As you know, Matt, but nobody else does yet, we got a LOT closer to solving this problem tonight. Though we don't know if it's the whole problem, we know that the communications between our switch and the ISP's router is an issue. Dropping packets like they're hot potatos.
Now the guy at the ISP has a very specific few things to check. The cable running from our switch to the gateway, the uplink port on our switch, the uplink port on his switch, or someone sharing the gateway with us having a broadcasting virus. Surely not us.
I'm going to suggest right away tomorrow morning that he move the DSL customers to another router and see if our problems go away. I talked to him tonight and he's going to be checking the cable and checking for broadcasting first thing.
Edit: The frequency with which packets are being dropped when pinging the gateway seems very close (but slightly below) the frequency we were getting when pinging an SBC router. Same is true of average round-trip times.
It really looks to me like there are a few packets getting dropped at an SBC router, but that the majority of them are getting dropped by the ISP's router. It's not at all uncommon for a perfectly healthy router to drop 1 or 2 out of every thousand packets. It's very bad when the droppage reaches as high as 18%, which we're occasionally seeing.
Edit 2: Or worse. I just saw 8 out of 14 packets get lost.
AI
