What kind of maintenance was it?

IsE

I have been using Fizz mobile and home internet services since the early stages. I also recommended Fizz to 6 or 7 friends. Today at a get together 3 of my friends said they have been having the same internet cuts during the day especially in the morning when the work starts. I have been on vacation, but my roommate has to go to her office because of the cuts we experience.

I restart the modem, I wait 10 minutes, I make sure only the modem uses wall outlet. I have been using the same setup for more than a year now. Nothing changed on my end. But since the 2nd of September, the modem loses connection and gets it back in 3 minutes. I cannot connect to my company VPN like this.

So what was this maintenance? What was actually done? My friends are in Verdun and I am in Villeray - St-Michel area in Montreal. We all experience the same issue. Could it because you cannot support the number of current subscribers?

Thanks

Emporium

Hey @IsE

Thanks for the update. Keep us posted. Hope it is something simple.

Blue lights turning to flashing green is a clear indication that your modem is losing sync. Could be a grounding issue. I had a similar problem ages ago in an appartment I used to live, and the tech had simply added a grounding block on the coax in the junction box outside, and ran a ground wire to a grounding strap that was around my hydro meter. My good old samsung inforanger cable modem was so much happier afterwards.

I have not noticed any bufferbloat, but I don't use any routing features of the modem. I switched the modem into bridge mode, and I use my own OPNsense firewall box and have all sorts of trafficshaping rules now, to keep the kids from hogging all the bandwidth and leaving me with none for my IPTV :) Both kids often tend to update their steam libraries at the same time and that was killing me when they would each download gigs of updates and no throttle.

IsE

Update: Technician arrived a few days ago and changed the cables outside the house. Haven't had a single issue since then.

StefanM

Same here, I intermittently experience latency issues. It has nothing to do with the router as I am using the Fizz provided modern in bridge mode. I'm located in Westmount and see lots of Videotron vehicles driving around. There is definitely something going on and I hope Fizz figures it out soon.

Mataze

It has been very Rock'n'roll the last few days with vieotron network. They had major issue in the last few weeks and I guess they are working hard to fix everything.

Whizz

Hello IsE,

I am sorry to hear about this situation.
I just verified your connection and I can see a large number of disconnections were detected.
I recommend testing the modem using a different electrical outlet if possible and try to avoid using extenders and surge protectors. 
Here you can also find more troubleshooting you can try: https://fizz.ca/en/faq/my-wi-fi-network-cutting-how-do-i-fix-it
If the issue still persists please contact our support for further investigations. 

Have a lovely day,
-Alex

IsE

Yeah, I tried that too. I am in chat now. I am back to work on Monday. I cannot continue using the internet service the way it is now.

Here are the things I did so far:

I plugged it in a different electric outlet.

I turned it off and waited 15 minutes before plugging it in.

I factory reset the modem.

I put the modem in bridge mode and used my own router with it.

I did all these on different days.

I used my router the limit to internet speed to 80%.

This started to happen on the 2nd of September.

Emporium

Hi @IsE

Did Customer service chat yield anything ?

Did they check the line to see if the signal is at normal levels ? Can they see the disconnections on thier end ? When you lose internet, do the blue lights go green and flash, or at the lights still blue, but just no internet ?

BTW: Do you have your modem vertical or lying down on it's side ? I have seen a few people put it on it's side. Keep in mind that this in the long term can cause failure of the modem, since it's designed to sit vertically (CPU heatsink and ventholes are on the topside). Also if you are using the WiFi features of the modem, you would be losing 1/3 of your antenna, since some antenna would be on the underside of the modem if it is lying down on it's side.

IsE

https://forum.fizz.ca/en/discussion/comment/6588346#Comment_6588346

Hey @Emporium

Fizz will send a technician. If it is somehow my fault, they will charge me for the service. I will update this thread with the result.

The modem has always been upright. it had enough space. The line cuts, blue light turns to a flashing green, then turns back to blue eventually. They do see that my internet is not stable.

The last Question I was asked was whether the cable is connected to modem properly. I had checked that already. The modem has been in the same place without any change for the last one year. The only thing I changed one year ago was the addition of a new router and limiting my speed to 100 Mbps instead of 120 so that I would face less issues with bufferbloat. Bufferbloat thing was not there at the beginning. It became an issue when Fizz updated the modem firmware. My new router fixed the issue. So I was happy for a year, and then September 2nd happened. :) And since that day, my internet is not as stable as anyone would like. My internet has been stable since 2 pm today. But the issue usually comes back in the morning during business hours.

Cheers,

Idefizz

https://forum.fizz.ca/en/discussion/comment/6588352#Comment_6588352

Hi Emporium,

A bit off topic but out of curiosity what brought you to OPNSense over pfSense or any other solution? Hardware availability (DEC600 series look sharp)? Features? I'm considering playing with one of these one day...

Emporium

@Idefizz

I chose OPNsense over PFSense, mostly due to the transparency. I was an early user of the original m0n0wall project, and liked the vision and the OPNsense split from pfsense was to keep that original vision alive. But for my purposes either one would have been sufficient.

My old Asus AC3200 router was approaching end of life, even with 3rd party merlin firmware. I did switch to a ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite that I had for a while and it was fine. BUT I wanted something that I could enable both IDS/IPS without it choking. So I already had a little quad core PC (which I had bought for another purpose) so I configured it with OPNsense, put it behind my existing router (double NAT initially), and started running a few tests to see how I liked it over a month. Once it was configured the way I wanted, and I was happy with it's performance, I planned the move to using the box as my main router. I decided that since I was changing ISP (went with fizz) i would switch at the same time. Have had no issue with it, and it works like a charm.

For hardware, I am using a small PC, similar to this one I'd have to check for exact model - I've had it from another project). No fans to make noise, it is low power consumption, and it remains cool due to its case being used as a heatsink. Has 8GB of RAM, and I installed a spare Micron entrerprise grade 256GB SSD I also had lying around. Downloaded latest OPNsense image and it installed without a hitch.

I did not have to worry about WiFi, since I did not use the WiFi of my router (asus) anyhow, since I already have a few Cisco WAP in my network setup which handle all my WiFi traffic.

Idefizz

https://forum.fizz.ca/en/discussion/comment/6588403#Comment_6588403

Thank you very much for the quick and very detailed response! 👍️ Makes me want to play with these even more :)