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Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
66 posts Page 5 of 7
by ankh » Fri Sep 25, 2020 12:54 pm
Now my Mac is connecting but my wife's Windows box says no Internet.
Rebooted the Rent-a-router, no improvement.
Rebooting the Windows box.
by ankh » Fri Sep 25, 2020 6:32 pm
OK, contacted Support via texting 707-800-4624, as the wait time on a phone call was very long, gave up after half an hour on hold. Text support was quite prompt.
--
Support verified that I had already power cycled the rent-a-router.
Next they told me they could not ping my router from their end.
(I don't know what that implies, presumably it was unresponsive in some way)
so they remotely reset the rent-a-router to its factory configuration.

So far so good since then, several hours now. I'll text them back tomorrow with a report.
by ankh » Sat Sep 26, 2020 8:21 am
So far so good.
by ankh » Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:16 pm
OK, we finally got a hard failure; Sonic's support troubleshot everything (including having me pull the power off the optical interface ONT device and the modem/router -- specifically not using the router power switch); also doing a factory reset with a paper clip; also connecting one of our computers by Ethernet directly to the ONT.

Note to self, when talking to Support on the landline, unplugging the ONT disconnects the call. Oops.

Everything apparently checked out except the router, so they're UPSing me a replacement, due late Thursday sometime.

I was hoping I could intercept a truck somewhere to get a replacement, but nope. Spouse is working from home, so setting up a cell phone as a 'hot spot' to get through the next couple of days.

And -- did I mention this has been an intermittent for quite a while? Lo, I power cycled the router again and for the moment now it's working again, more or less.

Viz:
PING sonic.net (209.204.190.64): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=0 ttl=52 time=7.738 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=7.638 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=2 ttl=52 time=32.176 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=4 ttl=52 time=109.884 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=5 ttl=52 time=7.415 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=6 ttl=52 time=8.549 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=7 ttl=52 time=7.360 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=8 ttl=52 time=7.759 ms
^C
--- sonic.net ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 20.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 7.360/23.565/109.884/33.593 ms
The technically competent inlaw who helped my spouse set up her phone as a hotspot asked why we don't just go out and buy a new router. Well, kind of hard to answer. Our tech support guy had also asked if we happened to have any old router kicking around that we could swap in for the next couple of days, but nope.
by ankh » Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:47 pm
So -- anybody following this?

Is there any explanation for this kind of intermittent malfunction as quoted above:
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=7.638 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=2 ttl=52 time=32.176 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=4 ttl=52 time=109.884 ms
64 bytes from 209.204.190.64: icmp_seq=5 ttl=52 time=7.415 ms

other than an intermittently failing router/modem? I know intermittent failures -- "wounded" semiconductors -- are damnably hard to identify.

Some kind of outside electromagnetic noise perhaps?
by ankh » Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:53 am
Hm. It may nt be just me after all. A Nextdoor thread just popped up about Sonic intermittencies in my North Berkeley neighborhood. I forwarded a pointer to Sonic Support and am posting it here too in case it deserves the atttention of someone at Sonic who might not find out about a neighborhood pattern of intermittents. Does Sonic have a map for locating areawide problems?

Here's the thread:

https://nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=16 ... fGYAE0s%3D
by amayfield » Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:51 am
That link prompts me to log in so I can't actually see the thread. But in general connectivity intermittency can be caused by a lot of different things so it's hard to say if the issues described in that thread are related, I'd urge those folks to reach out to Sonic Support to troubleshoot their connection issues.

Regarding the issues you've been experiencing - are those issues still isolated to the Apple computer, and not present on other devices? Usually in those scenarios I'd focus my troubleshooting efforts on the device having the issue, it's unlikely an issue with the service itself would affect one device and not another.
Andrew M.
Community & Escalations Manager
Sonic
by ankh » Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:50 am
Nope, this week's Support call eliminated the home computers as problem sources and he checked everything from the pole to the ONT, and had me connect a computer directly to the ONT's Ethernet port, which he could see just fine -- leavng only the rent-a-router as the identified problem.

I hope you can look up the notes from the support call under my userid.

We had no Internet for quite a few hours, before it mysteriously recovered later in the day.

I"ve seen electronics intermittently fail in the past and read the term 'wounded' to describe a failure that just changes the threshold at which the semiconductor changes from insulator to conductor, and I know over time those little variations from spec can eventually add up to a hard failure.

Question is, where's the failure. I know when we had the old copper DSL we always got a flurry of problems during and after the first rainof the season. But I don't know if there's any part of the system currently subject to humidity and corrosion. We're just a few blocks from the big phone company edifice on Solano. The last time we had troubles in the DSL era, the tech found corrosion on our closest phone pole, then on the next pole down the block, then traced the trouble eventually back to a failing hardware item in the phone company's building.
by amayfield » Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:57 am
If the issue persists on multiple devices and rebooting the ONT and router doesn't resolve it then replacing the router is a logical troubleshooting step to take. There aren't many things I can think of upstream of the ONT that could cause intermittent connectivity, in most scenarios it either works or it doesn't work.

When you get that replacement router please let us know if that improves things for you.
Andrew M.
Community & Escalations Manager
Sonic
by ankh » Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:22 pm
Thank you Andrew.
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