Another case of intermittent internet outages
BNet
Enthusiast - Level 1

For approximately the past 2 months, we have been experiencing periodic outages of our internet connectivity lasting minutes to hours.  Based on ongoing logging of ping times to www22.verizon.com, these episodes last for minutes to hours and are frequently preceded by periods of increasing network latency.  These episodes only affect the connection to the internet whereas connections within the house (between computers/devices/printers) remain completely functional with no latency. This is also NOT a WiFi problem as the connectivity to the internet affects computers connected via ethernet and WiFi the same.

Turning the Actiontec off and back on restored internet connectivity some of the time.

More recently, I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the coax from the ONT to the Actiontec and that reliably restores internet connectivity.

At no point have either the ONT or router shown an error condition (all lights are green).

There has been nothing in the Actiontec logs that suggested an error on the part of the router.

We have about 16 devices on the network and all of those that access the internet are affected the same (Mac laptops, Windows laptop, Mac desktop, Linux-based HTPC, 2 phones, iPad, iPod, Wii, TV, Blu-Ray.)

As I mentioned, we have been monitoring the connection using Cacti (www.cacti.net) to characterize the outages and they occur as described (usually increased latency followed by an outage). Based on these logs, the episodes only occur when we are actively using the network - i.e., not in the middle of the night or middle of the day on week days when no one is at home.

We have contacted Verizon about 8 times regarding this problem without resolution.  This has included 3 separate visits by technicians to the house.  Here is what has been tried so far:

  • Reset of the router to system defaults - no help.
  • Use of alternative DNS servers on the router - no help.
  • Replacement of the router with a new model (MI424-WR rev. F, original was rev. C) - no help.
  • At the second visit by a Verizon technician, the ONT and its power supply were replaced - no help.
  • Also at the second visit, the technician contacted Tier 2 support and the voice on the phone mentioned that he could see errors on some piece of Verizon hardware and that he would "monitor" the connection but this did not solve the problem.  Verizon makes it very hard, if not impossible, to contact Tier 2 support by calling Tier 1 support so we had no way to follow up with Tier 2 to let them know that nothing was resolved - no help.
  • The third technician visit was supposed to include a "supervisor" (but did not) and resulted in no new ideas - no help.
  • In an effort to avoid a conversion back to Comcast (after ~5 years of otherwise great service with FiOS), I purchased a new Netgear router and set up the Actiontec as a bridge (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r17679150-Howto-make-ActionTec-MI424WR-a-network-bridge) - no help.


After all of this, I am convinced that the problem lies somewhere with Verizon but don't know how to get them to do a more thorough evaluation.  I base this on the fact that we never lose connectivity within the house and that even configuring the Actiontec as a bridge did not have any effect.

This problem (or one like it) has been described several times in these forums (search "intermittent" under FiOS Internet) and only some of those have been resolved.  Of those that have been resolved, none apply as we have tried all of the things that worked for them.

I do not relish the thought of having to make the conversion back to Comcast so I am hopeful there may be some wisdom in this group about how to diagnose and resolve this.

Thank you for your time.




Under "normal conditions":

 > traceroute www22.verizon.comtraceroute to e3.g.akamaiedge.net (96.17.80.29), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1)  1.193 ms  0.856 ms  0.621 ms
 2  l100.bltmmd-vfttp-14.verizon-gni.net (72.81.130.1)  37.896 ms
    g0-5-2-3.bltmmd-lcr-22.verizon-gni.net (130.81.185.154)  22.380 ms  17.189 ms
 3  so-6-1-0-0.phil-bb-rtr2.verizon-gni.net (130.81.199.4)  42.495 ms  23.998 ms  25.223 ms
 4  0.xe-3-0-2.xl4.iad8.alter.net (152.63.3.57)  37.453 ms  31.728 ms  32.472 ms
 5  tengige0-7-1-0.gw1.iad8.alter.net (152.63.35.149)  25.323 ms
    0.tengige0-5-4-0.gw1.iad8.alter.net (152.63.33.45)  24.612 ms
    tengige0-5-2-0.gw1.iad8.alter.net (152.63.39.2)  24.493 ms
 6  teliasonera-test-gw.customer.alter.net (63.65.76.190)  45.077 ms  94.770 ms  27.457 ms
 7  * * *


When the network is running slow (note the 3 seconds it takes to make the hop from the router to the first verizon-gni.net device):

> traceroute www22.verizon.comtraceroute to e3.g.akamaiedge.net (23.13.144.29), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1)  1.015 ms  0.796 ms  0.698 ms
 2  l100.bltmmd-vfttp-14.verizon-gni.net (72.81.130.1)  3215.652 ms
    g0-5-2-4.bltmmd-lcr-22.verizon-gni.net (130.81.49.2)  2604.465 ms  3744.747 ms
 3  so-6-1-0-0.phil-bb-rtr2.verizon-gni.net (130.81.199.4)  4497.496 ms  1936.037 ms  4111.997 ms
 4  0.xe-3-0-1.xl4.iad8.alter.net (152.63.3.69)  3629.679 ms
    0.xe-3-0-2.xl4.iad8.alter.net (152.63.3.57)  4904.304 ms *
 5  0.ae4.br1.iad8.alter.net (152.63.33.121)  3949.525 ms  4127.460 ms  3847.150 ms
 6  te7-4-10g.ar3.dca3.gblx.net (64.212.107.157)  2395.500 ms  2421.707 ms  820.626 ms
 7  lag17.csr2.dca3.gblx.net (67.16.149.161)  3068.382 ms  3244.508 ms  1251.021 ms
 8  ip-64.214.129.106.gblx.net (64.214.129.106)  333.409 ms  1166.857 ms  674.483 ms
 9  * * *


When there is no connectivity, the trace stops at the router or we are unable to resolve the host name.