What is happening with 3G?
themcks's profile

Contributor

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3 Messages

Tuesday, January 21st, 2014 12:04 AM

3g Microcell and Charter Cable

Hi

 

I have had a 3g microcell for over a year.  Suddenly this week the 3g light starts flashing and phones no longer connect.  I have:

 

deavtivate and reactivated too many times to count

factory reset my modem, router, microcell

replaced microcell with new one

opened all ports listed in various posts and att support site

turned cellular data and 3g data off on iphone

used priority set up (modem then 3gMC then router, this is how I am configured now)

 

What ever I try, there is still no connection back to att network.  ATT support says it must be charter cable and charter cable says it is att.  The only port I can not touch is 123 NTP.  I don't know what is hooked up to it, but it is not accessible to me.  However, using the priority config should bypass any port issues...right?

 

Please help.

Professor

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2.2K Messages

10 years ago

Interpreting pingplotter data is somewhat complex and there are many variables that can give you a false indication that something is wrong when it is not.  For example some servers along the way on your trace may assign a low priority to ICMP TTL packets and that will skew your results significantly.

 

That being said, looking at your Pingplotter trace I would say that isn't likely that your problem resides on your end.  It would appear that Charter is having issues along the way to Google.com, most likely at their Sugar Hill, GA servers.

 

I would recommend contacting Charter and describe what you have observed with the testing and request that a tech be sent out to ring out your connection.  Their testing equipment is a lot more robust at detemining where problems reside.

Teacher

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27 Messages

10 years ago

Understood Avedis53 and I'll definitely contact Charter to come out.  Yeah, I took a look at the PingPlotter how-tos and realize too that pin-pointing where an issue is occuring can be difficult since there are so many variables in the connection.

 

I'm going to run it again, along with the VoIP test while plugged directly into my SB6141 so I can bypass and rule out any issues going on inside my LAN.

 

Thanks again and I'll keep you posted once Charter tests my line.

Professor

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2.2K Messages

10 years ago

That is certainly a good idea but like I said, your pingplot doesn't show an issue at your end.  Keep us posted.

Tutor

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5 Messages

10 years ago

How do i get this same issue fix in Illinois.  I have had this going on for 3 weeks now and no resolution from Charter or ATT.  ATT sent a new microcell, Charter claims they "fixed" their issue but I still can not get my microcell working with the Charter issued Netgear router.   I am about to cancel both services and take my business and money to providers that can work together.

 

Tutor

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5 Messages

10 years ago

How do i get this same issue fix in Illinois.  I have had this going on for 3 weeks now and no resolution from Charter or ATT.  ATT sent a new microcell, Charter claims they "fixed" their issue but I still can not get my microcell working with the Charter issued Netgear router.   I am about to cancel both services and take my business and money to providers that can work together.Smiley Sad

 

Tutor

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5 Messages

10 years ago

RailPass, I live in the Edwardsville, IL area and am still not working correctly.  I have had the issue for 3 weeks now.  Please help

Professor

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2.2K Messages

10 years ago

I don't believe Railpass is a regular viewer of this forum so he may not see your message.  You can PM him and see if he responds but I have to ask the question:  What makes you think that Charter's issue in this thread pertains to you?  The problem was in the West Ft. Worth, TX and Waynesville, NC areas.  Perhaps it does involve you but more information is needed from you regarding your problem.

 

I'm assuming that you had no problems until 3 weeks ago and that replacing the Mcell didn't not solve your problem?  That you haven't changed any equipment?  wiring?

 

What is the statis of the lights on the front of the Mcell?  Which are solid green, flashing green, red?

 

You've done a hard reset?  Power cycled your Mcell and router?

 

List out more specifics and what you've done and perhaps we can narrow it down to what the problem might be.

 

 

ACE - Expert

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23.9K Messages

10 years ago

Thanks Avedis53 for stepping in. Been tied up with other problems. To the OP, answer Avedis53's questions and we'll see what we can do. I'd check the Guide as well (link in my sig). There may be something in there useful.

 

And yes, railpass probably doesn't stop by here anymore. He was an engineer for Charter but I think that once the Dallas-Ft. Worth issues were resolved, he moved on. If your issue is related to the same problems that they had, I may be able to email him and ask but there's no guarantee.

Teacher

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27 Messages

10 years ago

OK guys, I did more troubleshooting today and wanted to give you an update.  Here's my latest findings and I now believe Charter is NOT the culprit here as we had orginally thought:

 

- Plugged the MCell straight into my SB6141.  Result: Did numerous test calls and the bi-directional call quality was terrific and crystal clear on all of them.

 

- Then plugged a laptop directly into the SB6141 to perform VoIP and general speed tests.  Result: All tests came in great; especially the VoIP tests as I achieved mostly all-green summaries and very low jitter latency.  For the Internet speed tests, the progress bars in the java apps no longer got stuck and they all completed successfully.  I also did more PingPlotter tests and had practically no lost packet issues.  Round trip times were averaging 22 ms to google.com.  Terrific.

 

- Plugged the MCell back into my Netgear N750 WNDR4300 router and performed test cell calls.  Result: Outbound voice was choppy and garbled again.  Now I'm thinking there's something wrong with my router.

 

- Researched for any known VoIP issues with my model of router.  Result: I found may suggestions to disable the "SIP ALG" setting in the WAN config of the router.  I did that, performed more test cell calls and the outbound voice quality drastically improved.

 

So with all of that being tested, I strongly believe the Charter HSI service is working well for me and that the issue is somewhere within my equipment.  After disabling SIP ALG on the router, MCell call quality seems very good again so far.

 

Now, I have one more component in my LAN that I didn't mention earlier and it's a Vonage V-Adapter since I'm a subscriber.  I have the V-Adapter sitting betwen my modem and the router.  I also tested all of the above with and without the adapter in the mix.  What I found was this... When the adapter is in the mix before my router, speed and VoIP quality deminishes quite a bit and I tend to get the garbled outbound voice again when using the MCell.  Since that V-Adapter is out front of my network edge, all traffic passes through it and for some reason it's degrading the packets causing the latency.  It never did that ever before.  I tried connecting it behind the router, got dial tones but couldn't make or receive any calls through the Vonage service.  I didn't want to start fooling around with port-forwarding so I basically gave up on that.  So at the current time, I've removed the V-Adapter from the whole equation and am not using it until I can get that issue resolved.... Maybe it's now faulty?  Maybe after Charter upgraded to 8-channel bonding a couple of months ago when my issues first started, the V-adapter can't handle the new traffic passing through it?  The modem handles the bonding so I can't see how that would affect the V-adapter's ability to pass the traffic.

 

Sorry for being long-winded but let me know your thoughts about how I disabled SIP ALG to help make the MCell work again and if you have any suggestions regarding the Vonage issue.  I understand that I'm creating scope creep here by introducing a Vonage issue but since it's also a VoIP service running on Charter's HSI, there may be a common denominator at play since that's not working well either.

 

Many thanks again. 

ACE - Expert

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23.9K Messages

10 years ago

I'm not familiar with the SIP ALG setting of your router but all you need, or at least what's required by AT&T is: DHCP enabled, IPSec Passthrough enabled, Fragmented Packets Disabled, MTU = 1492, and the four ports opened all the way to the AT&T servers. The connection needs to be as simple as possible. Ethernet from the MicroCell directly to the gateway (priority connection) or to the router. Nothing inbetween. I don't believe the MicroCell is designed to play nicely with other VoIP services and that seems to be the case if I understand your post correctly that the MC did work once you removed the V-adapter from the setup. The more devices you introduce into your LAN the more you increase your chances of affecting the MicroCell call quality. Anytime a provider upgrades their services (new network boxes, what ever) you may encounter problems with the MicroCell because of the new hardware configs. It's not up to AT&T to ensure that the MicroCell works will other networks after upgrades. It's the networks responsibility and quite frankly, they don't care if it's not their product.

 

I would try to make your MicroCell setup as simple and straightforward as possible and see what happens. Ping and jitter tests are fine but as Avedis53 has pointed out, they are no more than snapshots at a single point in time and really need to be taken over a long period ot time to really asess how your network is truly performing. It sounds like there's more to your network setup than you've indicated previoulsy mentioned so it's difficult to troubleshoot. Keep it simple.

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