Intermittent connection loss, very annoying

I am getting an intermittent connection loss with my FIOS. The problem has been occurring for almost a year now, pretty much since the day I got FIOS. It's fairly annoying as it seems to happen for 10-30 seconds each time when I'm trying to do internet browsing. In the recent weeks I've been trying to diagnose the issue and found this old thread that was resolved:

http://forums.verizon.com/t5/FiOS-TV-Technical-Assistance/Verizon-FIOS-intermittent-connection-drops...

This person is basically describing my exact problem. I am now running a PingLog app, which will log each time my connection times out for a ping against google's DNS (8.8.8.8) 3 consecutive times (5 seconds between each ping). I log approximately 10 of these drops per 24 hour period, just like the person posting in the link above.

I've called Verizon tech support and was sent a new Router which obviously did nothing. I was also told there was nothing wrong with my "signal". When the problem occurs, my FIOS TV still works fine.

Is the solution replacing/servicing the PON card in my area like the post linked above indicates? How do I get the Verizon techs to come out and actually "know how to" diagnose this instead of kick me around doing basic tests that I know won't work?

Thanks!!

Accepted answers

blopsss

New NIC installed and wired to my router. My problematic NIC is part of the mobo so I just disabled it in hardware. Problem seems to be solved. Very strange. Thanks everyone for their help!

All comments

Hubrisnxs

intermittent connection loss is very annoying, and tough to diagnose. You might find that you're problem is slightly different then the other guys, but if it turns out to be identical, then you have to go through the normal troubleshooting that everyone goes through. there isn't a good way to skip past those stages and simply have them replace a PON card.

replacing a PON card for Verizon seems to be a really big deal, and they do it as a very very very last step usually.

So just out of curiosity, are you wired or wireless when you get this problem? did you want some other possibilities that it could be?

blopsss

Thanks for the reply. So at this point should I just call Verizon again? Does this forum help expedite things with Verizon tech support at all? I'm always open to other suggestions you may have.

I should have mentioned in my original post that this is regardless of wired or wireless. My network of computers is very small and doesn't typically run anything that will tax bandwidth (torrents). When I'm running the ping logger, I'm directly connected to the router. Changing the router itself also did not help, so I suspect it is something at my outdoor box or the PON card.

One more quick question and forgive me for my ignorance, but if my coax signal coming into the house is bad, my TV would also be adversly affected, yes? This never happens and TV always works fine.

The problem seems to also get worse the more I browse. If I'm clicking around a lot going from youtube to google to yahoo to cnn to espn, etc. etc. I'll lose my connection in a matter of minutes. Tried on several PCs, mobile devices, wired, and wireless.

Hubrisnxs

when the connection is severe, then you may want to run a couple traceroutes to 8.8.8.8 or www.yahoo.com and post the results here, we can take a look.

basically if the problem is on a Verizon Router, they may be able to do something, if it's outside their network - maybe not. but the traceroutes will tell us a lot.

make sure your on a hardwired machine when you do those traceroutes.

blopsss

I can practically ALWAYS recreate the problem by doing the following procedure:

1) Open up my web browser

2) Go to google.com, followed by yahoo.com, youtube.com, espn.com, cnn.com, facebook.com once each is finished loading.

3) At about the 4th or 5th website I hit, my browser gets a timeout and my pinglogger starts timing out as well for about 20-30 seconds straight.

I just ran a tracert during this to the google DNS, and the request just times out at the first hop. When it's recovered, the tracert goes through normally.

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * 11 ms 7 ms G5-0-8-1827.WASHDC-LCR-08.verizon-gni.net [130.8
1.140.154]
4 9 ms 7 ms 9 ms so-1-1-0-0.RES-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net [130.81.2
9.2]
5 15 ms 7 ms 12 ms 0.so-6-1-0.XL4.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.36.237]
6 17 ms 7 ms 10 ms 0.ae4.BR1.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.33.121]
7 16 ms 9 ms 7 ms 192.205.36.141
8 16 ms 10 ms 23 ms 12.122.81.246
9 12 ms 9 ms 10 ms 12.122.135.149
10 79 ms 35 ms 41 ms 12.88.155.14
11 9 ms 11 ms 17 ms 216.239.48.112
12 18 ms 17 ms 9 ms 72.14.236.200
13 14 ms 15 ms 19 ms 216.239.49.149
14 18 ms 16 ms 12 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

Above is what I see when it finally comes back after waiting on the first 2 hops for 10-20 seconds timing out.

A few other quirks I've noticed. The PingLog running by itself (without me trying to web browse) logs significantly less connection drops, e.g. during the day when I'm at the office and no one is using my FIOS connection (other than the PingLogger). I also rarely disconnect from online gaming, for instance battle.net. It feels as if Verizon is throttling my web browsing capabilities on every 5th website I visit in a 20 second timespan. I've just recreated the problem 3 times now in typing this response. Seems ridiculous, no? Is this some sort of Verizon DNS issue then?

Anything else I can try to troubleshoot with?

blopsss

So I got another pc and connected it via wired to the same port an did not replicate the issues. I then installed a wireless nic to my problematic desktop and connected wirelessly without issue. I guess that rules out any software problem and points to my wired nic. I've ordered another pci nic for my desktop and hopefully this will be resolved. If it ends up being the problem, I'll feel pretty foolish but I've never experienced a finicky nic like this before. Thanks again for everyones replies.

Hubrisnxs

well, it's definetely the last thing I would have checked on my pc and I can't say that I've had an intermittent problem due to it. I've had bad nic's before but not with the symptom's you had. Glad you guys got down to the nitty gritty and figured it out, and pretty quickly too.

Kudos to antiphish and the OP.

blopsss

New NIC installed and wired to my router. My problematic NIC is part of the mobo so I just disabled it in hardware. Problem seems to be solved. Very strange. Thanks everyone for their help!

blopsss

Well, problem isn't entirely gone. Just experienced a connection drop last night and this evening on the new NIC. This is going to require some more investigating as the problem seems to be harder to recreate now. My $10 NIC experiment seems to not be the answer, so what now? Software issue on the PC? ISP issue? I'm going to try and get another computer more permanently set up here in a bit to once and for all weed out a machine specific issue.... but this ping timeout back to my router is really throwing me off again.