2 Adsl Accounts On 1 Line

[solent01]

I upgraded from Indy to Premier at the beginning of this month, and although I am happy with the speed stability for P2P, I have found that the line or rather the protocol drops out every hour or so, this was sometimes a problem with Indy also but not as often.

I have checked the ADSL Statistic and find them to be within normal levels, and I only live about 2 km from the exchange.

Down Up

SNR Margin (dB): 28.6 24.0

Attenuation (dB): 42.0 22.0

Output Power (dBm): 18.7 12.0

Attainable Rate (Kbps):5408 1280

Rate (Kbps): 1024 512

So thought it was just TT&T being their usual <deleted> selves.

However, I obtained a new email to use with this new account, and when I opened outlook to configure the new email for my Premier account, I realised I had left the old email account for "Indy" activated, and it was still receiving mail, so I went into my router (wireless TP-Link) and re-entered the Indy account details that I had deleted from it some 2 weeks ago, to find that my Indy account is still active on my line, so I have an Indy and a Premier account active on the same line, but my router only has the account details to use one (reconfigured again to use Premier).

But this makes me question whether the protocol on the line keeps dropping because two accounts are active on it or not (even though my router only knows/has been configured for one of them), I kind of think it should not make any differance to the connection, but I am certainly no expert on this, so ask the question here........

Edited March 14, 2008 by solent01

[Guest Reimar]

You can use one ADSL on the same line at the same time only. But it's possible to download the e-mails from different accounts at the same time. This possible because you use the active ADSL connection to connect to a website, while even the E-Mail accounts are accesses vis the Internet and it doesn't matter which ISP-Account you use to connect to the Storage Server, here the E-Mail Server.

But this makes me question whether the protocol on the line keeps dropping because two accounts are active on it or not (even though my router only knows/has been configured for one of them), I kind of think it should not make any differance to the connection, but I am certainly no expert on this, so ask the question here........

Let bsay it on this way, it's not the protocol which crashed the cennection at the moment you want to run 2 different ISP accounts on the same line, it's the signal. At the same moment as 2 diffent ISP ADSL Accounts are connected on the same line, they mixed up and crashed because they can't run together. That is the easiest understandable explanation even if not 100% correct.

Cheers.

[solent01]

Think you misunderstand me a little Reimar, I am not trying to use 2 accounts on one line, in fact I should only have one account as I upgraded, but I do have two accounts on one line, one Indy and one Premier, but my router is only configured for one of them, the Premier, my router does not have any config info for the old Indy account, I deleted it. I was wondering whether the two accounts are clashing and making the line drop, even though my router is only using the one account.

Edited March 14, 2008 by solent01

[Kyosuken]

Nope, TT&T would have disabled your previous account anyway. Besides have 2 account would do nothing to your line, the account isn't necessarily tied to your phone line (in the sense, if you go to someone else home that uses TT&T (and have adsl... ) you "may" be able to use your account on this line).

What is possible though is that by upgrading your account they switched you to another dslam to fit the ratio 1/20 for premier, and your connectivity may be bad. You have to call TT&T so they can see if something is wrong on your line

[lomatopo]

It sounds as though they forgot to delete your previous account/records. Not unusual and not a huge deal as you could only use one at any time. This has nothing to do with your current service interruptions. Provided all is well with your CPE (modem/router, etc.) you need to look at the inside and outside wiring. One need only look up at the wiring here and be amazed that DSL even works! In my neighborhood various people are up on the poles just about every day; my uplink speed drops occasionally due to cable plant issues.

Keep some stats then ask the provider to look into the interruptions.

Also what make/model modem/router? Is it USB (on the PC side)?

[solent01]

Kyosuken, I thought they would have disabled it also, but yesterday, I was able to gain internet access via my old Indy account, as stated in my above post.

Lomatopo, I have a Wireless TP-LINK TD-W8920G 4 port Router, which connects via my network port, I have checked the stats and settings etc etc, everything looks fine.

Guess I will phone TT&T today, but find them totally useless

Edited March 15, 2008 by solent01

[Prasert]

You got a new login name and password for your new account. Use the new one.

Technical background:

It looks like an email address, but it means something very different; the loginname is built up as follows:

account - delimiter - realm

the delimiter is usually a @ sign

What happens when your router logs in:

The ADSL line is enabled and the router starts to build up a ppp connection. To do that, it sends the login name and the password.

The DSLAM is a simple stupid box, that simply bridges everything to the closest router. This router doesn't care about the login name, but just looks at the realm (which is everything after the @ sign). Based on the realm, it sends your ppp request to a specific router (which can be located *anywhere* on the internet!). This is done through a L2TP tunnel.

Finally, the last router checks your login name and password (usually with a radius server) and if everything is okay, it will send you an IP address and the ppp session is built up, you have a working internet connection.

The line data you copied from your router shows the physical line quality between your CPE and the DSLAM. And those values are good. However, what you can't see is everything between the DSLAM and the last router in the description above. So it can happen that the endpoint for the 'indy' package is perfectly up and running, but the endpoint for the 'premium' package is down for some reason.

So you still have exactly the same adsl connection, by using a different login, a different endpoint is choosen, with different speeds / contention ratios (which are configured per-endpoint by the ISP).

[dsys]

" I have found that the line or rather the protocol drops out every hour or so, this was sometimes a problem with Indy also but not as often"

Just out of interest what protocol? How are you measuring/noticing this?

[solent01]

Thanks Prasert, that makes sense.

dsys, this may get a little long winded, so I will try to keep it brief, when I first turn on my computer and go online, everything is fine, I can run utorrent (five or six torrents running avg.down of 100KB/s avg.up 35KB/s) at the same time as browsing and still maintain fast browser refresh rates etc. After about an hour all the torrent trackers time out, but the torrents themselves are still running and I am still shown as being "connectable" (of course torrent trackers do time out I know, but not all of them on the hour every hour), and when browsing sites start to not load, and I have to hit refresh/update to get the page to load, same times refresh 2 or 3 times before it reloads. So I then open the router interface and check the line status which says "ppp failed"...... although I still have a line because my torrents are still running, if I close my browser and utorrent, then reset the router, everything is ok again for about an hour then it happens again.

[Prasert]

Thanks Prasert, that makes sense.

dsys, this may get a little long winded, so I will try to keep it brief, when I first turn on my computer and go online, everything is fine, I can run utorrent (five or six torrents running avg.down of 100KB/s avg.up 35KB/s) at the same time as browsing and still maintain fast browser refresh rates etc. After about an hour all the torrent trackers time out, but the torrents themselves are still running and I am still shown as being "connectable" (of course torrent trackers do time out I know, but not all of them on the hour every hour), and when browsing sites start to not load, and I have to hit refresh/update to get the page to load, same times refresh 2 or 3 times before it reloads. So I then open the router interface and check the line status which says "ppp failed"...... although I still have a line because my torrents are still running, if I close my browser and utorrent, then reset the router, everything is ok again for about an hour then it happens again.

It's probably your router that can't keep up any more. If you pick 5 or 6 popular torrents, your computer starts connecting to quite a large amount of other computers. Even if you limit the amount of concurrent connections per torrent to 200, that's still 1000 connections to handle for the router. And handling means address translation, routing and switching packets.

bittorrent packets are usually small, around 256kB, leading to a much higher packet-per-second rate than for ordinary websurfing with 10 computers at the same time.

so..........memory full, processor usage 100% and it seems like your ISP is the problem....

[solent01]

Again thanks Prasert, I've never had a problem with memory or processor before using utorrent (thats why I like utorrent, very small footprint), sometimes when using my old Indy account I got speeds upto 250KB/s down and 35KB/s up, and steady for maybe 6 hours with these speeds running multiple torrents yet the trackers mostly stayed online and refreshed (didn't happen very often though, but when it did my pc managed with no problems). But since then the standard router that came from TT&T broke, so I purchased the TP-LINK, then a few days later my upgrade was configured so I stopped using Indy.

I will go with you that it could be the router and/or ISP, even though I now run with premier, TT&T are still a Thai ISP, you know what I mean

A little niffed if it is the Router though, as I purchased a top end model with Torrents and the number of connections it would need to handle in mind, also went wireless, so I can network my sons pc to mine and "blast" each other to our hearts content.

Edited March 15, 2008 by solent01

[Prasert]

I was talking about the memory and processor usage of your router, not your computer.

We have been testing several adsl routers over the last weeks, especially with torrent traffic (since that's what everybody does at home, internet cafe's is surfing-only and any router can handle that).

By far, the worst router ever is the little white box that TOT supplies (Hinet DB120). This thing can be crashed within 60 seconds. We tried some more boxes (the cheap stuff from Pantip) and the performance varies from not-bad to $@#%.

Linksys does a fair job, Zyxel even better. 3Com is good, but more expensive. Haven't tested TPLink.

[solent01]

oh....ok then haha, agree with Zyxel, that was what I got from TT&T the "Prestige 660R-T1" seemed to handle torrents pretty well. Maybe when/if you test the TP-LINK you could post your findings, I would be interested to find out which router comes out on top for torrents.

[jstumbo]

could also be a windows xp/vista issue that only allows a certain amount of half open connections at a time. I have issues sometimes when I am on a really good connection because my bittorrent flys, and it reaches the max number, then utorrent cannot connect to the trackers, and my browser does not work. I have to reboot, or close utorrent for a little while and then it will start to connect again. When I am on a not so good network, I do not have this issue because it cannot make too many connections.

There is a patch for windows xp and vista, but I have never been able to get the one for vista to work for me.

[solent01]

jstumbo, I already have a patched TCP/IP stack for half open connections, I always patch to 100, and I setup utorrent to run with 50, thanks anyway

[lomatopo]

Based on the details you're dropping as the thread progresses it sounds like you've got some sort of issues with uTorrent and/or your CPE. Do you have any issues when you terminate all BT and P2P applications? Maybe swap in a different CPE, like the one you had before which worked well? Based on the scant details you've provided to date it just doesn't sound like a ISP or cable plant issue.

Check out the uTorrent FAQ page; lots and lots of issues, some with resolution, documented there. Have you set a "Global Maximum Number of Connections" in uTorrent? Also Google your router model and torrent to see if there are known issues and potential fixes.

[solent01]

Following on from Prasert's feedback, this morning I dropped the most active torrents, so now utorrent is running 4 torrents with an avg.down 50KB/s and an avg.up of 20KB/s and avg.peers of 9, ang.seeders of 17.

My connection has been stable all morning, so it deos point to the Router crashing, rather than a problem with TT&T.

@lomatopo, don't think a problem with utorrent, but the router I now use, the only things that have changed recently is the Router and the upgrade to Premier, the utorrent settings have not changed and when using my old router I could run far more torrents/connections (and sometimes at far greater speeds). Yes global is set to 400 (I was no where near this limit with my original number of 6 active torrents).

I searched for info regarding my current Router before I brought it, it received good reviews......

In the next few days I shall be in the city, so I will buy a new Router that has been recommended to me by Prasert, and test that out, I'm 95% sure it is a problem with my router, which I was over looking as not being the problem, and pointing my finger at TT&T's connection.

Edited March 16, 2008 by solent01

[damole]

I searched for info regarding my current Router before I brought it, it received good reviews......

In the next few days I shall be in the city, so I will buy a new Router that has been recommended to me by Prasert, and test that out, I'm 95% sure it is a problem with my router, which I was over looking as not being the problem, and pointing my finger at TT&T's connection.

I have the TPLink TD-W8910G and I've found it pretty reliable, sometimes web browsing gets a little slow if I allow Azuereus too much bandwidth but quitting Azuerues is usually enough to get things going again. I don't think it's ever dropped the connection as far as I can remember and I've been using it for 3 months on first Indy and now Premier.

As for router recommendations I've heard the Thompson Speedtouch get very good user reviews. I tried to get one here at HardwareHouse in Chiang Mai but failed and so decided to give the upstart TPLink a try instead of the more well known Zyxel.

Routertech is a great site for infomation and help about networking stuff.

[solent01]

Thanks for the link damole

[lomatopo]

solent01's CPE (router) appears to be robust enough to handle above average BT activities. Personally I'd do a bit of research on both the CPE and uTorrent to see if something is easily adjusted, or currently mis-adjusted, or perhaps solved with a firmware upgrade for the CPE. The uTorrent FAQ and forums pages have a lot of detail re: similar issues.

I'd probably drop the max. connections to 200 or 250, run a max. of say 8 torrents, and limit uTorrent usage to 50% (about 50 kilo-BYTES/sec in the solent01's case) when trying to use the ADSL connection for web-browsing. You can crank it back up when you are not using the PC. It's probably something simple, and by now you've probably jiggered a lot of settings; maybe reset the router (should be a pin-sized push-button somewhere) and re-configure. Make sure you've got all UPnP, firewalls, port forwarding stuff in synch.

I tried that TCP patch and was shocked that my system seemed slow to a stand-still, and hang for 5 sec. with every browser click. I quickly changed that back and now all is well.

[solent01]

spent the afternoon fiddling with the no. of connections allowed, both per torrent and global. I have set global to 250 and per torrent to 50, 7 torrents are active with around 70 connections, speed is maxed out both up and down, trackers still active and line stable, so this Router can't handle anywhere near the amount of connections the old Zyxel can handle.

I will keep loading more connections and see where the limit seems to be.

[damole]

spent the afternoon fiddling with the no. of connections allowed, both per torrent and global. I have set global to 250 and per torrent to 50, 7 torrents are active with around 70 connections, speed is maxed out both up and down, trackers still active and line stable, so this Router can't handle anywhere near the amount of connections the old Zyxel can handle.

I will keep loading more connections and see where the limit seems to be.

I just added 9 popular torrernts for the purposes of testing and managed to have Azuereus running with over 2600 connections (seeds and peers combined) downloading at around 90KB/s although upload speed dropped to less than 10KB/s. Now my browsing ground to a halt pretty much and my computer nearly ran out of it's 1GB of ram and slowed to a crawl but the router seemed fine. I logged into the router from another pc on my lan and had no problems although again the browsing experince was very poor. I stopped all the torrents in Azureus and everything returned to normal. I'm running firmware 1.2.2 Build 071110 Rel.36194n which according to the website is for both our routers.

[solent01]

I updated to 1.3.3 Build 080110 Rel.38149n this morning, but to be honest it has made no difference, just gives a few more options and tools to the interface.

Thats alot of connections

Thanks for the numbers, gives me a target range to work within. But over all, very happy today as I can now leave my torrents running whilst I do other things knowing my stats are being updated

[damole]

I updated to 1.3.3 Build 080110 Rel.38149n this morning, but to be honest it has made no difference, just gives a few more options and tools to the interface.

Thats alot of connections

Thanks for the numbers, gives me a target range to work within. But over all, very happy today as I can now leave my torrents running whilst I do other things knowing my stats are being updated

One thing to note is that when I upgraded to the latest firmware I noticed that Azuereus's UPnP requests to open ports were failing so I rolled back to the previous revision which worked fine so you might want to check your ports are open at http://canyouseeme.org/ if uTorrent doesn't report NAT status itself unless of course you already hard coded them in the router.

[solent01]

I have my Router configured for port forwarding, but double checked at the URL you gave me, everything fine there

[JakeBKK]

I upgraded from Indy to Premier at the beginning of this month, and although I am happy with the speed stability for P2P, I have found that the line or rather the protocol drops out every hour or so, this was sometimes a problem with Indy also but not as often.

I have checked the ADSL Statistic and find them to be within normal levels, and I only live about 2 km from the exchange.

Down Up

SNR Margin (dB): 28.6 24.0

Attenuation (dB): 42.0 22.0

Output Power (dBm): 18.7 12.0

Attainable Rate (Kbps):5408 1280

Rate (Kbps): 1024 512

So thought it was just TT&T being their usual <deleted> selves.

However, I obtained a new email to use with this new account, and when I opened outlook to configure the new email for my Premier account, I realised I had left the old email account for "Indy" activated, and it was still receiving mail, so I went into my router (wireless TP-Link) and re-entered the Indy account details that I had deleted from it some 2 weeks ago, to find that my Indy account is still active on my line, so I have an Indy and a Premier account active on the same line, but my router only has the account details to use one (reconfigured again to use Premier).

But this makes me question whether the protocol on the line keeps dropping because two accounts are active on it or not (even though my router only knows/has been configured for one of them), I kind of think it should not make any differance to the connection, but I am certainly no expert on this, so ask the question here........

TP Link's Firmware has known issues with TT&T - set your debug level to max and take a look at the logs.

Greetings

Jake

[solent01]

Thanks for the info Jake, can you point me towards a referance for this?? I've been searching the net for info and havn't found much at all.

[JakeBKK]

Thanks for the info Jake, can you point me towards a referance for this?? I've been searching the net for info and havn't found much at all.

Sure, let me know what tp-link router you have got and i post a link.

Greetings

Jake

[solent01]

TD-W8920G

[solent01]

Edit.....

Double post

Edited March 20, 2008 by solent01