Latency and high packet loss with Technicolor router

Help & Support
#1

Greetings,

I noticed some unusual behaviour with the supplied Technicolor router. So I went to investigate. I use wireless but also have a switch attached and a few devices connected over Ethernet for a home network.

I ran a ping from my laptop over WiFi to a number of these devices on my LAN. After sending 300 packets to each, I noted an average 7%-9% packet loss.

I then tried a ping with an external host. After 300 packets sent to the BBC website, ping recorded 5% packets lost.

In order to isolate the issue I swapped the Technicolour router for a old spare router I have. Running the same tests in the same scenario yielded 0% packet loss. However I couldn’t test over the WAN because this router requires an external modem for Internet access, such I don’t have.

With that being said, has anyone else noticed similar performance problems with the Technicolor router? If necessary, would it be possible to arrange a replacement? High packet loss isn’t ideal for a number of operations I run on my network: SSH, backup, video streaming. I especially notice the delay when using SSH locally. I also sometimes see odd errors in Firefox like: ‘The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because an error in the data transmission was detected.’ which soundly supports my packet loss observations.

Regards,

R.T.G.

#2

Welcome to the Cuckoo Community & Flock !!! @ReleaseTheGeese :smiley: :hatched_chick:

While I’d personally like to think it wasn’t the Modem/Router itself there’s a Few Models That Cuckoo have out in the wild at the moment So Firstly it’s always best to find out the Model Of The Technicolor Router Your Using from the bottom of the unit itself.

Secondly you mentioned the WAN Port testing on your other router…now for this depending on the router model you have received from Cuckoo you can change its mode so that it acts as a Pure Modem Only with no routing functions (you just have to disable the wireless broadcasting afterwards)

You can read how to do this here written by Cuckoo’s First Guide Writer & Badge Holder @ChrisR5

Now I will admit I do see quite a lot of Latency issues when running speed tests and these can go up into the 1000’s when data is loaded but this could actually be network congestion however my Main Pings haven’t really crept over 15ms some as low as 6ms.

I used to have Terrible Packet Loss like your describing with other providers but every area is different.

What’s the status of your connection under SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) on your upload/download screen and are there many errors accumulating.

@Oliver or @Becca can run a line check if needed as it could be an issue on the network side but they would need you to email in to hello@cuckoo.co from your account email address to verify your account.

#3

@PhantomR1982 thanks for the kind welcome and the swift reply, hopefully there’s room for a few (mostly) well-behaved geese in the flock!

The exact router model is a TG589vac v2.

Now curiously I ran the same ping test from my desktop using Ethernet and it showed none of these issues. I may have prematurely laid blame on the Technicolour. My suspicions is it could be the laptop I previously used for testing is confused by 5Ghz WiFi. (This laptop also runs NetBSD and uses a cheapo wifi dongle, either could be the problem, though as said before it had no packet loss with the spare router). Since the old router provided only 2.4 Ghz, it may only be a case of telling it to prefer 2.4GHz for the Technicolor in some config file. What can I say, I have a whole herd of Unixen…

Regarding Pure Modem, SNR and a possible line check, I’ll look at these other options over the weekend and get in touch with how it goes.

#4

Hiya @ReleaseTheGeese

Your Welcome I Always Greet Community Users with the respect they deserve something a lot of Bigger ISP’S have forgotten these days.

2.4GHZ as your probably aware (or may have seen on a previous reply I may have made) is a personal favourite frequency of mine and I prefer this over 5GHZ as it’s more compatible and the way the normal router Cuckoo supply the two channels are enabled by default however through the routers web interface under 192.168.1.1 you can disable the 5GHZ channel and just run with the 2.4ghz but at a reduced speed up to 150mbps Wireless N max speed but compatible with wireless B/G device standards.

The Technicolor router is supposed to detect your older devices and pair/steer them to the correct band but can sometime encounter issues on older devices under a single Wireless name.

So you can always try a channel split and then run your tests again while this maybe a pain it would provide proof if the router is causing the issue or the WiFi frequency also you can disable the 2.4Ghz channel and just run a test on a compatible 5GHZ device if you have one that supports Wireless AC.

If you need any pointers,just drop a post but support maybe limited over the weekend compared to weekday responses by the team and would require emailing in on the above email address.

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#5

Sir, I thank you very much. Switching to 2.4Ghz only has solved the problem. The random packet drops would point to software issues with the drivers, but 5GHz isn’t a necessity so I’m quite happy with this solution. 2.4Ghz is now my favourite frequency too!

Though, as they had been requested, here are some stats from my router in case they are in any way abnormal:

Line Attenuation
UP: 4.5, 21.2, 32.2 dB
DOWN: 12.4, 27.5, 40.9 dB
Noise Margin
UP: 9.1 dB
DOWN: 17.5 dB

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