Have you come across a restriction around 50 to 59 minutes for downloads at a 6.5 Mbps connection?
Have you come across a restriction around 50 to 59 minutes for downloads at a 6.5 Mbps connection?
It's possible. For instance, PPPoE uses keep-alive timers to maintain the connection by resynchronizing authentication data. If I set up my PPPoE DSL with an MTU of 1500 and ran heavy transfers, I noticed repeated drops after roughly ten minutes. This was likely due to IP fragmentation interfering with proper transmission of authentication frames, preventing them from being retransmitted. Either my router or the ISP's central office router wasn't handling it correctly during connection setup, causing the drop after that time. A similar issue can occur with VPNs if the MTU is too large—so they determine the optimal size before establishing the tunnel. That's just a thought I had!
It might make sense to explore this further, though such an issue wouldn't typically appear unexpectedly. It seems to stem from a modem/router setup error, and it appears ATT can handle it remotely. A friend of mine experienced similar problems last year when their service was re-provisioned with IPv6, altering their IPv4 subnet and causing conflicts with my network (which uses a VPN). Could this be the cause? It only resolved after ATT turned off IPv6 on his router.
It's conceivable but unlikely a subnet clash is happening here. Typically it leads to a complete route failure that lasts. Or intermittent drops make the internet feel sluggish. My idea is more about a firmware upgrade, which often lines up with events like IPv6 activation. I recall AT&T might have used some unusual 6RD/6to4 gateway instead of standard prefix delegation. That method tends to cause issues. Previously, I wasn't impressed by the 2Wire gateways AT&T provided for U-Verse; they were unreliable. Frequent problems with them and laptops using Wi-Fi, plus constant DNS errors, were common. It seems AT&T now uses Pace or Arris, though I have no idea their performance. My local DSL service is from Verizon, and after switching from Westell modems—reliable and long-lasting—to ActionTec and D-Link models, customer experience declined. The ActionTec devices suffered from significant memory leaks in the wireless driver and DHCP daemon, while the D-Links struggled to keep a stable DSL connection.
The issue stemmed from allowing IPv6, which led to severe connection instability. Adjusting someone's network settings without their consent was problematic since the ISP couldn't verify potential conflicts, especially when it caused unexpected issues.