erratic fairpoint dsl? [was Re: FYI: Comcast...]

[Lloyd Kvam]

On Fri, 2015-07-17 at 21:59 -0400, Brian St. Pierre wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 9:42 PM, Lloyd Kvam <python at venix.com> wrote:
> 
> > Last month my Fairpoint DSL service became horribly erratic.  The modem
> > reported good DSL connections, but PPPoE just would not stay up.
> > Outages sometimes persisted for days.  After three weeks of grief and
> > many calls to tech support, I reluctantly switched to Comcast.
> >
> 
> I'm glad (?) to hear it wasn't just me. I had three different technicians
> visit, with the last one blaming trouble in my house, though all my
> subsequent internal troubleshooting hasn't turned up anything. (The
> previous two changed various line settings, moved me to a new DSLAM, and
> generally blamed recent "software upgrades" in the CO.)

I kept a browser window focused on the Comtrend DSL status page.

My router is a Netgear 3800 running cerowrt.  I had it log to my server
so that I'd have a history of events.  The pppd messages in syslog
showed the ups and downs along with the authentication attempts:

Jun 18 08:04:20 cerowrt.local pppd[27338]: Plugin rp-pppoe.so loaded.
Jun 18 08:04:20 cerowrt.local pppd[27338]: RP-PPPoE plugin version 3.8p compiled against pppd 2.4.6
Jun 18 08:04:20 cerowrt.local pppd[27338]: pppd 2.4.6 started by root, uid 0
Jun 18 08:04:35 cerowrt.local pppd[27338]: Timeout waiting for PADO packets
Jun 18 08:04:35 cerowrt.local pppd[27338]: Unable to complete PPPoE Discovery
Jun 18 08:04:35 cerowrt.local pppd[27338]: Exit.
(repeats ad infinitum along with other stuff I snipped)

This would happen even when the DSL modem reported a good connection.
Tech support insisted on focusing on my DSL line, but it's only about a
hundred yards to the SLIC (roadside interface cabinet) and, of course,
the DSL modem was reporting a good DSL connection.  Tech support had no
interest in my logs.

> We're out in the boonies, so Comcast isn't an option.

I hope they have tracked down and fixed the problem(s) whatever they may
be.  I left reluctantly.

> Have others been having terrible problems with Fairpoint DSL recently? (At
> the risk of jinxing myself, it's been slightly better over the past 2-3
> weeks.)
> 
> --
> Brian St. Pierre

-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp
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