I have a 1 Gbps connection with an ISP that rents another telecommunications company’s fiber. That telecom owns the ONT in my apartment.

I had an electrician fix the heated floor in my bathroom a few weeks ago. He had to turn off the main breaker for safety reasons, which also cut power to the ONT. After turning the power back on, my speeds had dropped from 1 Gbps to circa 100 Mbps. I filed a ticket with my ISP, who resolved the issue by having the telecom do something at their end, they said. (Sounds software-y/configuration-y.)

Yesterday, I f*cked my router (a raspberry pi with openwrt) up by flashing the latest pre-release firmware on it. I lost all connections and the Pi wouldn’t recognize any of its hardware interfaces. As part or my “routine”, I rebooted my devices in this order: my APs, my routers and, lastly, my ONT. After some diagnosing, I identified that the problem was indeed the new firmware on the router/Pi. But then I noticed that my speeds had dropped, so I gauged the speeds directly at the ONT and, lo and behold, they were down to 100 Mbps again. I have, yet again, filed a ticked with my ISP, waiting to hear from them now.

My question, just out of curiosity, to those of you that have the knowledge/experience: what could be going on the telecom’s end? Is there a correlation/plausible technical explanation between my connection speeds dropping and restarting or cutting the power to the ONT?

  • isgleas@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    Afaik, ISPs retain access to their provided equipment in order to troubleshoot. With this in mind, looks like they made some changes on your router/ont remotely fixing the original issue, but somehow they either not saved such changes, or your router/ont reverted to defaults after the power cycle.

    If you have access to the equipment, take a look at every configuration on the device and take notes, then get the isp reconfigure and then compare.

    If this is the case, your device may be faulty. Verify by powercycling it again, and atk for a replacement (if applies)

    • emotional_soup_88@programming.devOPEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      That’s great insight! I think I’ll ask them when they get back to me on the current ticket, why the ONT doesn’t retain the setting after a power cycle (if that indeed is the case). I unfortunately don’t have any legitimate way to interface with the ONT and I really don’t want to get on their bad side by trying to hook something up in a MacGyver fashion. Worst case scenario, they charge me $200 in technician fees if they find out that I accidentally messed something up in the process.

  • BluescreenOfDeath@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    I can’t say for certain that this is what is happening, but it would fit.

    I work for an ISP and deal with problems like this a lot.

    In our system, we have a master keeper of information. We call it “The Biller”. It keeps all the records of what services you have and at what tiers.

    Then, there’s the fiber optic equipment. There’s a small building somewhere near your area that houses the equipment on the other end of your fiber optic line.

    By default, the biller and the fiber optic equipment don’t communicate with eachother, so there’s some middleware software that ‘provisions’ the service automatically.

    When I get these kinds of complaints, there’s generally some software glitch or misconfiguration in either the biller or the provisioning software. When provisioning is triggered, the middleware queries the biller for the information about your service (what services do you have [TV, data, phone?], what are their features [channel lineups, speed profile, calling plan, etc], what equipment is used to deliver that service [ONT serial number, etc]) and it builds a configuration file that gets sent to the fiber optic frame equipment in your area to set those services up on the device you have in your home.

    For some reason, when you reboot your ONT and it fetches a configuration file from the OLT, that configuration file is saying you should only get 100Mbps. When you call in to support, my bet is the support agent is manually fixing the speed profile on the OLT without looking into why the OLT is getting the wrong speed profile.

    It’s likely an issue with your account, and unfortunately it’s squeaky wheels that get the grease. If you want this resolved, I would recommend making it happen a lot one day. Just keep rebooting your ONT and calling in to support. Eventually, someone will find and fix the problem.

    • emotional_soup_88@programming.devOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Thank you so much for sharing your first hand experience! I’ll make sure to point out when they contact me that this can’t keep happening every time there’s a reboot.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    When it’s in this state, does the OpenWRT interface status show the speed as 100M or 1G for the WAN port?

    Assuming OpenWRT shows it as 100M, it sounds like it’s negotiating the port speed to 100 Mbps rather than 1000 Mbps.

    Have you tried a different ethernet cable to the ONT and/or checked the port for any lint, dust, or other debris? Could be an issue with the ONT but I’d rule out any simple things like a dirty port / bad cable first.

    You might also try, if you haven’t already, a different device than your router connected directly to the ONT and see what speed ethernet negotiates and if it also only runs at 100 Mbps (to rule out anything with the Pi itself)

    • emotional_soup_88@programming.devOPEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      Thanks for the advice on ruling out physical “dirt” factors! I rarely think of those…

      Regarding the negotiated speeds, I’m unsure where to find them. Neither the interfaces page, nor the status page nor an ip link shows anything speed related (other than the MTUs but those have always been set to 1500).

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Mine shows up on the main Overview page like in your second screenshot:

        To check from terminal, assuming your WAN interface is eth1:

        cat /sys/class/net/eth1/speed

        Should be 1000 for 1 Gbps, or 100 for 100 Mbps.

        Either end (ONT or Pi) could cause the auto negotiation to drop to 100 Mbps. Since that’s the consistent speed you’re seeing, I’m inclined to believe that’s the problem though the “why” is up in the air. Like I said, try a different ethernet cable and different device connected directly to the ONT and see if it negotiates at 1000 Mbps.

        • emotional_soup_88@programming.devOPEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Every interface under ../net/ returns 1000. Unfortunately, I don’t have any other devices with which to interface directly with the ONT. But then again, there’s just a gigabit switch between the Pi and the ONT… Anyway, thank you so much for indulging me! I’ve learned a lot! :)

          • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            Well, if it’s negotiating at 1 Gbps but you’re only getting 100 Mbps, assuming the Pi router itself is fine, then yeah, sounds like something upstream from you on the ISP side (ONT provisioning, etc).

            On the plus side, when you engage support next you can let them know you’ve ruled this out so there’s at least that much progress lol.

            • emotional_soup_88@programming.devOPEnglish
              21·
              3 days ago

              Just as a bonus: this lead me to discover why wan/eth1 didn’t show up on the status page. I had to add “device” and “protocol” under “network” in /etc/board.json

              Two birds.