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Home Fusion dropping EVERYDAY

I just had Home Fusion installed a couple weeks ago. The service is fantastic when it is running. However over the last week or so the connection has dropped at least twice a day. The problem appears to be at the antenna and not the router since the only way I have found to get signal back is to unplug the power supply to the outside antenna. After doing this Internet access returns so I was wondering if there cold be something tong with the antenna or some update I need to run. Any suggestions?

Comments

Verizon_Support

Hi ryanvt,

I feel your pain! I want you to have constant service without having to unplug the power supply to outside antenna. Try rebooting http://is.gd/RbtCantenna the Cantenna and test. I trust that this procedure will resolve your concerns. Keep us posted.

AntonioC_VZWSupport

Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/VZWSupport

wrathstorm

I have also had a few days where the 4G LTE light goes yellow instead of green, sometimes when this happens and you look at the router web interface it shows the status as connecting instead of connected. A fix procedure I have found is to go into Advanced/HBR Advanced Settings/Reboot HBA. After the HBA is rebooted, you may need to reboot the HBR as well. My connection dropped today while I was in a GoTo Meeting with a customer. Luckily we were not in the middle of a critical procedure. As I was trying to upload this reply, my connection dropped. Talk about timing.

The other issue I am having is with corrupted downloads. I have downloaded several large files that when I attemt to extract the data, the programs state that they are corrupted. This is VERY frustrating since we are billed on a usage basis and having to download the same file multiple times uses up my quota very quickly. I have tried to update my iPhone to iOS6 3 times today and each time the download errors out. I must have "wasted" at least 300-400MB on that today alone.

EJS_CE172

I have the same problem. So are you saying with your comments that this is the norm and customers just need to reboot the server every time this happens. That is how I am reading your post and you are Verizon Support. That doesn't give me a good feeling about HomeFusion. My system was just installed about 3 weeks ago. The first 2 weeks service and connection have been super. Downloads of 10mbps or greater. I also get corrupted files, had to download OS6 3 times. Now, in the last week I've had to reboot the antenna several times. Called support and we did what I was going to do anyway, reboot the cantenna. What's funny, there are 2 lights on the cantenna and even when the internet is down those lights and the 4G light are all green. Verizon needs to put a little more effort to figuring this out.

wongat

I had this same issue. The only thing I can do is unplug the router and also the the cantenna. I am not sure what else to do. I do not have the protection plan and wondering if it is too late to sign up for it. I've only had the service for about 3-4 weeks and I understand it will cost at least $150 for someone to take a look at why the service keeps dropping. Does anyone else have any other suggestions?

wongat

I have tried rebooting the cantenna and I am still having intermittent internet connectivity. I'm thinking it may be the cantenna. When I got disconnected, I went outside to check the cantenna. Directly underneath the unti if you are looking from left to right are 2 lights. I noticed when the internet is connected both lights are green. However the moment I am running into internet connection issues, the light on the right turns to red, then a flashing red and then it may go to a blue color and then green and then back to blue and then flashing red. Inside the house the colors on the router are all flashing green and my computer still shows all bars indicating that I am connected.

So it seems the cantenna may be having issues transmitting the info to the router or receiving info? Any suggestions? The bad part is when I was having these issues I was in the middle of a timed exam and needless to say as a result of this issue, I failed the exam due to me not being able to answer all the exam questions.

ryanvt

I do have an open support ticket with Verizon on this. Last I had heard from the support person was they vendors THINK they have a solution but it would not be attempted until sometime this week. Only other thing I can add is this really is quite irritating that I have not gone a full day in WEEKS without needing to reboot the cantenna. Haven't heard a peep from them about "well since our service isnt performing as we promised we will compensate you" or anything like that. The support person has been polite but the reliability of this service has been poor. I love it when it runs, I hope they figure it out. But Verizon Wireless people if you are out there, this isnt just one person with this issue.

scott21

My homefusion never went down once now it does alot more like 2 times off and on during the week.

EJS_CE172

This is my message to Verizon and to anyone who wants to purchase Home Fusion. DON'T. Until Verizon get's off their butts and figures out why this is happening, I wouldn't dare tell my friends to sign up, I'd be afraid it would do it to them in just a few days. My neighbor down the street was interested, I told him to stay away. Already today it's dropped at least twice. I've called support to no avail. I am going to check into taking this to the Texas Attorney Generals office. I think with all the comments, there is much to be said. There is obviously a major problem and Verizon isn't owning up to it. I might even put this in the local papers as a letter to the editor or call Wayne Dolcefino at channel 13 news in Houston to investigate. Got nothing to loose, there are other providers out there. I like this service, would like it better if it worked the way it's portrayed in their store ads.

Protagonist

I too am having problems.

I just tried to download Office 2013 (682 MB) and when I ran the SHA1 checksum to verify the file was properly downloaded, it didn't match the proper checksum, indicating that not every byte was transferred properly. So I downloaded it again, and this time I got a different SHA1 checksum, which was also not the proper checksum. I tried rebooting the cantenna and the router, but am still not able to download a copy with the proper checksum. Wow, that will eat into my usage limits real quick!

The first few months of service were flawless, but something changed about 6 weeks ago. I notice that occasionally the router blinks yellow on the 4G connection, yet everything seems to work. Eventually it goes back to green. Also once or twice a day, usually late night or early morning, everything just stops working. If I leave it, it will usually reconnect, but sometimes, it won't until I reboot the cantenna (not the router).

I love the service, when it's working. I regularly get around 30 Mb/s downloads and 17 Mb/s uploads. But of course, fast speed isn't much good if the data transfers are wrong.

scott21

Well mine was working good for 4 days after they replaced the antenna, But now dropping connection again.

EJS_CE172

I've been unplugging the antenna every day before I go to work. Not sure it helps bt have had less dropouts. Plus, if they are scamming bytes, this holds them at bay for awhile.

Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2012 15:29:17 -0600

From: <Personal information removed per the TOS.>

To: <Personal information removed per the TOS.>

Subject: Re: Home Fusion dropping EVERYDAY - Re: Home Fusion dropping EVERYDAY

Re: Home Fusion dropping EVERYDAY

created by scott21 in Broadband & Netbook Community - View the full discussion

Well mine was working good for 4 days after they replaced the antenna, But now dropping connection again.

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wvforu

I have had this service for 7 months, became a member in April 2012. I pay 136 dollars a month which of course is outrageous but between ViaSat and HomeFusion the LTE has much better latency! I have had one Cantenna to fail and it took them 3 weeks to come out and replace and I even have the service plan. Ever since day one I have dealt with this internet outage with both cantennas. It happens almost like clockwork averaging for me every 2 hours and takes usually anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes to correct itself. Most of the time it is not a bother me but when I need secure connections for extended periods of time it is so frustrating. Plus when downloading large files I get so mad! I just had 3 files downloading 300 megabytes each, all going along nicely at 1megabyte per second each, yes I have very fast speeds I practically live beside a tower, I average 2 to 3 megabytes per second. Well when they reached about 50% I lost connection so there went all that wasted data. I had this happen one time with a file that was 1.2 gigs and it stopped at 80%. I have spoken to the tech support and they acknowledged the problem and they have no solution as of right now, my account was noted weeks ago and they hope to eventually have a fix. Considering this has been happening for 7 months hmmm I think it may be a terminal issue with the technology. The only time it never dropped was a 2 day period I had a week or so ago when my light blinked yellow/orange for two days but my connection was rock solid never failing and I figured they fixed it but no they didn't! This sucks but unfortunately I have two options ViaSat which I had before and get about 1megabyte per second down but horrible horrible ping latency or homefusion and just pray they eventually use all the cash we give them to pay someone to fix this DARN PROBLEM! I am actually selling my home and moving out of the country because of my internet woes I have had the last two years I have lived here. I will never live in an area without cable broadband ever again!

PReinie

I don't have Home Fusion (never heard of it until I read this thread) but y'all might consider a download manager which is supposed to recover from incomplete downloads such as when you loose a connection.

I don't know if the server also has to be able to handle partial downloads too, but you might want to check around.

Home21

Is there gonna be a fix for this soon ? cause this isn't reliable home internet.

VerizonFriend

I have the same problem. I switched from a MiFi unit that shared the internet with my whole network to Home Fusion. I added a yagi antenna external antenna connection and got 4 bars on the signal strength indicator. Thought that having a cantenna on the roof would increase my good signal strength to great. Not so much. Having the same issues that you all are talking about. After replacing the router and cantenna, I have to shut the whole system down a few times a week. It seems like the cantenna locks onto a weaker cell tower and does not switch back to a stronger tower. I wish it was always seeking the strongest signal. Can Verizon explain why the units lock up? I just want to be assured that someone is listening and working on the problem.

scott21

I now got router and antenna replaced still doing it lol. But good thing is after ticket comes back and no fix they are letting me out of my contract.

ryanvt

Just to follow up, I have had my cantenna replaced about 2 weeks ago. Originally the change made no difference. We lost the connection just as frequently. I will say now over the last week (and I am sure this will bite me) we have had much more reliable service. I have not had to power off the device or reboot the cantenna thru the router in a week. I am hoping it was an issue with the cantenna or the service ticket some how was addressed behind the scenes with a firmware upgrade or something. But the service has been much more reliable over the last week. I will post again if it continues or changes. Once thing I encourage you all to do is log the service request. It was good to post here to see if anyone had suggestions but having the ticket in the system gave me a contact and also led to 2 site visits by Verizon staff.

scott21

Its not the antenna or router it will drop again trusts me. what is causing this is a august firmware update that messed up the connection to drop or stall out and until a vendor fixes this it will keep on i had my antenna replaced and router all was good to for week and boom again it went.

wongat

I keep getting the answer from Verizon that its a firmware issue but no ETA. You would think that since this is an issue with so many customers Verizons would have an alternate solution. As customers we cannot wait months or years for a resolution. Its been at least 2 months since this issue has been occurring and telling your customers to be patient and wait this long is not a solution. Please help us Verizon.

scott21

Its sad this wasn't tested really good before this firmware went out in first place. Or the vendor were morons. i'm giving them till January or i am demanding to get out of my contract.

HF is great if this gets resolved but they can't expect us pay top dollar/month for low quality service for so long.

Protagonist

The HF system doesn't detect and/or correct communication errors

I needed to upgrade a piece of software on my Windows system. So I downloaded it (645 MB) using HF, expecting it to fail. It failed. The checksum on the downloaded software was incorrect, making it impossible to install. So then I tried downloading it using my XOOM tablet (at the same location as my HF) directly via 4G (without using HF), expecting it to work. It worked. The checksum on the software was correct, and I was able to transfer the downloaded software from my XOOM to my PC and install it successfully. The HF system doesn't detect and/or correct communication errors.

This is probably what causes our HF systems to periodically fail. Since the HF regularly (every minute or two) checks that we are authorized users of the device, if there is an undetected communication failure during the authentication process, the device thinks we are no longer authorized and shuts down. A reboot of the cantenna restarts the authentication process (and likely cleans up whatever firmware bug is allowing incorrect communications to be accepted as correct), and everything goes back to "normal".

If communication errors were properly detected, downloads would never be incorrect, and very likely, our HF systems wouldn't regularly shutdown.

scott21

If your right and it is what you say, whats that say about how fast there really trying to fix this ? i mean this been going on for while and no eta or even if the vendor is testing or fixing this lol. I think verizon needs get a new manufacturer for HF.

A bug this huge should done been fixed, period.

jonusko

I have had the service for about two weeks. I see 10 disconnects in the system log. It has disconnected twice today. It usually reconnects on its own in 5-15 minutes without a reboot. Is there anyway to determine if it is an antenna or network issue? The antenna always shows 2 or 3 bars. I work from home and rely on a constant internet connection. It scares me to read that some users are down for days. If HF is not reliable, I will need to return to HughesNet which I have despised for 9 years.

scott21

It's a august firmware caused this we all know that so no its not the antenna or router. call in and ask for credit and i am sure this get fixed sooner if you know what i mean. i got $60.00 one, and gonna ask for one every month till fixed.

BillH442

I've had the same problem. Replaced the Cantenna and router with no improvement. Purchased the home protection plan which is a joke. They can replace the equipment and that's all they know. No signal strength meters, no technical skills.

Mine fails two different ways. First it will randomly drop connection with a blinking yellow 4G light for 30 seconds to 2 minutes several times a day. But if it drops for more than 2-3 minutes, it will not come back on it's own and power cycling the antenna (or rebooting from the Admin utility) fixes it. After numerous calls to tech support, Verizon identified the failure to reconnect issue as a software bug with no fix ETA. What's worse is that every time I call in, I have to go through the same dance. Unplug the router, unplug the antenna, reboot your computer, blah, blah. Nobody seems to know this is a system-wide issue.

And today it's been down all day with all green router lights and no internet connection even after power cycles on my end and two switch resets on Verizon's end. They think there is a tower issue and get this - estimated 5 days to get an engineer out to fix it. I was able to get a $10 credit for the inconvenience. I'm guessing this will end with a class action lawsuit.

scott21

It's not a tower issue at all, so your waiting will keep going. Its just need a new firmware update to solve this.

VerizonFriend

Isn't this site moderated by Verizon? Why don't we here from them in this forum? Verizon are you listening?

Ann154

This is a peer to peer customer forum. The Moderators are tasked with keeping the posts and discussions within the rules in the Terms of Service here.

jonusko

Seems like if it was a firmware issue only, then all customers would be experiencing the same problem. Since some customers cannot keep a connection while others drop once in a while, I suspect there are other factors involved like tower types, location, etc. A firmware fix is probably what is required, but I am sure it is not easy to reproduce the problem in a lab and Verizon is mostly likely working with a small group of customers to debug the issue. There is always the chance that it is a hardware problem and some devices have more issues than others. It would be interesting to know what percent of the customers are experiencing a total disruption of service. It might be very small and that is why they continue to sell the product. The rest of us who experience an occasional failure live with it because the satellite alternative is much worse. Except for the occasional outages and corrupted downloads, this product is a thousand times better than what I had.

HFScam

I agree with everything you've stated and I too, could go on for days and days about all the continuous problems with Verizon and the HomeFusion.

Funny how all the ongoing calls and tickets I've had when calling tech support and not one has ever mentioned anything even remotely close to this firmware issue. It's so ridiculous how all they keep doing is repeating the same steps to unplug the antenna for 10 seconds or turn the router off and on. They've replaced my router twice and the canteen twice as we'll. No resolve. In fact, their tech support has even closed my trouble ticket without fixing the problem or communicating back anything. Clueless. IT'S MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK FROM HOME! Then all they push is to purchase the Assurance or roll a truck out for $150. Ummmm, No. For anyone insisting a truck roll or service call and told it will be $150, just call back and get another rep who won't charge you. I have been keeping a log of every time my HomeFusion drops....funny how there is always a time pattern. Time for a lawsuit.

BillH442

Actually in this case it may have been the tower because after a day or so

it came back up on it's own without me doing anything. I also found out a

friend of mine had the same issue at the same time. We can't rule out

software but the way it acted this time was very different from the normal

yellow blinking 4G light and service interruption that we are all getting

several times a day. While that issue is very annoying, it's more annoying

to have no service at all.

FrustratedMore

Finally some public acknowledgement of this problem, I KNEW it was widespread and not just me. I too am being told (for the last several MONTHS) that this is a bug the hardware vendor needs to fix and they have no ETA.

This is good that I found this forum. Now that I see this is widespread, I am going to contact some friends I have at Engadget and some other larger media outlets and get some headlines going for this ridiculous fiasco.

Maybe if some Verizon big wigs see this BS in the gadget headlines they'll get off their rears and get some forward progress on this. So this has been going on since August? Wow, absolutely RIDICULOUS.

HFScam

Yes. Since August. We all need to ban together and do something. Any suggestions.

samoore70

We have had the HF since August 2. It went down for a week I did take out the protection plan. They sent 2 techs out and had a "new protocol" they had to follow. One guy was here for almost 5 hours and the other guy didn't stay as long . I had already been through all the rebooting and evyerthing over the phone. They finally changed out the cantenna and the power cord. These guys basically said that it should have never been installed because the signal wasn't good enough here. There is a tower about 2 miles It worked perfect for 4 months running 2 PS3's and laptop at once with no lagging, so I do not think signal strengh has anything to do with it. I was told that I would not be charged a early termaination fee. But when they asked me what I would go with I told them only other thing available was hughes net. After the fixed the cantenna it worked until about 9 pm then was out for a day. My son needed the outlet so he unplugged cantenna then a few hours later plugged it in and it started working again. You can't get the same answer from anyone at Verizon. I am going to start a journel like someone suggested.

gavin1066

When Home Fusion "locks up" for a while, toggling the power on the cantenna and router at the same time seems to work.

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a Verizon support representative on the phone. They stated that there's an open ticket on the Home Fusion disconnection issue. They added my details to the ticket and claimed the manufacturer was trying to resolve the problem. I'd strongly recommend more people phone up and report this issue. It might encourage them to resolve it faster. Several threads on here have been claiming the fault is a firmware update from August.

When I'm either gaming or stream, I've noticed the following features of the disconnects.

The latency before and after disconnect is low. (ping google and other sites).
Generally disconnects last for a few minutes, unless the system "locks up".
Disconnects never seem to happen less than a couple of hours apart. (Almost like clockwork)

I've been experiencing the disconnects ever since I first got Home Fusion back in August.

For the first few months, my signal strength was 3-4 bars with a green light on the cantenna and the odd flicker of red. Recently, I seem to be getting 2-3 bars with the catenna mostly blue.

However, the stability of Home Fusion has not decreased further! My pings remain the same, the only difference is maximum download speeds.

jaystad

Same problem here. Verizon please help. Homefusion service was installed on 10/2/12. All was working well for the first week or two. And the services is super fast...when it is working. But now I am rebooting everything at least twice a day. This is just terrible. I've got full 4G LTE bars most of the time, but bad, bad, bad connectivity. Many folks in my neighborhood need a rural solution, but I will not recommend this until it is fixed. I'm spending too much money on this each month, but unfortunately no other fast solutions in my area. I too will call and file a ticket so that perhaps a solution is found.

Again, help!

Thank you.

cjrhea

I'm seeing similar things to what everybody else is reporting. I don't notice the total drops as often, but we can't get a good download of software or patches.

I have had HF for two months now and I like the improved speeds over the wireless DSL we had previously (purchased by Verizon as a result of buying Alltel).

I've talked to Support once-- all I got was the "Please power-cycle your HF and reboot your PC".

Since I'm now out of the trial/grace period, re-downloading a 600MB software package file several time, trying to get a good copy will cost me big $$$ in overages.

rafiki2323

All, I too am having frequent dropouts. I ran a ping logger for several days. The service drops out 5 to 10 time a day for 1 to 5 minutes on each drop. This service would be great if it was stable. The pings and download times are great and the data limit is manageable. The dropouts however are unacceptable and frustrating. I live in a rural area and have recommended to several people not to get this service until Verizon fixes the problem. Some notes on the problem. I have good signal strength even during service drops, according to the router administration pages. Resetting the box through the menus or completely cycling the power restores service. Verizon has also replaced my router, cantenna, and completed remote software updates to this hardware none of which made any difference. The service is stable for at least an hour after a reset. I am fairly certain it is a software problem on the router, cantenna or maybe even at the tower. Verizon customer service has been courteous and responsive but ultimately useless. Please fix this Verizon. RC Sanders

jonusko

I have had no disconnects for the past 10 days, but now my signal strength will not display. This first happened a few days ago and I had to reboot the cantanna (via the admin UI). The cantanna status is not available once again today, but my internet access is fine. Because the cantanna's admin service is unreachable, my log is filling up with messages like:

dbg> ATC No Response for cmd AT%PPHYSNR

dbg> ATC No Response for cmd AT%PSQ

dbg> ATC No Response for cmd AT+VZWAPNE?

dbg> ATC No Response for cmd AT%PBEAM

dbg> ATC No Response for cmd AT%PPHYDLTPUT=1,1000

One interesting thing to note on the disconnects, I never have more than 3 bars and its usually 2. I was getting one disconnect per day for 10-15 mins without rebooting. Others mention much better signal strength and many more disconnects. I have a fairly constant network load and average 500-700MB of download per day.

I hope that the disconnects are a firmware issue and not a hardware issue. If there is a lot of hardware out there that not up to the design spec, I could see Verizon being very reluctant to replace all those cantannas. I would hate to be in those conference calls between the cantanna vendor and Verizon.

BillH442

If you want to log the service interruptions automatically, I found a decent ping logger gadget for Windows at: http://samwtucker.com/NetworkMonitor

It's free and easy to set up but doesn't work with Windows 8 and it may no longer be supported. I set my timeouts to 2000 ms, 2 retries before fail, and ping every 15 seconds. When an outage occurs or service is restored it can log to a file, display a popup message on your desktop, and/or play a sound.

Running it all day every day should consume about 6Mb of data a month.

scott21

Well what ever they done to mine it is great now.. no disconnect for 25 days nows. leave my service alone verizon lol.

VerizonFriend

What area of the country do you live in? I am in Columbus Ohio and am still haveing outages. Maybe they are rolling out a solution in one area of the country at a time. Glad to hear you arn't haveing problems now!

scott21

Hanceville, AL

BillH442

This week I've had almost no service. Doing the reboot dance sometimes works for a few minutes, then the 4G light starts blinking yellow. Often though all lights are green and the Cantenna is simply not connecting. The status shows connecting and 0 bars some days, but today it's showing connecting with 2 bars. It had been working normally with the usual dropouts until the cold weather hit us in Virginia this week. It also seems to drop out more for me in the mornings than mid-day. Maybe I have a bad Cantenna or it's temperature sensitive.

wendyhwarren

I too wonder if it's a temperature issue. Lately, I've had to unplug the Cantenna at the power source 3 times a day. This is a quick fix every time. I have a power inserter box that I unplug until the green light on the power inserter box (not the router) goes out. Takes about 20 seconds. Then I plug it back in and it works fine. However, I'm doing this way too often.

I have Verizon 4G service on my cellphone and that's working fine. Have ATT 3G service on my iPad. So it can't be a signal issue. Works fine.

They charge you once you go over the data limit. I wonder if they'll credit us when we're getting no data at all?

BillH442

I placed a call and was told basically the same thing, that a fix was on the way but still no ETA. But this week it's acting differently than last week. Sometimes I now have a blinking yellow 4G light, but the service is working fine for hours this way. When I told the Verizon engineer this, she was amazed as that indicates it's not authenticated to the network and shouldn't be working. Still having the random dropouts but at least it's up more than it's down this week.

TheThomas

I received a call from a knowledgeable Level 2 tech support agent from east coast call center last night requesting that I send him my system log file to help them with debugging the system. It was great to have them call me and also request meaningful info so that was a good sign that indeed a fix is on the way. If you go into the admin pages, there is an option to download the system log file. I sent two, one from the original Cantenna, and another from a recently replaced Canenna. Both have the problem (which was no surprise....) and he said they are working with the vendor to fix it. Send your log files to <Email address deleted per the ToS.> and he will send them to the developers. THANK YOU DANIEL! You were the first helpful person in about a dozen calls.

Hey Verizon, you should really be reaching out to community for this info and not having us do this on your behalf. I already have a day job in technology developing my own products, I don't want to have to develop yours at night. I have spent over 6 hours dealign with this and still dont have a reliable product.

Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

jonusko

If anyone at Verizon is relaying this info to the cantanna vendor... My connection has been up for ten days without a drop according to the log file. However, the cantanna status has not been available for at least ten days. It shows zero bars and the log file is full of warnings that it can't get the cantanna status. They need to fix this issue also. I am not rebooting my cantanna as long as the connection stays up. A reboot always gets the cantanna status back until it stops working again.

TheThomas

Apparently an internal notification went to the tech support team ~2 weeks ago stating this is a "known issue." He said a fix should be pushed out in the matter of weeks (not days and not months).

They asked for my System Log file for the Antenna to help with the debugging, you can find this in the Admin pane. From my file, I get a recurring "PDN" event which is when the antenna connection drops. It also looks like it regularly checks status at the top of every hour.

I sent my log to an agent, and have pasted other logs on threads. You may want to cut and paste your log file or call an agent to find out where to send it.

BillH442

I don't know if they have changed anything but I had an issue a couple days ago where no matter what I did, I couldn't get HF service back. All the while my phone had 4G service. This time the tech said to unplug everything and wait one minute. Then plug just the Cantenna in and wait 2 minutes, then plug the router in. After doing that, service came back and has not dropped since. The 4G light continues to blink yellow instead of green but everything works.

If this doesn't work, I'm thinking of placing my router inside a pentagram of salt and sacrificing stinkbugs on it. Seems as likely to work as anything else!

catkin

Hey!

I'm in Missouri, 65632. I got HomeFusion in August and the installer said the signal was great. 2 months later, it started degrading. Currently, it's amber all the time, although I have a connection MOST of the time. I've been reading this thread and am going to take some of the actions listed.

I have to say, Techs Juan, Sam and Terrill were great; but Victor, who closed out my tag, took the easy way out. Said my area was just marginal and that's what I'm going to get for full price. Lump it. Wasn't marginal in August and September!

How do we get them to upgrade? The BBB? Facebook? A contract should go both ways.

Any ideas? And has your connection gotten better?

gavin1066

My Home Fusion connection just got a lot worse...

Since Thursday afternoon, Feb 7th, I've been unable to receive a 4G signal.

Yet, I am able to get a strong 3G signal and voice on a Verizon smart phone and a ST Home Phone inside the house.

The snow storm did not affect my location of central VA.

I've had Home Fusion since July 19th 2012, and from day one it has been disconnecting multiple times daily.

The 3G smart phone and ST Home phone are far more reliable...

Updates:-

Feb 7: 4G signal dead...

Feb 11: 4G connection finally came back on Monday evening, but weak signal of 1/5 bars.

Feb 12: 4G signal dead again Tuesday morning....

Feb 13: 4G signal came back just before midnight on Wednesday, with 4/5 bars.

Feb 15: 4G signal still up and a constant 4 bars, but still experiencing the random disconnects.

I'm happy to have the 4G signal back, but the constant disconnects with 4 out of 5 bars of signal strength is pathetic.

Plus, it seems very shady to continue to offer HomeFusion, especially as a reliable internet connection, with this known issue!

BillH442

Well, my HF is down again and refuses to come back up. But in calling support yesterday, they confirmed that a software patch is scheduled for the "end of the month or the first of next month". Let's hope it solves some of these issues.

BillH442

Well, 2nd day with no HF service. New router wasn't delivered today as promised. Called Assurion (yea - I bought the service contract) and was told that it normally takes 2-3 DAYS to PROCESS the order. I guess they don't know about things called computers at Assurion, and carrier pigeons are more reliable - at least more reliable than Home Fusion!

Anyway, I guess I'm going to be down for a few more days. I doubt the router is even the issue. Lights continue to blink green on router but Cantenna light is solid red. Surprisingly it actually connects every now and then for a minute or two.

gavin1066

There should be two lights on the cantenna. The "Coax Network" light representing the connection between the cantenna and the router. While the "Link Quality Indicator", LQI, light representing the 4G/LTE connection.

During the week my Home Fusion connection was down, the LQI light was solid red while the "Coax" light was solid green. The 4G/LTE light on the router seems almost meaningless...

Most likely the blood from the stinkbugs has shorted out your router, or it's salt corrosion.

BillH442

We have an abundance of stinkbugs here for sure, but no salt water for hundreds of miles.

Yes, the Coax light on the Cantenna is solid green and the LQI is solid red. But I can stand 15 feet below the Cantenna and see 4 bars of 4G service on my phone, so whatever is going on seems unrelated to the signal from the tower. This morning it was working with nothing being done, but the LQI is still red. Very odd.

b55driver

Welcome to March... and no fix yet. I lose connection in South Central VA twice a day requiring HBA reboot and have several more smaller interruptions each day. I also have the file download corruption that has been mentioned for months on this thread. Installation was mid-July. Repeated PDN events, ME PDN ACT 1 - state 9 (0).

Looking forward to a fix soon... please!

briens

This has gotten progressively more and more frustrating. I am about at the end of my rope now. I was dropping for ~15 minutes every 2 days for for most of this month (when I started actually tracking the drops). As of this week it has been more than 1 per day, and in the last 12 hours it has now dropped 3 times, with the latest being for over 20 minutes, even with a reboot of the HBA.

I really hope that Verizon and the vendor are working hard to get a fix for this. I am quite prepared to move my ~$300/month away from Verizon if things don't change soon.

jonusko

I have 139 events like that in my log, but my service has only dropped 3 times since Feb 16th. which show up as "Forced IMS disconnection (0)" in the log. I am actually fearful of the planned patch because I don't want my service to degrade like others on this forum. I have poor reception and relatively good service which is thousands of times better than my previous satellite service. If I had the issues that others are experiencing, I would have to switch back to satellite since I work from home and need a reliable internet connection. When they push that patch out, they better be 100% sure it fixes the connection issues and does not cause any regression.

gavin1066

Most likely your connection has dropped far more than three times since Feb 16th.

People that just use Home Fusion for just browsing websites are far less likely to notice the disconnections.

They do not require a constant reliable internet connection, plus the connection can come back up in 5-15 minutes.

If you're streaming video, doing online gaming or using VOIP and need a constant reliable connection,

you will notice every disconnection. I signed up for Home Fusion hoping for a reliable connection.

Unofficially, Verizon technical support has acknowledged the issue but has been dragging its feet.

Instead, Verizon blames the vendor's firmware, yet continues to sell Home Fusion ?!??

I really hope Verizon gets its act together and finally resolves this issue this weekend.

Or at least formally announce the issue and any scheduled fixes on this website....

jonusko

I am logged in 24 hours a day. I use WebEx for meetings (VoIP plus screen sharing) around 5 hours a day or more. My Outlook, Skype, Communicator clients are connected 24x7. I usually keep the VPN connection to the office up all of the time. I notice when any connection drops. The VPN does drop more frequently, but not because the HF connection went down. Whenever anything drops, I check my HF connection. I only lose the HF connection when the log shows a forced disconnect.

The overall service is so good, I have stopped using my home phone or cell phone for business calls or meetings. I use the WebEx VoIP for all calls because the sound quality is superior.

BillH442

After being down for 11 days, an Assurion tech came yesterday morning and said that I only had 51% signal strength according to an App that Verizon provides them. It wasn't Open Signal. He was able to get a high level engineer from Verizon on the phone and they agreed that the minimum signal strength needs to be at least 60% for reliable service. They both agreed that HF shouldn't have been installed at my location. There is a tower closer to me that is still only 3G so they decided to "suspend" my service until that tower gets turned on and we can evaluate service at that time. To their credit, Verizon waived suspension fees and credited me for the down time.

Meanwhile I picked up a 4G USB Modem, plugged it into a Cradlepoint router located within 10 feet of the Cantenna, and it works beautifully. It occasionally falls back to 3G and there is a few seconds lag when it switches over but at least I maintain service. It just seems odd that a small 4G device located inside a house would perform as well or better than a huge outdoor antenna on the roof.

I also asked the Verizon engineer about the software patch and he told me it had not yet been released by the vendor.

vbush

I have made it 24hrs without a disconnect so it appears the new firmware may have helped.

jonusko

My connection dropped again today in the middle of a WebEx. It took 13 minutes to reconnect on its own - I did not reboot HF. My iPad had 4G LTE connectivity while HF was down and trying to reconnect. My firmware upgrade occurred on 3/16. Since the upgrade I have had drops on: 3/17, 3/19, 3/20 and 3/22. Prior to the upgrade I had drops on: 3/8 and 3/14. Today, I called Verizon Support to inform them that my HF connectivity appears to be worse after the upgrade and it is not as stable as my iPad. They said they were not aware of this issue and would get back to me.

novaflyer

Mine dropped 2-3 times today and came back after rebooting the router…don’t know yet whether I’m going to keep the service. I don’t remember whether it’s 14 days to cancel or one month. Has anyone contacted Verizon during that timeframe and questioned whether they would consider you continuing the service on a month to month basis, since we’re all beta testers with this?

Paul

vbush

Yep, I dropped again today and had to reboot both HA and HR to get back connected. This is really a crying shame on VZW's part, as the service is top notch if it would just hold connection. I would almost be happy to reboot once a day or so if it would prevent the unexpected drops. I really can't believe this issue didn't come up when they were testing before the national rollout. If it did, they should have never rolled this out until they found and corrected the problem. I tend to believe the problem is with the HA. I don't understand why they didn't use the HA as a powered antenna and use something like http://www.netgear.com/home/products/mobile-broadband/4g-mobile-broadband/MBR1515.aspx as the router. The problem is not the 4GLTE, so it as to be an issue with the HA connection to the HR. This is really disappointing.

scott21

I agree but i think nothing gonna get done right till some other company makes HF hardware period.

joeldr

To all,

I got HF system in December and had periodic drops talked to support and they sent me out a new router. The new router still dropped me periodically, so I tried something unorthodox. I had an ASUS RT N66U spare router which is a Dual band wireless supporting both 2g and 5g. I ran a cat 5 cable from the Ethernet port on the Verizon HR to the WAN port of the ASUS and turned off wi-fi on the Verizon router. I connected my Dell to Ethernet port on the ASUS and my wife's IMAC connects through wireless 5g. I've been running this configuration since February and rarely have drops. This last week I saw that I received the new firmware for the HA but don't know what effect if any it had. Hope this might help someone if they happen to have a spare router which supports piggybacking to the WAN port.

b55driver

I have been in this configuration for a few months now. That is: turned off the router's wireless and use another wireless that is cable connected to the router. It makes no difference to my stability. And that is because the HBR is not causing outages. It stays up for days/weeks. It is the HBA that causes the problems for me.

The things that do make a difference to my HF's stability are:

1) turning off the Vonage modem. The SIP protocol commands required for voice seem to bring down the unit every two hours.

2) Not using HF to connect my VZwireless iPhones and iPads. They seem to cause the system to hang more often. I do need to connect them from time to time, either to print things on my wireless printer, or to download an update that will not download unless I am attached wirelessly. That last one is an interesting limitation because both ways of connecting will end up at the same cell tower. My guess is that it is not the i-things that are an issue. But just the total number of sessions active at one time.

With those limitations, I get a day or two of stability with the latest firmware releases before the antenna side hangs. And I have two-three times a day 3-5 minute outages while the antenna attaches to a 1-bar cell. It believes it is connected. But no data is transferred. Eventually it goes back to the 3-bar cell and things start to move again.

Full disclosure: my antenna is temporally moved to a different location while my home is renovated. Normally I would have a stronger signal. On the other hand, all my i-things are happy with the signal they see inside the house. I would think that a dedicated antenna would do better than they would. And when I was in the four to five bar area I still dropped twice a day on the older HBA firmware.

Summary: new firmware -- slightly better under some situations, significantly worse for VOIP using the SIP protocol. And on its best day not as good as my iPhone or iPad.

MADempsey

I am a recent customer as well as all of you. Noticing the same thing with my VPN dropping. Failures about once an hour. I already have the 20.9.49.300.49 firmware version in the HBA. I have excellent signal strength. 5 bars 24x7.

I received a follow-up call from Verizon this morning. Mentioned that I am in a marginal area (contrary to my 5-bars comment) and that a code update is coming that may address this problem. I sure hope they don't mean the version that is already installed!

TheThomas

My router never accepted the new firmware udpate and was stuck on 8.8.H.G. They sent a new Router in the mail, stating that it would be updated prior to me getting it but it was not. I was sent the "K" version and not the "L" version. Seems the Cantenna is not stable enough to get the update from the Router so they are sending a truck out to replace what will be my 3rd Cantenna. I have little faith this will fix the problem but continue to go through the motions since having this initially installed the first week of January 2013. The Jetpack they loaned me has been rock solid and a past tech support rep tunneled into my Catennna and said I have enough coverage so it is not a coverage issue (even though the Network team that handles the tower quickly dismisses this as a coverage area, which the facts don't support).

I am hoping that during the Cantenna activation process, all systems will be updated (like a *228 on a mobile phone) and will shock me back into shape.

I have ~15 hours of tech support call time with this issue.

novaflyer

I just brought mine back today (14th day). It just wouldn’t stay up. There’s a tech scheduled who didn’t arrive in time, but I presume that they would have replaced the cantenna. I just didn’t want to be stuck with a termination fee if it didn’t work. As an alternative, you could always get a 4G USB stick and plug it into a CradlePoint MBR1400 (or other CradlePoint flavor) router to achieve the same thing and hook up Vonage for phone service. Verizon’s bulk data plans are more reasonable than AT&T’s.

Paul <Email signature removed for privacy per the Verizon Wireless Terms of Service.>

Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

mymy0513

The Cantenna has a problem maintaining the connecting with the tower..... Where is you cantenna located?

MyMy

MADempsey

It is on the roof (single story) on the east side of the building. But why every 50 minutes?

Sent from my iPad

mymy0513

If your Cantenna is on the roof, I am assuming it has a clear line of sight to the cell tower. The problem may be with the router heating up and shutting down. Put you hand on the router by the red sticker on the front of the router. The one that says "Phone Service Not Supported At This Time", if that area is considerably warmer the the rest of the router, that may be the problem.

MADempsey

All,

I wanted to follow-up and let everyone know that Verizon technical network services team was able to identify the source of my (disconnecting briefly every 50 minutes) problem. They ran a detailed trace and discovered that I have/had a device on my network that was reaching out to a static WWW i.p. address using an invalid source I.P. address. (Source I.P. Violation)

You see, my HomeFusion router dynamically assigns I.P. addresses in a range (192.168.1.nnn) This device was given one of those addresses - however it was also communicating with another unroutable I.P. address of 10.8.12.249. When I disabled this device the problem disappeared. The device is the Western Digital TV Live Hub. Specifically, I can make the problem come and go if I turn on the Mobile Access feature.

I have opened a case (Which they quickly turned into a future enhancement request) requesting that they only use a network address within the valid range.

Kudos to the Network Service Team, for taking the time to troubleshoot this for me. Sure beats some of the tier 1 and 2 support resolutions of allowing me to terminate my service or swapping out equipment.

TheThomas

Ah Ha. Very interesting. I have my HF Router plugged into my network which also has a NAS and about 20 other devices on it. Perhaps there is a conflict someplace. I will check this out and report back.

offgrid

I just wanted to post my experience with th HF dropping daily.

I have a Mifi hotspot as well as HF at home. I live off of the grid with solar power so leaving the router and Cantenna plugged in is not an optioin. (The installer told me to unplu the Cantenna from the wall when not in use).

Observation #1:

When I plug the Cantenna in and turn on the router sometimes the Cantenna refuses to connect no matter how many reboots/power cycles I do. BUT, when I turn on my MiFi hotspot the Cantenna connects immediately. So what is happening there? Any suggestions are much appreciated.

cjrhea

Home Fusion is becoming worthless for me. I was a ClearWave customer (slower technology, but was very reliable) and switched to HF per Verizon's incentives. Since day-one, speeds have been great, but unreliable technology:

1. Multiple drops per day.

2. Corrupted downloads of large files (e.g., patches for either Microsoft or Apple Mac).

In order to get UN-Corrupted downloads, I need to either:

1. Pay for media from the supplier.

2. Physically take my computer(s) to a location that has reliable Internet service.

Verizon support is useless-- "Have you unplugged/rebooted your router and antenna?" is about all they can handle.

These issues have been around since the start of the HF product (and reported by many users), yet Verizon has not addressed them.

I live in a rural area and have very limited options for Internet connectivity.

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