.51 (running on their PPP server) and that it should be fixed when they upgrade to 4.0. A few weeks later all was well.
I don't fully trust their explaination. I have don't doubt that NT _could_ be the problem, but the folks running my ISP seem kinda clueless. There is no telling what the _real_ problem was. Their earlier explainations included "not enough RAM" and "driver problems with their multiport serial board," as well a a few others that I can't remember. Anyways... for the past couple months I have had exceptional PPP performance.
A few things that you can do to isolate the problem:
Run 'traceroute' to the server(s) that you are connected to when this problem occurs. You should be able to tell if any router along the way is causing the problem. When I did this, I would randomly loose packets right after the packet went through the NT PPP server.
Ping the server/routers that your 'traceroute' shows your packets to be travelling through. When I did this, pings from the PPP server came back in under 200ms. Pings to any node on the other side of the PPP server, on my ISP's internal network or outside of it, including their router, would range from 150ms to 8000ms, with lots of dropped and duplicate packets.
Good luck.
Rob (rriggs@tesser.com)
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