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Never Thought I'd Be Posting One of These...

Lindal Kidd

By Lindal Kidd,
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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

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7 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

...But just now I tried to log in and got the dreaded "Despite our best efforts..." message.

With Lindal, with an alt, with Firestorm, with the standard viewer, and at several locations.

Checked the Grid Status blog and it says all is well.

Well, it ain't! See?

https://gyazo.com/53c2cba18e5860537ba7196ace633b2e

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Lindal Kidd

Lindal Kidd

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38 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Wow, thanks Rowan.

How does one "report an outage"? Other than a support ticket?

I answered my own question on this one. Rowan's screen grab was from Down Detector, a site where you can report outages of...well, just about anything on the web, with a single mouse click.

https://downdetector.com/status/second-life/

I don't know if the services themselves monitor this site, but adding your voice to others at least gives you the feeling that you're doing something.

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Solar Legion

Solar Legion

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18 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Yay, I'm in! I don't know if the router reboot did the trick, but I did try it and was able to log in.

Thanks, Quartz...I wouldn't have expected that to work, since the rest of the internet seemed fine.

You'd be surprised how many odd issues can be fixed by a simple router/modem reboot (unified unit or not - I've had to reboot our cable modem but not the dedicated external router before).

14 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I answered my own question on this one. Rowan's screen grab was from Down Detector, a site where you can report outages of...well, just about anything on the web, with a single mouse click.

https://downdetector.com/status/second-life/

I don't know if the services themselves monitor this site, but adding your voice to others at least gives you the feeling that you're doing something.

Site depending, many simply ping the web page to see if it is up and then rely on user commentary/reports to fill in gaps.

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

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24 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I answered my own question on this one. Rowan's screen grab was from Down Detector, a site where you can report outages of...well, just about anything on the web, with a single mouse click.

https://downdetector.com/status/second-life/

I don't know if the services themselves monitor this site, but adding your voice to others at least gives you the feeling that you're doing something.

It's always nice when you realize it's not just you having an issue especially since many times, the grid status page has nothing as not enough people have the problem or bother reporting it.

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Quartz Mole

Quartz Mole

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33 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Yay, I'm in! I don't know if the router reboot did the trick, but I did try it and was able to log in.

Thanks, Quartz...I wouldn't have expected that to work, since the rest of the internet seemed fine.

The way it was explained to me, by Spike Linden years ago (remember him?),  rebooting your router forces a completely new route between your PC, your ISP, and LL's servers, thus (probably) bypassing any obstructions on the route your connection is currently using.

Glad the problem is solved, whatever the solution may have been.

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Ardy Lay

Ardy Lay

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Most retail residential broadband routers are garbage.  Expect rebooting them to help.  Keep track of the time between reboots.  I find that the time keeps getting shorter for some of them, eventually getting down to multiple reboots per day!  If yours runs longer than 30 days reliably and the time isn't getting shorter, then maybe you have a keeper.

What really can help is if your Internet Access Provider screens the broadcast traffic your router sees so that it is not exposed to massive quantities of junk it must examine and discard, such as ARP and BOOTP frames.  DOCSIS cable modems and GPON ONTs would be examples of service provider devices in the home that SHOULD be filtering that rubbish out before it hits the subscriber router.  The subscriber router can either be built-in to the cable modem or ONT, or it can be a separate device.

What I use at home is an integrated device where the GPON ONT and the subscriber router are on the same circuit board inside but function independently through an integration controller.  This is the third of this exact model I have had in my home, and it works great and has achieved uptimes exceeding 200 days between power outages.  The previous two of this exact same model and revision required frequent reboots.  This is just one example of a decent design that has problems in implementation or fabrication.  All three were running the same code revision.  They are owned by the service provider, so I didn't have to pay for the replacements.  I was allowed to swap them out on my own, probably because I am one of the network engineers running the core and edge networks at this service provider.  I ensured that I securely attached failure reports to the failing units by laminating the sheet of paper to the subscriber units with packing tape.  I hope they sent them back to the manufacturer.  I really hope they didn't reuse them.  Logistics is not under my purview.

I would not have phrased the advice to reboot the residential broadband router the same way Spike Linden phrased it, but, the recommended action does indeed resolve many issues, temporarily.  What the reboot does accomplish is to get that device back on-task after clearing its volatile memory.  On some Internet access provider networks, rebooting router and cable modem or fiber ONT can result in the subscriber router's Wide Area Network interface being assigned a different IP address, and sometimes this is helpful to the subscriber if there is something weird happening elsewhere in the network.  Many Internet access providers use a sticky-lease configuration in their DHCP servers to keep assigning the same IP address to each requesting device so that they do get trouble reports from subscribers allowing the provider to find and fix those IP address related problems instead of them remaining as resident gremlins in the network.

All that said, I have found Second Life to be a decent tool for detecting wimpy residential broadband routers.  The faults exposed are usually in the address:port translation function and the failure-modes are usually insufficient storage for translation tables, and insufficient processing power to manage table growth by removing expiring entries in the table, and insufficient table lookup speed.

I am going to stop now because I suspect I have bored the one person that has read all of this.

Edited by Ardy Lay
-insured +ensured
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Persephone Emerald

Persephone Emerald

Posted
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28 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

Most retail residential broadband routers are garbage.  Expect rebooting them to help.  Keep track of the time between reboots.  I find that the time keeps getting shorter for some of them, eventually getting down to multiple reboots per day!  If yours runs longer than 30 days reliably and the time isn't getting shorter, then maybe you have a keeper.

[snip}

I had this problem with my router. I finally called my service provider, and they replaced it with a new router.

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Ardy Lay

Ardy Lay

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1 minute ago, Sid Nagy said:

For me it's simple, if SL doesn't boot, I see it as a sign from above that it is time to do some housekeeping.  :D

That's funny because rebooting the router is necessary when it fails to do its own housekeeping.

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Sid Nagy

Sid Nagy

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I think it is at least 5 years ago that I rebooted my broadband modem the last time.
That was after that the cable guys worked on an upgrade of equipment further down the road.

Let me knock on wood and keep my fingers crossed, but my Internet connection is really solid as a rock for years already.

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

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2 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

I think it is at least 5 years ago that I rebooted my broadband modem the last time.
That was after that the cable guys worked on an upgrade of equipment further down the road.

Let me knock on wood and keep my fingers crossed, but my Internet connection is really solid as a rock for years already.

I never had an issue with mine either until about 6 months ago.  We'd had it for around 5 years.  I had to reboot every day at that point.  When I called, they said 5-6 years was the average usability of the modem.  They came out, replaced it free of charge and haven't had an issue since.  The minute you start having issues, it's time to replace IMO.

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HeathcliffMontague

HeathcliffMontague

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55 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

For me it's simple, if SL doesn't boot, I see it as a sign from above that it is time to do some housekeeping.  :D

My ISP always warns me ahead if the net is going down. Saves me a lot of headache. Lasts ten minutes at most, but enough for withdrawals :) Kinda kidding, I need the net to make a living :)

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