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Verizon FIOS Internet woes ... any advice?

G

GCS

Diamond Member
Ok fellas bear with me as I explain ...

My office was always on Verizon DSL and had very little trouble. The only downside was that it wasn't fast enough for the VPN work we do from home. About 8 months ago we switched to Verizon FIOS.

Ever since FIOS went in Internet surfing, website address resolution etc has been hideously SLOW! Downloading files, uploading files, and VPN work has been superb.

I have researched and tried EVERYTHING I can find/think of and no luck. I have even tried OpenDNS as well with 0 luck.

Verizon takes no responsibility whatsoever since they come out and hook to the modem and all is well.

Our setup is as follows:

Verizon FIOS
Actiontec FIOS modem -- Set to BRIDGE MODE
Clearpath SNAPVPN box
Gigabit Network Switches
Computers


All computers have a set IP address on the network. We have tried several different DNS server options that I have found on the net and seems to have no affect.

We are at our end here and really need some help. We are willing to even pay to have someone come and fix our problems but have no idea who to call (or trust for that matter) that won't charge us $1,000 + and not fix the problem and blame someone else for the trouble.

Thanks in advance!!

Greg


UPDATE:

Ok here is the update as of 4:47pm 1/22/2009. Spent the last 5 hours or so on the phone with Tech Support at Clearpath (SNAP VPN folks) and after exhaustive testing and troubleshooting we have discovered 3 problems.

1 - SNAP box had a feature turned on that currently has a bug in it and their engineering dept. is working on the fix. At the moment they have turned this feature off so it is no longer causing any delays.

2 - SNAP box had improper memory allocation. They reallocated the memory from 2mb to 7mb so that will no longer be an issue.

3 - This is the more serious issue. There is a problem with Verizon FIOS coming into our building. After tying into the modem directly and "mimicing" the SNAP box everything worked great EXCEPT -- approximately every 3-4 mins we would lose connection for about 10-12 seconds. The connection would restore itself and then be fine for another 3-4 mins or so. This is our main culprit.

The Clearpath tech set up a constant ping to us from outside and whenever I noticed a slowdown on my end (or got completely stuck) he would lose 5-6 pings every time.

I have Verizon coming out tomorrow to address the issue. Hopefully they can fix it.

Will update more once I know.
 
You need to give a lot more information if you want help? Such as a speedtest or really anything that gives us actual numbers. Unplug all other computers from the FIOS except for one and then try a speedtest and see what happens. You have to try eliminating things and see if a device is causing your issues. Another thing, is your VPN box a router/firewall? If so, why don't you just try removing the actiontec box? FIOS doesn't use PPPOE so you can use any router (unless your WAN is coming thru on coax which for a business, I'd have verizon change to ethernet instead of coax/moca)
 
Speedtest is just fine. We are on 20mb up 20mb down service. We get about 18mb down and 14mb up every time we do a speedtest.

I have removed everything from the system and connected 1 computer to the VPN box and still experience the same issues.

SNAP VPN is s firewall/router device. It has a connection for the modem and a connection for the network and that's all. It provides hardware firewall protection and a dedicated VPN tunnel

The SNAP device is connected VIA DHCP to the modem.

FIOS is hooked up via ethernet.

The Actiontec is the MODEM/ROUTER combo unit with wireless built in (wireless is turned off as well as all firewall protection built into it). Therefore I cannot remove it from the system. That is also why the unit is working in Bridged mode as it was the only way to allow us to use the SNAP VPN service (which we have had for about 3-4 years now)

Greg
 
So are you SURE it's a name resolution problem? For example type "nslookup" at a command prompt. That will allow you to make DNS queries to whatever server you are configured to use. You should get an answer within a second or two. If not then you've got slow name resolution. You could try setting a machine for all DHCP to make sure it's getting the correct dns info from your provider, you may be pointing at an old one.

So powerdown your modem, wait at least 60 seconds then power it up. Same with a computer.
 
Start typing in fully qualified domain names like - www.yahoo.com to see how fast your queries are answered. The other option is to load up wireshark and get packet traces to see where the delay is taking place.
 
Loading webites via www.****.com take forever.

Loading Anandtech takes at least 30 seconds minimum, yahoo 25 seconds, MSN a minute, ebay 30-45 seconds, IRS - 10 seconds, Microsoft - a minute, other lesser sites I could navigate to and then go get lunch and come back and it might be ready.

Also we get A LOT of Page Not Found errors.

Not that this means anything but I also cannot get into the Forza Forums at all.

FYI we are not blocking ANY websites here (yes you can even get to pr0n)

Greg
 
I should also mention that email checks often get hung as well. Not all the time but out of say 50 checks a day I would say at least 20 of those will hang and either take a long time to check or will simply state error and not check email.

Greg
 
Sounds like the problem is that SNAP thing. If you can take that out of the picture, hook ONE computer to the modem and it works that will help point the finger at it. It may be doing some kind of funky UDP inspection and that's messing with DSN queries. Also make sure you aren't blocking ICMP MTU path detection - you need to allow ALL icmp unreachables.
 
To OP: Are you sure it's DNS problem? Since you said the name resolution is fast, but loading the websites is slow. Have you tried to use tracert utility to check different websites?

It looks to me probably the network is not configured properly, and there is some looping traffic.
 
Whenever dealing with any sort of telecom carrier, you will be expected to "test from the demarc." In this case, that means hooking up a known good PC directly to their ONT. Always do that and test from there. As soon as you introduce your wiring and your equipment, you'll find that any telecom carrier really just wants to point the finger at your end.

There are programs out there that will do a continuous ping and report a running loss total/percentage. Leave one of those on overnight.

The FIOS service techs should carry a laptop that is their known-good PC to test with at the demarc point. If you can get a tech out, have them do a continuous ping. If things are as intermittent as you describe, this should be easy to spot.

That said, FIOS is based on technologies with enough management that they should be able to see if your link is going up and down like you describe. At least, technologically. The people you can actually talk with don't seem to have access to any of the actual gear, only an OSS that hides it all away 🙁
 
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