Azores ONT troubles

Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
24 posts Page 1 of 3
by danswick » Wed Dec 21, 2022 6:49 pm
I feel lucky to have had Sonic's 10G fiber at home for the last 6 months or so. It's been completely rock-solid until 12/5, at which point any device connected to my ONT would lose its IP address intermittently for no discernible reason. I've tried all the router/ONT reboot combos, several different ethernet cables, factory reset my router and rebuilt everything from scratch, directly connected both a macOS and windows laptop, and even went so far as to run an extension cord to the opposite corner of the house to rule out power issues. Every time, things go right back to the same frustrating loop: healthy connection for 15-30 minutes, then IP address is dropped and it could take anywhere from a few seconds to multiple hours before things get connected again. Even when I connect a computer directly to the ONT, the same intermittent connection cycle usually kicks in.

Early this week, a Sonic tech came out and tested the ONT. It looked to be reporting low power, so we swapped it for a new one, which was reporting healthy. It looked great until about 10 minutes after the tech left, at which point it went right back into its intermittent disconnection cycle all over again. The Sonic tech also inspected the fiber going into the building and even replaced some connectors for good measure. A remote support representative told me that they saw my router and my laptop (we tested both) repeatedly cycling through the process of requesting an IP address, getting one, then dropping it and requesting another one.

The weirdest part of this whole situation is that *sometimes*, for reasons I can't fathom, I'll get a day or multiple days of totally rock-solid connection. Then it will either go out completely for an extended period, or go back to its cycle of issuing and dropping IP addresses every 15-20 minutes. I've asked multiple Sonic folks about this and no one has seen anything obvious.

My question to the forum is: has anyone else seen this type of behavior with the newer Azores-branded ONT boxes and do you know of any other troubleshooting steps I could try? Sonic would like to send a tech out to physically inspect the latest ONT, but we have an active COVID case in my household and it may be another week before it's even possible to get something scheduled (I 100% understand and respect that policy from Sonic. Gotta keep folks safe). Unfortunately, two of us work full-time remote and are just burning through our PTO and cobbling together sketchy hotspot bandwidth trying to make things work and I'm starting to get a little desperate, hence the call out to forum members.

Thanks
by brandonc » Thu Dec 22, 2022 11:33 am
Hi Dan,

I'm sorry that you've been running into DHCP issues with the ONT and that we haven't been able to immediately fix it due to COVID. I hope that you both get well soon.

Out Network Engineering team believes that the issue was caused by a corrupt firmware bank that affected some our ONT's from what we saw. They would like to replace the ONT once again and that should fix the issue.

Since we aren't able to dispatch a technician inside the home to perform the replacement, we would like to try arranging a technician to do a non-contact drop-off for the new ONT, then having yourself hook it up to try and get this fixed faster.

If this would be something you'd be willing to try, please let me know. I've sent you a direct email with my phone number to call directly or if you prefer to reply to the email, it'll go straight to me as well.

I hope we can get this fixed soon!

Kind regards,
Brandon C.
Community and Escalations
Sonic
by danswick » Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:43 pm
Thanks so much for the reply, Brandon. A no-contact drop-off sounds like a very reasonable idea to me. I've replied to you over email to coordinate.
by ltetone » Sun Dec 25, 2022 10:07 pm
I’ve had this exact same issue starting around the very same timeframe at the beginning of December. I’ve had many phone calls where I’m told my ONT looks fine on sonics end, yet I’m getting brownouts on my end. Just like you described, sometimes it’s super frequent and other times a day or two will pass with no issues. Like you I’ve tried different cables and factory resetting my router.

I’m pulling my hair out here. Everything was totally fine until the start of the month. It’s tiring calling in repeatedly and getting nowhere…
by danswick » Tue Dec 27, 2022 12:35 pm
ltetone, what kind of router are you using? A couple of updates on my issue:

1. Sonic replace my ONT again (this is my 3rd). This one was stable for several hours while connected directly to a computer via ethernet. However, behavior with my router (a unifi dream machine base model) didn't improve at all and seemed to take even longer to recover.
2. I bought a cheap tp-link wireless router just to keep us online. It's been rock-solid for 4 days now.

Ubiquiti support have been less than helpful so far, mostly asking me to repeat troubleshooting steps that I've already detailed in my service ticket :roll: . Hoping to get the router RMA'd or something but am not holding out much hope.
by dane » Tue Dec 27, 2022 1:58 pm
Well that’s an interesting development.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by danswick » Tue Dec 27, 2022 2:18 pm
I would be curious what kinds of firmware updates or other upgrades happened at the beginning of the month. My issues seemed to begin pretty much exactly when this maintenance occurred. The other place I've seen very similar reports about Ubiquiti hardware just refusing to play nice with modems/ONTs is on the Starlink subreddit. The solution over there is always to add an unmanaged switch between the Starlink modem and the UI appliance (issue seems limited to UDM and UDM-pro). I tried that but am now realizing that the switch I used is also UI hardware, which maybe also has the same problem? Tonight I might try putting my UDM behind the temporary TP-link router to see what happens.

Ubiquiti really seem to be struggling with firmware updates lately. I hopped over to their early access firmware channel at their support team's urging, but they've since pulled that firmware and it's unclear if/when they'll provide another update.
by danswick » Wed Dec 28, 2022 8:45 am
I tried putting my UDM behind the TP-Link router yesterday and it's been rock solid for about 15 hours so far. I'm still talking to the Ubiquiti folks, but this does suggest that the UDM is not, in fact, broken and that there's some other mysterious incompatibility between the ONT and my UDM.
by danswick » Wed Dec 28, 2022 8:48 am
Weirdly, I got a very brief disconnect notice from the UDM right after I posted my previous update. I checked the UDM's system logs and it turns out it had a couple of brief disconnects overnight. With the exception of this most recent disconnection, none were long enough to trigger any notifications from any of the devices on my network or to show up as an unhealthy internet connection in the Unifi dashboard, so I hadn't noticed them. Could it be that there are still disconnections happening at the ONT, but that the TP-Link just recovers much more quickly?

I'm very open to other troubleshooting suggestions. I've shared all of this info with the Ubiquiti support team as well.
by ltetone » Wed Dec 28, 2022 11:35 am
I am on Ubiquiti hardware as well (UDM-SE). It had worked fine until 12/5, so something clearly is going on here with them and Sonics ONTs. We had a new ONT installed, so we'll see if that does anything.

Like you I also have a support ticket as well in with them. My internet was cutting out whether it was on the Unifi network or plugged directly into devices, however durations outages were small when not passing through the UDM and much longer when going through the UDM
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