Help me solve a mystery...


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We just moved into a new house and I put my server back online.  Both my wife and I work from home fulltime (VPN).  A few days ago, I started noticing internet connectivity issues.  I use the Speedtest.net plugin to measure speeds since the server is the only device currently hardwired.  Our download speeds would drop from consistent ~115Mbit to 6Mbit.  Naturally, this threw our VPN connections into a tizzy and basically made things so unstable we couldn't work.

 

I had the cable company come out and they did their due dilligence (checked for noise, replaced line ends, etc.)  However, the issue returned 20 minutes after the tech left.  I then noticed something VERY interesting...the slow downs ALWAYS occurred at the top of the hour (1pm, 2pm, 3pm, etc.) and would last for 15 mins.  This behavior is/was VERY consistent.  This prompted me to start to look at applications (all Docker containers) I have that run tasks on a schedule.  My first culprit was my Plex server.  I took Plex offline and waited.  At the top of the hour, the issue appeared again.

 

OK...I rethought my strategy...I took all containers offline and at the top of the hour...NO ISSUE.  So, I started to put the containers back online until the issue appeared.  As it turns out, Deluge was the culprit.  This didn't make any sense to me since I'm not exactly sure what Deluge would be doing at the top of every hour to break our internet connection (or at least saturate it).  So, I left all containers online overnight with the exception of Deluge and scheduled speedtest.net plugin to run hourly.  No issues were detected.  This morning I put Deluge back online and waited til the top of the hour and speeds bottomed out.  I have now had Deluge offline for 4 hours and manually ran speed tests at the top of every hour and have not seen an issue.

 

~TLDR...

 

Does anyone know what scheduled job Deluge runs at the top of every hour that will kill an internet connection?

 

John

Edited by johnodon
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14 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Maybe post in the specific support thread for the Deluge container you are using? There are 3 containers that I know of off the top of my head.

 

It's the LSIO Deluge container.  And honestly, I posted here because most issues I post in the container support forums do not get addressed. Don't want that to come off as b*tchy...just my experience.

Edited by johnodon
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This one intrigues me.   No idea what the issue could be, just wondered if you can narrow it down to a container issue or deluge issue by trying a different deluge container?  I'm not big on how torrenting works, but could the ISP have anything to do with this?  Wondered if the house move also involved an ISP change.

 

Anyways, congratulations on your new home, hope the move went well, you're settling in and you're happy! :)

 

EDIT: One other thought, you using any plugins with deluge at all?

Edited by CHBMB
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I used to see this back in the late '90s with shitty router equipment. So I'm going to assume it's similar and the router is it being swamped with connection requests by Deluge that happens to cause an issue with all other connections through the router. 

 

What make and model of router are you using? Is the firmware up to date?

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3 hours ago, NAS said:

Just to clarify, is your link being saturated or is your link speed dropping?

 

Undetermined.  All I can see is that the speedtest.net download speed drops to between 5Mbit - 7Mbit for a solid 15 minutes.  And, it is ALWAYS at the top of the hour.

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5 minutes ago, BRiT said:

I used to see this back in the late '90s with shitty router equipment. So I'm going to assume it's similar and the router is it being swamped with connection requests by Deluge that happens to cause an issue with all other connections through the router. 

 

What make and model of router are you using? Is the firmware up to date?

 

This is what I am using (with latest stable pfsense):

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AJEJG1A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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3 hours ago, CHBMB said:

This one intrigues me.   No idea what the issue could be, just wondered if you can narrow it down to a container issue or deluge issue by trying a different deluge container?  I'm not big on how torrenting works, but could the ISP have anything to do with this?  Wondered if the house move also involved an ISP change.

 

Anyways, congratulations on your new home, hope the move went well, you're settling in and you're happy! :)

 

EDIT: One other thought, you using any plugins with deluge at all?

Using any plugins?

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Oh...I also installed the LSIO Transmisison container and let it sit idle for ~5 hours and never saw any fluctuation download speeds (again...using speedtest.net plugin).  I can guarantee you that if I fire up the LSIO Deluge container right now, my speed tests will drop to ~6Mbit @ 6pm EST.

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This is a really interesting bug. I realise you now have a fix but I suspect like me you want to know wtf is going on.

 

Step 1 if it was me is I would determine if it line saturation or line shaping. Debugging the former is much easier than the later but my gut is telling me is either your fw, cpe or upstream providers is shaping the link based on some packet matching seen from deluge.

 

pfsense still has bandwidth graphs doesnt it?. If so you should easily be able to spot a bw spike given how large you internet connection is.

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8 hours ago, NAS said:

 

pfsense still has bandwidth graphs doesnt it?. If so you should easily be able to spot a bw spike given how large you internet connection is.

 

It does.

 

What do you guys think of using something like Wireshark to capture data at the time of the issue?

 

EDIT:  It looks like pfsense has some packet capture ability built-in:  https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Sniffers,_Packet_Capture

 

I'll try that first.

Edited by johnodon
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Since nobody's mentioned it, is it possible that Deluge is scheduled to refresh its RSS feeds at the top of the hour and your (presumably) new ISP is rate limiting when it sees RSS feeds checking known torrent tracker IPs? Consider looking at your Deluge schedule to see if it's scheduled to check RSS at the top of the hour.

 

I did see you mention something about installing Transmission and not having issues, but you didn't mention if you had it fully configured with all your RSS feeds, download filters, etc.

 

Are you still getting expected torrent download speeds consistent with your nice sized pipe? Try kicking off a download at half-past the hour and see if your bandwidth plummets again.

 

/random thoughts at the end of the work day

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