Kopete IM problems

[taimatsu]

I am getting really pissed off. Our internet connection is slow at the moment, but I can load things I want to load 90% of the time, and it's all usable if not fantastic. EXCEPT that I am having huge enormous problems with Google Talk and MSN Messenver via Kopete (running on Debian Linux, on KDE). I have just updated everything and it's not helping. The Google Talk problem is less serious - it does actually connect sometimes and work. MSN either does not connect at all, no matter how often I try, or, when it does deign to show up as connected, it will not deliver any messages - anything I send comes back with a 'was not delivered correctly' message, and I don't get any messages from others. LJ Jabber, ICQ and Yahoo all seem to work ok, but MSN and GTalk have by far my largest number of contacts and I really want to get them working. Does anyone have any ideas what this could be about?

Comments

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

MSN has a particularly laborious protocol, in particular, it requires three timeouts before it will tell you your message wasn't delivered. That, or there may actually be a problem with the MSN servers.

Given that your connection is slow, I would suspect that either the line is wonky (since you've been having engineers and all) or other people in the house are overloading it. MSN tends to break more easily under these conditions, I don't really know why. It's ADSL? I've known lots of people that have had to have the line tuned over a period of weeks before performance becomes good and reliable.

Here's a couple of tests that might help find where the problem is:

ping www.google.com

Leave that running for about 10 lines, then hit ctrl-c, which will give you a summary. Post the summary :)

traceroute www.google.com

Leave it running till it produces a line with all stars, ctrl-c, post the whole lot. Bear in mind that will show your IP, so email instead if you'd rather.

[taimatsu]

It's the NTL broadband thing, which I believe is cable not ASDL, but don't quote me. It's similar to what i had at Pell Street, though I don't know what capacity line we have here.

Tests - cool, will post in a mo.

[taimatsu]

test 1:

--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
14 packets transmitted, 14 received, 0% packet loss, time 53333ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 5544.872/7316.115/8888.686/1200.208 ms, pipe 8


Just before that I left it running for longer and got:
--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
67 packets transmitted, 65 received, 2% packet loss, time 494996ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 5609.233/7912.256/9986.249/974.245 ms, pipe 10

[oneplusme.livejournal.com]

That's a quite staggering amount of latency right there...

On my 4Mbit-ish ADSL I get:
--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6005ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 36.832/38.793/41.535/1.431 ms

Something is very clearly Not Right with your net connection. It wouldn't be at all surprising if things were behaving flakily under conditions where it takes 8 seconds for a round-trip packet.

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

You have tremendously long, but consistent, ping times. This normally means that your network is congested. Either you have too much traffic in your neighbourhood, or, much more likely I would guess, someone in your house is bittorrenting like a fiend.

I'm guessing you are using a hardware router? ie, a box not a computer. If so, you will probably have to ask around and get whoever is filesharing to turn on rate limiting on uploads somehow. If you are lucky enough that they have Azureus, it is Options -> Transfer -> Auto-Speed -> Enable when downloading and seeding.

If your router is a proper computer, you can run software that will automatically make everyone play nice together (whether they want to or not, which is what I do).

[taimatsu]

We keep asking around if someone is downloading things and everyone says no, apparently. I have my suspicions as to who it might be but really it could be anyone. I have fired up KTorrent once or twice in the last week but, you know, not actually got anywhere with downloading anything because the connection's so crap. :)

We have a standard NTL cable modem and a combination wireless router thing.

[brrm.livejournal.com]

We have a standard NTL cable modem and a combination wireless router thing

Just a thought - is there a password on the wireless network, or could the traffic be being leeched by neighbour(s)?

[(Anonymous)]

The poster who says you could have someone nearby stealing your wireless is quite right; it's a possibility. If the router has WPA, turn it on. Even if it only has WEP, at least it means some people might not bother using your connection. Do not think "Oh, I can't be bothered to turn it on" :P If it's not configured currently it will stop all housemates from connecting, so maybe let them know first ;)

You could also have problems with the signal strength to the modem. This is far less common with cable, but has happened to me once. Probably you will get the router config page if you go to 192.168.100.1 - see if there is a section telling you signal strength and signal to noise ratio and other gubbins. If you find this is a problem, you can't fix it, but you can get an engineer round to tweak it. This should cause aa unreliable connection though, not one with long ping times.

There is a slim possibility your router can tell you who is using what proportion of the bandwidth - a real computer router can do this. One thing it should definitely say is which IPs are connecting to it - you can use this to check if only people in your house are using the connection. Yay wireless, where you have to worry about people outside your house that you can't see making your connection rubbish for you :P




Or since you are in a house using a desktop computer, you could use a wire and disable wireless functionality of the router.

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

stupid LJ, that was me, obviously.

[taimatsu]

I believe we have the wireless password-protected, I think it's WEP. As three of my housemates have laptops they are in fact using the wireless functionality so removing it is not an option. Also, none of this equipment is where I can get easy access to it - it is in Rugile's bedroom, and if she's not there the door is locked, so I can't fiddle with it much at all without complex discussions. I am using a wired connection myself at present.

The IP you suggest gives me the cable modem config page, which has a lot of detailed information but from which I cannot pick out any of the information you mention.

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well, good that it's the right page, but I can't help much with picking stuff out, as you'll have a different modem from us, ours isn't a router, or wireless. Too many commas!

Something you can do without physical access - install nmap and do:
nmap -p 445 192.168.0.*

(you might not be .0)
That will check the standard windows filesharing port on all machines on your local network - which should just be your housemates and the router. Count and see how many :)

I would come round and work for peanuts, but I am a bit busy at the moment! Maybe in a couple of weeks.

[taimatsu]

traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 64.233.183.99
traceroute to www.l.google.com (64.233.183.99), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 buffalo.setup (192.168.XXX.XXX) 3.040 ms 0.651 ms 0.574 ms
2 * * *
3 * * *
4 *

I have obfuscated part of our IP address - if this means the data is not useful to you, I will email - just let me know. :)

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

Nah, 192.168 is a private network, never on the internet. It's the next two hops that could have been sensitive information. It's a little weird that it didn't return anything for those - could be caused by timeouts because you're so congested.

[taimatsu]

I seeee :) Yes, I knew the first bits were not sensitive which is why I left them - I wasn't sure about the last parts.

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

You are quite right that cutting the last two blobs will mean any IP is mostly useless though :)

[ade-of-roke.livejournal.com]

i get problems with my msn contacts, linked in and messaging me on my Yahoo....pain in the arse.

[cjwatson]

It might not be this, but this kind of problem can sometimes be caused by incorrect MTU settings. Assuming that your primary network device is eth0, try ifconfig eth0 and look at the MTU setting there; it may well be 1500 which is too high for many ADSL connections, in which case try ifconfig eth0 mtu 1400 or similar and see if that helps. If so, a bit of googling should show how to make that permanent.