Azores ONT troubles

[danswick]

Wow, thanks for the reply. That does sound exactly like my situation. The intermittent nature of the issue really makes it difficult to troubleshoot.

Interestingly, I think we can put a problematic Ubiquiti firmware update in the "tentatively ruled out" column. My UDM-base model is on a completely different firmware update schedule than the UDM-SE (I know way more about UI's firmware update schedule than I'd ever hoped to) and I've tested both the stable and early-release channel with no joy.

If you need a temporary solution while keeping your network topology intact, you might try putting another router between your UDM-SE and the ONT. I would like to try an unmanaged switch as well, but don't have one on-hand at the moment.

[js9erfan]

As a test have either of you tried forcing the speed/duplex on the UDM WAN interface to match the ONT? I mention this since placing a switch between the router and ONT seems to suggest a workaround for a WAN lease renewal/negotiation issue. I've seen similar problems on some pfSense boxes and forcing the speed/duplex has resolved those periodic renewal failures on WAN... Perhaps it may work in your case.

[danswick]

I have tried forcing the WAN speed setting on my UDM, yeah. Unfortunately, it didn't have any effect.

[ltetone]

I have tried the same on the WAN as well with no luck. I've also messed with setting custom ARP timeouts to combat things.

New ONT failed to fix the issue. danswick shared the same solution to me which was to plug a router or switch in between the ONT and the UDM router. This makes zero sense to me, however it completely eliminated the issue. This seems to clearly be an issue with Ubiquiti hardware and some ONT/firmware combinations. I'm working with them on a solution, but this sort of thing seems to have been an ongoing issue with their hardware for years. I'm frankly disappointed. While practically no one has a hosue of 10g capable connections, I do have several 2.5g nic equipped pieces of hardware and a few rooms hardwired in with cat6a to future proof things, and currently I have this throttling inexpensive switch keeping the internet up.

Another sad side effect is that the new ONT seems to be delivering much slower upload speeds than my previous :/ I would get 6500 do on average and 3500up, but now it's about 800up.

[danswick]

It's especially weird that things were working fine for both of us until the first week of December.

Re: Ubiquiti support, I think I've reached the end of the standard troubleshooting back-and-forth with them and they say they're passing my case on to some other team. We'll see.

[artakamoose]

Ugh. I was thinking of getting a UDM-Pro/SE, but this gives me pause now. Ubiquiti's firmware has been a hot mess the last couple of years. The UDM series has been especially bad. The firmware was barely in a beta state when they released the hardware. Then there's the fact the UDM-SE uses completely different firmware from the UDM-Pro, which seems crazy.

[artakamoose]

Are you both using Ubiquiti's SFP+ to RJ-45 module? If so, it might be worth trying a different module.

Others having random disconnection issues:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comme ... 0g_issues/

Someone with a UDMP using a QSFPTEK module:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comme ... g_at_25gb/

The relevant QSFPTEK modules (it looks like the generic ones work with UI):
https://www.qsfptek.com/c/10g-16g-trans ... 0g-16g-sfp

Edit:
Here are the Wiitek modules that are highly rated:
https://www.amazon.com/Wiitek-10GBase-T ... geNumber=1

[danswick]

Mine is just the base UDM and doesn't support SFP+, unfortunately. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

For now, I've replaced the go-between router with an unmanaged switch and things seem just as stable as the double router situation. Sounds like these SFP+ modules would do the same job.

[danswick]

I was just trawling through some recent ubiquiti firmware threads and noticed this comment that describes a very familiar situation:

don't know if it's related, but some ISP CPE and downstream hops don't like something about UDMP's. I posted on here a few months back about how my WAN would disconnect like clockwork about every 4 hours for 10-15 minutes or so before reconnecting. I also had packet loss and several periods of low latency reported throughout the day (little yellow slices on my internet quality bar). After several posts and things tried here and with my ISP, my ISP mentioned that with some gateway gear including SonicWall, they have to manually create an ARP table entry with your MAC address on their side to keep the WAN connection stable. Once they tried that for my UDMP, my connection has been rock-stable ever since. I don't know if the blame likes in the ISP equipment, or if Ubiquity and SonicWall are doing something slightly "out of spec" but for those of you with recurring WAN connectivity issues, you might look into it. The downside is if my MAC ever changes, my WAN will be broken until my ISP can change it.

Not sure if this is applicable at all, but maybe something to test out.

[danswick]

Heard back from Ubiquity's next tier of support today. Their recommendation was to set my ARP cache timeout to 15 seconds. I went ahead and followed their advice after removing the switch that was between my router and the ONT. It's been about 4 hours of steady service so far. We'll keep monitoring.