For the last year or so, I have had an increasing number of 'connect' and transfer issues with my K3 remote setup. The most striking is of course the connection dropping out entirely and the control unit announcing this fact with its "error' sound like an old modem that fails to connect.
Sometimes I could re-connect immediately, but other times it would be 15 minutes or more before I could reconnect, and a few times not until the next day. The MTBF on a successful connection was a few hours before it dropped. Sometimes I could connect and have no receive audio. Sometimes I could connect and receive but had no transmit audio.
Even when I could not connect with the RRC units I could always access the radio unit via the web interface and all the other devices at the radio site, including the router and the 1269 antenna switch. Sometimes the Windows 'remote desktop connection' would drop out too, with about the same MTBF.
I tried different ports and settings on the RRC units with no change. All the diagnostics I could run showed everything to be great (with 60 mbps down and 12 up at the 'control site' and 18 mbps down and 1.2 mbps up at the 'radio' site. Latency was about 27 ms and 'jitter' about 7 ms between the two sites. The cable company support line testing said everything was fine, and they 'could see no problems'. I even switched out to new and upgraded cable modems at each site. No help. I tried a different router at the radio site. No change.
Finally I told the cable people that if we couldn't find the problem, we could just drop their service. After they confirmed that I had the latest and greatest modems on each end, they finally sent a knowledgeable tech out to the radio site.
He confirmed that the modem was working fine, then ran a diagnostic program on his laptop that he said was 'more sensitive' than what they could run from the main office. He said the readings on the 'down side' were 'squirrely' and variable. After some other test that I inferred was some kind of TDR, he said the problem was with 'the drop'.
He then climbed the pole and discovered that the outer jacket of the cable had been abraded on the pole,and in several places on the way down to the ground, perhaps by falling limbs or other debris during a windstorm. Water ingress and random drying cycles were his working hypothesis.
He ran a new cable from the 'mainline' all the way to my modem. The diagnostics now looked 'solid'. Since then (about ten days ago), no problems, no dropouts, no issues at all. Even the Windows RDC stays connected until I disconnect it by choice. Fingers crossed. Maybe grinning a little.
At some later time, a crew will come to bury the new cable.
Next project is the killing off the occasional digital noise on my transmit audio - next thing is to try connecting the mic direct the RRC instead of via the front panel of the K3 mini.
73 John N5CQ
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