MTU change after 1/21 outage

[perturbedinsfl]

After yesterdays service outage was resolved for me late last night, I noticed my xbox 360 was unable to connect to xbox live. The error message indicated that a MTU below 1376 was the cause. I checked the RG & the default (1500) was set in the broadband settings, but on the read-only status page it was set to 576. I called support & was told everything was working fine & there was nothing they could do, claiming this setting was an advanced networking setting that would fall under paid support to fix. When pressed on what the negotiated MTU should be between their upstream equipment & the RG the tier rep kept repeating the same 'advanced networking' line
They would not troubleshoot the xbox 360 issue either.

Has anyone who had downtime from the outage noticed a lower MTU after their service was restored? Is the usual effective MTU setting 1500? I can set a lower setting than 576 & the negotiated rate changes to what I set, but it won't go higher.

[Tsukasa117]

Your not the only one I'm having the same problem and there are a couple of threads on XBL of people having the same problem. Hopefully this is an issue that works itself out but if its there crude attempt to force subscribers to get a paid repair service subscription there gonna lose people quick.

[StealthWolf]

yea same thing happening to me here with the exact same settings its been bugging me all morning >.< they better get this fixed!!! im missing valuable call of duty time!!

[lqhnybear]

I'm having the same issue and phone support has over a 30 minute wait. I had to call three times before it connected me and didn't hang up on me. This has been going on at least all day since 10am when I first tried logging into my xbox.

I logged into my gateway to see what's going on and it appears my MTU is locked at 576. Too many issues with ATT. I think it's time to switch all my cell phones/home services to another company.

[Ponzi]

Which model RG do you have? I have the 2WIRE 3800HGV-B, and I'm not having any problem with the MTU setting. It's still at 1500, and I rebooted the RG yesterday. Xbox Live connection is working for me.

[lqhnybear]

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Ponzi wrote:

Which model RG do you have? I have the 2WIRE 3800HGV-B, and I'm not having any problem with the MTU setting. It's still at 1500, and I rebooted the RG yesterday. Xbox Live connection is working for me.

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I have the 3801HGV

Are you sure you're checking in the right place? Go to Settings/Broadband/Status then look at the last line of the Internet details right under MAC Address.

I even tried to ping out with a specified packet size and it failed on all except for 546 or lower. By fail I mean it had to fragment the packet.

[Ponzi]

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lqhnybear wrote:

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Ponzi wrote:

Which model RG do you have? I have the 2WIRE 3800HGV-B, and I'm not having any problem with the MTU setting. It's still at 1500, and I rebooted the RG yesterday. Xbox Live connection is working for me.

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I have the 3801HGV

Are you sure you're checking in the right place? Go to Settings/Broadband/Status then look at the last line of the Internet details right under MAC Address.

I even tried to ping out with a specified packet size and it failed on all except for 546 or lower. By fail I mean it had to fragment the packet.

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Yep, I'm looking in the right place. It's set at 1500.

[uhearse1]

my mtu under mac address is 576 as well, the upstream mtu is still 1500

when i try to connect to xbox it keeps saying mtu error, im in sc

[Ponzi]

Have you guys tried resetting the RG to factory default?

[uhearse1]

whats the point if there is a major outage?

[Oehk]

Also having exact same issue. MTU at 576, cannot connect to XBLA. All other wireless devices in house working fine.

Tried not using wireless also. Tried re-establishing IP etc, rebooting, dancing-in-circles with Router over my head. Nothing changes the fact that the MTU is set to 576.

[lqhnybear]

Ok so here's what's going on. I just got off the phone with Uverse Support and here's what they said, according to the engineers.

"Do to a multi state outtage that has been going on for 24 hours now and to try to reenable Uverse services to some areas they have limited the downstream MTU to 576 to avoid network congestion and to allow connectivity."

This is like being on a dialup connection, it causes all packets above 576 to be fragmented. In my case it has cut my download speeds to 10MBPS or lower and will not allow me to connect to XBox Live do to the MTU setting being under 1364. 1364 is the minimum MTU required for you to be able to connect to XBox Live.

They claim the issue hasd been being worked on by the engineers for 24 hours now and will be resolved by the end of today. Knowing a couple engineers in the Miami area myself that work for ATT, this won't be resolved until at least tomorrow.

P.S. THEY STRONGLY RECOMMEND NOT RESETTING YOUR GATEWAY OR DISCONNECTING THE POWER AS IT MAY LEAVE YOU WITH NO SERVICE DO TO DHCP ISSUES THEY'RE ALSO HAVING.

P.S.S. I reset mine and was lucky I guess. Did a full factory reset before I called just to find out that it'll be fixed when some engineer sets the MTU for everyone back to 1500.

[uhearse1]

looks like we'll be playing campaign for another day or so -___-

[Ponzi]

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uhearse1 wrote:

looks like we'll be playing campaign for another day or so -___-

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Or maybe this is a good opportunity to read a book! (I'll be playing BF3 though.)

[Oehk]

Thanks, this sounds most likely why were all seeing 576. Of course support jumps the gun and refers all questions to the PAID tech support line.

[lqhnybear]

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Ponzi wrote:

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uhearse1 wrote:

looks like we'll be playing campaign for another day or so -___-

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Or maybe this is a good opportunity to read a book! (I'll be playing BF3 though.)

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I'll be playing Hawken (www.playhawken.com) on my computer. MECHWARRIOR LIVES!!! lol

[uhearse1]

i'm going to try that game looks pretty cool!

[andrew1919]

I use my xbox as a uverse receiver and I can't sign into Xbox live, so no tv tonight either. 

Wouldn't lowering the MTU actually increase network congestion? Lower MTU = more network overhead = more load on the system. 

On the other hand... This "outage" is preventing a lot of people from watching Netflix via Xbox Live.  That's a great way to reduce congestion.

[perturbedinsfl]

I'm not surprised this information didn't filter its way up to the T1 & T2 techs.  Outages I can deal with, people make mistakes & are human, and hardware fails.  Things break, sometimes spectacularly, regardless of how much redundancy you build into systems.  It is inevitable.  

A lack of timely updates, support staff being kept in the dark about outages, and bad flow of information through the different silos of an organization like AT&T (operations, support/customer care) however is not excusible.  When the engineers made the decision to bring the service back up but in a degraded state that information should have been made available to both support representatives & customers directly.  AT&T Uverse needs a network status page.

If something is broken, keep me up to date on it.  Don't try and convince me that it is a problem on my end when things were working fine before they broke and later came back up, and don't insult your customers by suggesting they pay for support in these situations.  

[lqhnybear]

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andrew1919 wrote:

I use my xbox as a uverse receiver and I can't sign into Xbox live, so no tv tonight either. 

Wouldn't lowering the MTU actually increase network congestion? Lower MTU = more network overhead = more load on the system. 

On the other hand... This "outage" is preventing a lot of people from watching Netflix via Xbox Live.  That's a great way to reduce congestion.

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Technically lowering the MTU should technically lower the congestion by sending more frequent smaller packets. I don't think it really makes that big of a difference though.

[perturbedinsfl]

Kudos to Microsoft for having  a status  page with an update on this issue, even though they didn't cause it.  AT&T should take notes on how to handle an outage.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live-status

1/22/2013 5:46:08 PM PST:

Are you having problems connecting to Xbox LIVE and do you have AT&T U-verse internet?  We got your back. AT&T is on the phone and we’re figuring this one out. We appreciate your patience and don’t forget to check back in half an hour for an update.

[abbeldydoo]

I was having the MTU problem and getting the run around.Was in at least three seperate chats if not four and was told to call the paid support people with my problem without being told you had to pay them.i declined the offer of 15 dollars a month for paid support i called Xbox live and was told they screwed thing sup with MTU by updating after the outage.Nice job ATT!Another great feather in the hat of their customer support team.

[rsecor]

Unfortunately that message was put up on xbox.com about an hour and half (about) minutes into my phone call that started with AT&T.

After the first 40 or so minutes someone in India (?) for AT&T technical support decided my Internet was fine and sent me over to Xbox Support (he actually transferred me) and that was after he said, "I will have to get you to a Xbox specialist."  So AT&T's Xbox specialists are actally Xbox's own support staff... (cannot put a three letter acronym that starts with "W" and ends with "T" here as per AT&T)!

I ended up being transfered to Xbox Billing.  They were nice enough to transfer me to Xbox support, where I waited for another 40 minutes (total time at that point -- an hour and fourty-five minutes).  Got a Xbox support technician on the phone and he knew about the problem, had me give him some information and then told me there is a post on xbox.com... this was 30 minutes after the post showed up at this point.

Fun.

AT&T, stop messing with MTUs.

Sidenote: this is also effecting many other parts of my online life :/

[lqhnybear]

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perturbedinsfl wrote:

Kudos to Microsoft for having  a status  page with an update on this issue, even though they didn't cause it.  AT&T should take notes on how to handle an outage.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live-status

1/22/2013 5:46:08 PM PST:

Are you having problems connecting to Xbox LIVE and do you have AT&T U-verse internet?  We got your back. AT&T is on the phone and we’re figuring this one out. We appreciate your patience and don’t forget to check back in half an hour for an update.

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Yeah right after I posted my post about the MTU's on the Xbox forums Microsoft put this up. You're right though. ATT could take a lesson from them and actually update their customers in a easy to follow fashion.

[acwalters]

After 4 hours of messing with IP's, DNS, TCP, UPD, STUPID, and any other acronym, I finally found this forum. Yay me.

[987654321!!!]

yes !!! there is a nation wide outage belive me i have it from a very good source.my sytems went down last night at 3 am and this morning the internet was so laggy i couldnt conect to certain devices and after numerous attemts at a answer as to why i have given up on ever getting any sort of truth about this from att i assume this is a update gone horrible wrong but im sure we'll never know my only advice on this would be in the future they try these updates in one area before they do the whole country!anyway ill give them today but if its not fixed by the morning ill assume they dont respect my needs enuff to keep my buisness.

[LooGT]

I am in North Atlanta GA and just got off the phone with a very good service rep who is having a long, difficult day.

First, why do I need to tell them my account number after I've told the machine???

He said service is not fully restored yet and I infer from this that they lowered the MTU setting to restore internet and TV service for the majority of subsuscribers (damage control).  He did not know when it will be resolved.

Don't believe the "Advanced support"; "We don't support XBox live issues"; "It will be resolved in 24 hours" lines because they don't know!

I'm wondering if there was a massive denial of service attack at this point...

But of course, no one can confirm or ever would.

The only thing you can do is ask for a credit.

It seems they have empowered the reps to first offer $15 and up to $20 for the inconvenience.

So call support (I used 1800-288-2020), BE POLITE but ASSERTIVE, and ask for help changing the MTU setting back to 1500.

This of course is not possible, so then ask for your $20 credit and play the campaign .

I work in SAAS, and when we can't give the reps the information they need (resolution date) it makes their job VERY DIFFICULT.

Let's all hope this gets resolved soon.

PS, I need to add that Uverse is the best internet service I've ever had and this is the first issue that had impacted me directly for more than 24 hours.

[jrookie007]

Like most of you, I got the run around from 4 different reps, and received 4 different reasons as to why I was not able to increase my MTU. I too was trying to get into some "Team Deathmatch" for an afternoon cool down from school.  One gentleman representative  suggested that I reset my modem since I had exhausted every other option.  Well, I did, and immediately lost my internet connectibility.  I was given a $10 credit, which at the time thought was a nice gesture, until I read the post about people receiving the $20 credit!!!  HaHa.  

Ok, now my issue is trying to recover the damage I have caused by resetting my modem.  Is there a procedurel that anyone knows of that I am not doing to get my internet back up?  not to get back onto my xbox, but just to use the internet on my Mac?  Customer service can only offer me the 800 number for the "Advanced Tech Team" that is at my disposal, with fees to apply to service rendured!  

[lqhnybear]

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jrookie007 wrote:

Is there a procedurel that anyone knows of that I am not doing to get my internet back up?

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Unfortunately until they have fixed the issues with the DHCP servers you're not going to be able to resolve a new ip address and therefore are stuck offline. I'm shocked the rep told you to reset. In my earlier post as I said they strongly recommended not resetting. I'd call back and ask for a bigger credit.

[jrookie007]

In hind sight, definately should not have reset.  I had no idea that it was a nation wide shortage and the reps (all four of them) never even mentioned there being such.  All of this was taking place between midnight and 2.  The one rep who suggested the reset even told me that if he had access to it, that he would reset it for me, but that it was not something that he could do from his end, and of course there was no ETA of a fix.