Ping spikes on the BQM

[Bill]

There's another thread for people with problems, but there's no real indication of how widespread the problem is- is it general or just a few select customers?

The problem seems to be characterised by periods of (more or less) slowly increasing latency followed by a sudden drop back to normal. What makes this unusual is the packet loss which follows the same general pattern, "normal" congestion doesn't seem to show the same packet loss. For the graphs I've seen, anyway.

Could anyone who is running the BQM and not seeing this effect post in this thread please? BQM graph optional.

That way we might get a handle on how common it is, and just maybe pick up some sort of common factor.

[Rik]

Don't run it, Bill, sorry. Good idea though.

[esh]

I run a local quality monitor on the router here and have not seen any consistently high lag or big batches of packet loss for a while. There is the odd 2% spike but they are just momentary spikes, not protracted in length.

[Rik]

Thanks, esh. In case you haven't seen it, IDNet think they may have found a problem in one of the core routers, which will be re-booted tomorrow morning at 6.

[esh]

Thanks Rik. My first hop is gw2, so I guess I have escaped the wrath of our packet routing overlords, this time.

[faircot]

Could anyone who is running the BQM and not seeing this effect post in this thread please? BQM graph optional.

Here's mine.

[Bill]

Thanks Rik. My first hop is gw2, so I guess I have escaped the wrath of our packet routing overlords, this time.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when gw5 gets kicked... a traceroute from me to tbb goes through gw5, a traceroute from them to me doesn't!

[Rik]

Are you on a gw5 login, Bill?

[Bill]

@ faircot- yeah, thai's what several of us are seeing, periods of higher than normal latency together with elevated packet loss.

The periods of higher latency without the packet loss are almost certainly just normal congestion and are just something we have to put up with if we want broadband

[Bill]

Are you on a gw5 login, Bill?

No, I'm on dsl4.

[Rik]

Thanks. I am on gw5, but don't see it in a trace, if you see what I mean.

[Bill]

I don't see dsl4 on a trace, in either direction... does it matter these days?

[Rik]

It shouldn't do, Bill, we are all connected to the same hostlink these days. For that matter, I can't recall ever seeing a dsl4 in a trace. OTOH, since you mentioned gw5, I thought it was worth checking your login as I am gw5, and don't see it in a trace:

tracert www.idnet.net

Tracing route to www.idnet.net [212.69.36.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.254
  2    14 ms    13 ms    13 ms  telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]
  3    16 ms    13 ms    17 ms  telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]
  4   250 ms   305 ms   169 ms  redbus-gw2-fa1-1-1003.idnet.net [212.69.63.1]
  5    16 ms    13 ms    15 ms  redbus-gw1-fa2-0-300.idnet.net [212.69.63.225]
  6    16 ms    15 ms    13 ms  www.idnet.net [212.69.36.10]

Trace complete.

[esh]

My login is also a gw5, but yeah, I suspect it means little... I guess a lot of hardware/infrastructure got consolidated, but I don't pretend to understand these things.

[Rik]

It's all one big black box to me, esh.

[Bill]

My route to IDNet looks the same as yours except hop 2, I go through gw4 rather than gw2.

[Rik]

I'd be interested to know what decides that.

[.Griff.]

It shouldn't do, Bill, we are all connected to the same hostlink these days. For that matter, I can't recall ever seeing a dsl4 in a trace. OTOH, since you mentioned gw5, I thought it was worth checking your login as I am gw5, and don't see it in a trace:

tracert www.idnet.net

Tracing route to www.idnet.net [212.69.36.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.254
  2    14 ms    13 ms    13 ms  telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]
  3    16 ms    13 ms    17 ms  telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]
  4   250 ms   305 ms   169 ms  redbus-gw2-fa1-1-1003.idnet.net [212.69.63.1]
  5    16 ms    13 ms    15 ms  redbus-gw1-fa2-0-300.idnet.net [212.69.63.225]
  6    16 ms    15 ms    13 ms  www.idnet.net [212.69.36.10]

Trace complete.

I'm GW6 but my TR is identical to yours Rik.

Code Select Expand

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                             192.168.1.1 -    0 |  104 |  104 |    0 |    0 |   28 |    0 |
|             telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net -    0 |  104 |  104 |   18 |   19 |   36 |   18 |
|        telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net -    0 |  104 |  104 |   18 |   23 |  291 |   19 |
|         redbus-gw2-fa1-1-1003.idnet.net -   27 |   49 |   36 |    0 |   19 |   21 |   19 |
|          redbus-gw1-fa2-0-300.idnet.net -    6 |   85 |   80 |   19 |   19 |   42 |   19 |
|                           www.idnet.net -    1 |  101 |  100 |   19 |   19 |   43 |   20 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
  WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

[Rik]

Well, that eliminates logins as the determinant.

[pctech]

BT decides which particular physical  connection your traffic flows over for hand off to the ISP on what appears be a 'round robin' basis.

I've known some ISPs who have lost a pipe or two need to do some load balancing when the pipe is fixed so that traffic is evenly balanced.

This involves terminating PPP so that BT moves it to another pipe.

[Rik]

We've certainly seen that happen in the past with centrals, Mitch.

[pctech]

Forget where I read it now but I believe the ISPs could steer the traffic to certain centrals on 20CN but they no longer can on 21CN.

[Rik]

ISPs used to be able to load balance by moving people around to different pipes, but now they have just the one.

[pctech]

Not sure whether this holds true for other ISPs but the ISP I use have hostlinks in both London and Manchaster but since it all went to 21CN I've only ever connected to the London gateways whereas before sometimes it would be London, sometimes Manchester and sometimes at their HQ in Rochdale.

[Rik]

IDNet has always been in one place, Mitch.