[colug-432] Insight Broadband Dynamic IP Problem

[Rick Troth]

By coincidence, this morning (Sat) I got hit with a couple of "almost"
outages.  77% packet loss from one 'ping' run.

When these discussions come up, I can't help but wonder how much of
the problem is related to buffer bloat.  That's a known issue.

-- R; <><


On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Rob Stampfli <res at colnet.cmhnet.org> wrote:
> This is not directly Linux related, but I suspect it might be a good
> place to garner some information about a problem that's been driving
> me crazy recently.  My apologies if it is out of line.
>
> I am an Insight broadband subscriber.  Since January 7th, my IP address
> has been changing every day or two.  Now, while I do not pay for a static
> address, I don't expect it to change while I'm in the middle of doing
> something.  I've been left high-and-dry while watching a movie, while
> on a VoIP call, and when I'm just ssh'ed and working to one of my servers.
> It's very frustrating.  Before this, my IP rarely changed, perhaps once a
> year or so.
>
> The problem seems to be due to an inability of my router to renew its
> DHCP lease:  Insight seems to be forwarding the DHCP Discover packet,
> which culminates in an IP address being assigned, but not the Unicast
> DHCP renewal packet.  Thus, the IP address eventually expires.  It
> also looks like there are multiple DHCP servers on the Insight LAN, as
> I'm being assigned IPs out of several different pools.  I suspect this
> is due to changes being made with Insight's acquisition by Time Warner.
> See:
>
> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26576944-TWC-Fail-to-renew-TWC-DHCP-issued-WAN-IP-address-Kansas-
>
> I'd think this would be a major problem, but the Insight people won't
> tip their hat either way.  All they want to do is offer to send a tech
> out to check the signal levels (already done, and NTF) and try to
> convince me to get rid of any router and "connect your PC directly to
> the modem", which I tell them is not an option.  (Does anyone except
> my aunt run with a PC directly connected to the modem anymore?) They
> don't/won't give me a list of routers that they support.
>
> I'm using an old ZyXEL P324 router which has served me well until now.
> I've tried several others, including another P324 and a ZyWALL 2 Plus,
> and they all behave the same way.
>
> Several questions:
>
> 1.  Are others experiencing this problem, or is it just me?
>
> 2.  If you are/have experienced this, what are you doing about it?
>    Or, better yet, how did you resolve the problem?
>
> 3.  I have the option of moving to WOW broadband here, and am considering
>    doing just that.  What are people's experiences with WOW?  I can also
>    move to AT&T U-verse, although that is a less attractive option for me.
>    In particular, I'm a bit concerned I may not be able to run my own DNS
>    LAN server with WOW.  WOW used to block external access to port 53.
>    Does anyone know if this is a problem?
>
> Thanks in advance.
> Rob
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-- 
-- R;   <><