| Back in a past Cc: column, I
discussed how I finally bit the bullet and bought a cable modem for
broadband access to the Internet. Of course, installing the cable modem
was not without some minor snafus. For instance, I had to take possession
of the power drill from Evan "Toolman Wannabe" Koblentz to
prevent him from drilling an eighth hole in my bedroom floor! After we
patched the holes and got my cable modem fully installed and operational,
I was pleased with the performance.
I was able to download large files, stream audio and video with very
good quality, and access our corporate LAN -- including e-mail -- at
blazing speeds. I could now essentially work from home with no loss in
productivity. Life was good.
ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END
Unfortunately, my optimistic outlook was short-lived. During the first
week of using my cable modem, I noticed that sometimes the performance was
very sluggish and Web pages would even time out. I'd click on a hyperlink,
wait, and wait, but nothing would happen. I'd click the "Stop"
button, try again, and then it would work. It appeared that I had a flaky
Internet connection. I performed some "pings" to my default
gateway and sure enough I was losing about 30 percent of my packets. Not
good. I called Cablevision (my broadband provider) and the conversation
went something like this:
"Do you have three green lights on?"
"Yes, that's the first thing I checked."
"Did you try emptying your browser's cache?"
"I'm getting 30 percent packet loss from the lower-level ping
command, so I don't think emptying my browser's cache is going to help
any."
"Sir, can you empty your cache anyway?"
I knew full well that the cache had absolutely nothing to do with my
packet loss, but rather than argue with the technician, I humored him and
pretended to empty my browser's cache.
"I'm still not able to get to www.microsoft.com or any other site.
Any other suggestions?"
"Did you try rebooting your PC?"
"Yes, I have rebooted and it still loses a lot of packets."
"Try disconnecting the power to your cable modem for 30 seconds
and then plug it back in."
After disconnecting the modem and plugging it back in, I still was
having packet loss.
"Do you have cable splitters in your home?"
"Yes I do, but I took them all off to reduce the chance of signal
degradation. I'm now running a coax wire directly to the coax wire coming
into the house."
MURPHY'S LAW?
The technician with whom I was speaking decided to escalate the call
to a second-level technician. This technician asked me to perform a few
other steps, none of which helped. He decided I needed an on-site service
call to check the cable signal coming into my house.
We scheduled a service call with a four-hour window between 8 a.m.
12 p.m., forcing me to take a half-day at work just so I could let the
cable guy into my house. Once he finally arrived, the cable guy hooked up
a device to the coaxial cable running to the cable modem and determined
that the signal strength was fine. We turned on my PC and of course I
didn't receive any packet loss with the technician there.
NO END IN SIGHT
For weeks I continued experiencing periodic problems accessing the
Internet. I was calling Cablevision's technical support line more often
than Bud Bundy called 900 numbers on the TV show, Married... With
Children. I even made it a speed dial on my phone. By this point, I had
grown tired of typing "ping 208.221.55.65" each time to test my
packet loss, so I created a batch file and put it on the desktop, so I
could double-click it to run the ping test.
After clicking on my batch file, I could see that I was losing about
anywhere from 10 to 35 percent of my packets. I made another call to
Cablevision and the technician told me "Do you see three green
lights?" Here we go again, I thought. "Yes," I said,
"And I even emptied out my browser's cache, so skip to script line
three."
Mind you, I was only curt to the technician because I had a cable guy
in my house three other times to try and resolve my packet loss problem,
which they were never able to fix. Each time they kept telling me my
signal strength was fine, but gave me no solution to end my dilemma. It
was rather frustrating to take time off from work on three separate
occasions, with no resolution to the situation. I was losing my VPN
connection to our corporate LAN, which was severely decreasing my
productivity.
DRASTIC MEASURES
It got to the point where my 56K dial-up connection was more reliable and
sometimes even faster. Since IP packets would try multiple routes to get
to their destination, I thought a dial-up connection might help alleviate
my packet loss. My theory was that Windows 98 would sort of
"bond" the dial-up connection with the cable broadband
connection, similar to "multi-link." Of course, you are probably
thinking that I've gone crazy, but trust me it works.
Yes, my overall throughput went down, since some of the packets went
across the 56K connection, but at least I didn't get any packet loss. If a
packet couldn't go across my default gateway (the cable connection), at
least the IP packet would be routed across the 56K Internet connection.
Finally, I could access the corporate LAN without being sporadically
disconnected, as well as surf the Web with no problems.
But I wasn't happy with my ad-hoc solution, especially since I was now
tying up my only voice line. Freeing up my phone line was one of the
reasons why I wanted broadband in the first place! I started to notice a
pattern when my broadband Internet connection seemed slow or unresponsive.
It seemed to work quite well during off-peak hours, like when I was
surfing the Web at three o'clock in the morning, but often when I surfed
during peak periods it performed poorly.
Perhaps it was a bandwidth contention issue? I suspected this in the
very beginning and I asked the first Cablevision technician if it was
possible that this was the reason why my connection was slow. He denied
that this was a possibility. I asked each and every technician this same
question and they all denied that it could be a bandwidth issue.
NOT BUYING IT
I pressed the last technician I spoke to and demanded to know why I
was losing so many packets. I asked, "Isn't it possible that my
neighbors, or whoever is on the same node as me, is sucking up all the
bandwidth? I live in Norwalk, one of the first places broadband was
offered in Connecticut, so no doubt Norwalk has probably the most
broadband users. You guys don't do any QoS monitoring of the network
traffic, do you?"
She said, "No we don't do any bandwidth quality of service
provisioning, so yes it is certainly possible that someone is using all
the bandwidth."
I was a little stunned to finally get an admission from Cablevision
that they weren't using any type of bandwidth provisioning or QoS
management tools. I asked her if she had any suggestions and her answer
was "Yeah, move out of Norwalk."
That's her answer? Move to another city so I can have more reliable
broadband access? I was absolutely incredulous and said some things to her
not fit for print.
LIKE A PHOENIX RISING
But something good did come of this. I was able to get Cablevision to
admit that it wasn't a signal strength problem and that it could be a
bandwidth problem. There has to be software or hardware out there that
helps broadband providers manage their broadband networks to prevent
bandwidth hogs from stealing all the bandwidth.
Surely, out of the thousands of broadband users, I cannot be the only
one experiencing poor cable broadband service. However, I haven't read a
single article that talked about this issue. I decided it was time to do
some research of my own to get to the bottom of this.
During my research, I discovered a company called Broadband Access
Systems (BAS), which sells a series of products aimed at reducing the
headaches associated with broadband provisioning and bandwidth management.
I scheduled a conference call with some of their gurus and what I found
out was very interesting. First of all, they told me that I am not alone
in experiencing packet loss and that the cable providers are very aware of
the problem. He even guessed that the cable company just kept sending RF
(radio frequency) cable guys to check my signal anytime I called to
complain.
I also learned that many cable companies deployed broadband services
very quickly without giving much thought to making sure they have adequate
bandwidth. It's the "sign up as many people as possible before our
competitors do" mentality. I'm stuck in a minimum two-year agreement
with a service that I am not happy with, so I guess it worked.
MY BAD EXPERIENCE ASIDE
Despite my own hassles, the early success of initial cable modem
rollouts coupled with the emergence of the standardized Data Over Cable
Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS) promises to result in many new
subscribers for IP-based cable services. Service providers are looking to
exploit their new or existing cable infrastructure to reap revenues from
services beyond just broadcast TV, which is another reason why cable
companies rushed to rollout broadband services.
BAS is a strong proponent of cable broadband and they have designed a
series of products which they feel will solve the problems I encountered.
According to BAS, their products will allow service providers to provide
enhanced services, such as IP telephony, which require operators to
construct networks that are highly scalable, reliable, and optimized to
deliver telephony services and true QoS to many subscribers
simultaneously.
Cable operators will be required to offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
to businesses in order to be a viable alternative to incumbent service
providers. The limitations of today's Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS)
equipment continue to create a serious challenge for cable operators
looking to balance between their investments in infrastructure and the
potential revenue gains offered by emerging data, voice, and video
services. In my opinion, cable operators will need to bite the bullet
(just as I did in signing up for cable broadband) and spend money on
products that guarantee bandwidth to customers.
12000 IP ACCESS SWITCH
From what I learned in my conference call, Broadband Access Systems'
Cuda 12000 IP Access Switch represents a huge leap from today's CMTS
solutions. This IP access switch was designed from the ground up to
support the reliable delivery of best-effort data services, IP telephony,
tiered data services, multicast services, and other emerging offerings. It
includes support for over 5,000 HFC ports equating to millions of homes.
It supports a variety of interfaces, including HFC, DSL, T1/E1, DS3/E3,
OC-3 Packet-Over-Sonet, OC-12 POS, 10/100 Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet.
Support for the recent DOCSIS 1.1 specification (which include QoS
capabilities), MPLS, and DiffServ is also available. BAS also claims
"wire-speed" switching and routing on all physical ports with
support for multiple traffic priority levels and per-subscriber bandwidth
allocation.
BAS's Cuda Provisioning Manager is a Java-based tool that runs as a
layered application on the Cuda Desktop application. All the software
network services, such as DHCP, DDNS, TOD (time of day), and TFTP that are
needed to initialize cable modems and enable subscribers for Internet and
voice connectivity are included. In addition, this same tool allows cable
operators to assign different levels of services to various business
users.
The Cuda Protocol Analyzer is a network-engineering product (similar to
a packet sniffer) that gives cable operators visibility into the DOCSIS
traffic on their HFC plant. The product is used to analyze traffic
characteristics on the cable plant for optimizing network performance and
is used to capture and analyze detailed packets for diagnosing and
resolving customer problems.
CURE FOR THE BLUES
Some of the features the Cuda Protocol Analyzer has include the ability to
graphically display traffic characteristics, set filters by MAC address,
identify misconfigured equipment, and more. This is exactly the type of
tool that Cablevision should have to solve my packet loss issue! I begged
BAS and told them that they needed to sell their system to Cablevision in
Norwalk right away and jokingly said that I'd put a good word in for them
if they wanted.
Something else good came of my bandwidth blues. While trying to improve
my poor broadband connection, I discovered a utility that speeds up
downloads, which you can read about in the sidebar titled "Faster
Than A Speeding Download." And as for you, Cablevision, if you're
reading this, be aware I'm sending a Broadband Access Systems brochure
your way. Use it or lose it! (Lose me as a paying customer that is.)
|
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IoT EVOLUTION MAGAZINE
June
2000
