Speed drop all of a sudden?

[andrue]

Well I'm not home now for a few days but I have a feeling that if I was I could reboot the router and all would be back to normal - it was the 24th of Oct when I got back from the wedding and that cleared the first time. As it is it's just going to sit there with random spikes in maximum latency:



What a weird set of spikes around lunch time - I was in the car then swimming my way along the M56 :-/

[andrue]

I knew it. I got back this lunchtime and after powering the router off for 20 minutes everything is back to normal:



The first break was me testing if using the 'disconnect' option on my router that I'd recently discovered would work and save me the hassle of going upstairs. It didn't. The second break was the power off. The single spike was me downloading something.

NB: At no point have I turned off my modem so it's not a line fault. It's a network fault. Now I just have to decide how I'm going to take this up with IDNet 

[Niall]

Is this something specific to you, or are other people seeing this but do not realise? There is very little communication from FTTC users. Whether this is because they contact support directly, or there are no other users having issues I don't know.

Just worried as I've just placed my upgrade order, not even had an automated reply email and have just noticed you're still getting nowhere with support.

[mervl]

Well my live graph is here:


Absolutely no problem, given that the VDSL still uses the copper from the cab to your premises (so still has the limitations of ALL DSL over that portion of the line, but if your ADSL works, there shouldn't be an issue as the copper length will be shorter!). If though you have a nervous breakdown about your speedtests then I don't think any technology short of a dedicated fibre link will help you, but if your concerns (as mine) end with doing what you want to on your connection I find FTTC a saviour. It just works, consistently. There are occasional very short-term night-time work at the BTw PoP but they affect everybody who uses BT backhaul (all IDNet DSL customers, then).

I think the usual ordering process is automatic with OpenReach (who own and control the technology), and in my experience a darned good job they do with VDSL compared with their history with ADSL - but that's life - it's a learning curve  (well for most of us anyway). The order confirmations only come through during BT's office hours it seems though, but you can't have everything! (EDIT just in case anyone frets the bursts of maximum latency are my router giving priority to my streaming and uploads/downloads rather than responding to TBBs pings - but hey, I'm not complaining!).

[andrue]

Is this something specific to you, or are other people seeing this but do not realise? There is very little communication from FTTC users. Whether this is because they contact support directly, or there are no other users having issues I don't know.

Just worried as I've just placed my upgrade order, not even had an automated reply email and have just noticed you're still getting nowhere with support.

I've not heard of any other comments from FTTC users on IDNet. I have read of a few from customers of other ISPs (although not recently). For what it's worth I think my regrade from 40/10 to 80/20 is the problem so a new order should be fine and it doesn't seem to be a common fault. If your order was placed in the last couple of weeks it might be delayed by Christmas of course.

For most people the service works very well. To be fair for me it works very well. It's just half a week every two months when it doesn't. Even then my beef is mainly with their staff. It's such a trial trying to get past the 'firewall' of their front line staff. If you manage to get your issue seen by the real people who work behind the scenes it gets fixed eventually. I've managed it once already and I'm just antsy enough to keep trying on this issue. Sadly of course now that I've got it working properly again I've probably killed off any chance of them looking this time.

I guess you can expect to see this thread become active again on the 19th of February. Make a note in your diaries, folks 

[Niall]

That's the trouble I see with the support side of things. I have issues with my line. IDnet say there's no problem, so contact BT, BT say there's no line problems or with my equipment. My speed was half of what it was supposed to be. Engineer visited and the line was fine until one hour after he left and showed me evidence while he was here. Now, if BT say the line is fine and should get 14mb and all checkers say that, and my router reports no errors at all, either on 14mb, 12mb, 9mb, or 6mb that it always drops to, then where is a paying customer supposed to go?

Frankly I feel that people pass the buck now, saying "BT will only say the line is acceptable" rather than bother to look into my query. In what, over a year I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer as to what is happening. BT engineer basically suggested it's the ISP, but as both are saying that there is no faults and are reluctant to do anything then am I supposed to be happy with not getting what my line is capable of? It got that speed before and apparently hasn't degraded, with previous problems being circuit board issues in the cab (which they replaced - the cab that is). I've got new cable from the house to the cab too, after the engineer replaced that. My last reply from support basically said I might aswell wait for FTTC, which leaves me worried that support don't care to check into things as they used to.

This issue I've had for over a year cost me a small fortune in hardware replacements for testing/ruling things out. If this is the sort of support you get on FTTC too, then it doesn't look like it'll be as happy of an upgrade as I expect, unless of course my connection somehow gets the maximum the line supports and stays there when I switch over. Oh, and incidentally I only placed the order through IDnet's login page about 4 today, but was expecting at the very least, an automated reply to state they have the request.

[andrue]

I hope that won't happen for you. If your current modem is dropping to a slower speed it suggests a line issue and at least FTTC has a shorter line so there's a good chance the problem will go away. In my case if they do nothing I'll probably move to AAISP. The pricing is comparable for what I want and they have a reputation for fixing problems.

[mervl]

I too had an unfortunate history with ADSL - my line should have been capable of up to 6Mbps - but I achieved sync rates of 5.5Mbps for less than six months in the middle of a 4 year period  before the line card failed; and after the repair varying sync rates of 4Mbps, 3.5Mbps and  most of the time down to 2Mbps, and finally after a change in the DSLAM (from LLU to a BTw service) it rose back up to 4 again. Helpfully my ISP reduced my maximum attainable "line rate" with each reduction in sync (and it never recovered) which meant a complaint got no-where ("that's all your line is capable of sir, it's your maximum attainable line rate shown in our records"). FTTC was the answer to this maiden's prayer (but don't take that too literally, though). It's the first time I've ever exceeded a projected speed, and by a significant margin of around 5Mbps.

The installation engineer should bring a JDSU (or may check at base) which will show the cab distance and speed - which you should ask about (I didn't know at the time, and didn't) - if there's a fault between you and the cab he's as good a prospect as any visiting engineer of being able to detect it. Yes for some people their FTTC doesn't perform as they think it should - after all we don't live in a perfect world; but I've not yet discovered anyone within a reasonable distance from the cab who'd rather go back to ADSL for its superior performance, and I'm guessing other posters here aren't the exception.

A word of warning: the rest of the world seems in love with speedtest.net, but it's not universal - on my connection it shows half of the speed measured during actual downloads or uploads, and by other testers. I don't think any commercial speedtester is foolproof all of the time.

[andrue]

A word of warning: the rest of the world seems in love with speedtest.net, but it's not universal - on my connection it shows half of the speed measured during actual downloads or uploads, and by other testers. I don't think any commercial speedtester is foolproof all of the time.

True. For download speed I use both TBB and Speedtest but unfortunately TBB's tester has been broken for upload speeds for at least a year now. Another option is to upload/download data to/from the free webspace. Out of curiosity which server do you use? I used to be very disparaging of speedtest net but since getting FTTC it's been pretty good. I use the London (Namesco) server.

But either way a single test proves nothing. The real value in speed testers is to run them frequently to see how your line changes over time. If you know what your line 'feels' like normally and know what the testers normally say you can tell when something goes awry.

[mervl]

The real value in speed testers is to run them frequently to see how your line changes over time. If you know what your line 'feels' like normally and know what the testers normally say you can tell when something goes awry.

Agreed. I too use the London server on speedtest.net - much less than 50miles away. I wonder if TBB has problems with "high" uploads, as I don't get above 6.8 attainable, but TBB tester shows up to 5.5 which must be about as good as it gets - just below what measured uploads have shown (around 5.8). Speedtest.net maxes out at under half that! Traceroutes to the TBB server show a range 0ms!-25ms, with ave of about 10ms (which seems optimistic when TBBQM is consistent at 16ms and router shows 8ms latency just to the cab - but if that interested I suppose I could try a traceroute to speedtester.net to see if there's a potential congestion issue from here). I assume from the latency stats the backhaul is performing admirably, just a pity about the local loop (but that's where you get what you pay for - as little as possible).

As mentioned previously I have JDasts automatic testing running - for the first 15 months until autumn, the IDNet service was boringly consistent with as straight a graph over time as you could get (almost) - like the Essex badlands; more recently it's moving towards the gentle rolling hills of the southern chilterns - but it's an issue that seems to afflict speedtests and not actual downloads which have always varied between being a bit more spikey at the upper levels or blocky when graphed (from day to day) according to TBBmeter, which itself seems compatible with what the router shows and Netmeter on those occasions I've checked. I put it down to server congestion, perhaps time for a reboot at the other end; and the slightly greater irregularity (which hasn't noticeably affected performance at all) to the greater take up over time at the cab.

[andrue]

It's interesting about the difference between your speedtest results and mine. Presumbably it's something in the BT network. For me the TBB tester usually hits around 8Mb/s which is what a lot of people report however others have shown that the tester can go higher. It's not a universal fault by any means. I think one of the site owners has said it's something to do with buffer sizes and Java.

[Niall]

Well my line was feeling REALLY sluggish over the weekend. I've just done a few speed tests and my ms is now 40 up from 15, download has dropped by 12mb and upload by 3mb.

What the fook is going on?



Oh, the ms is 50 in this as I changed the server to test to/from.

Still, this sucks in comparison to what I'm supposed to be getting, never mind what I WAS getting!

[andrue]

Well my line was feeling REALLY sluggish over the weekend. I've just done a few speed tests and my ms is now 40 up from 15, download has dropped by 12mb and upload by 3mb.

What the fook is going on?



Oh, the ms is 50 in this as I changed the server to test to/from.

Still, this sucks in comparison to what I'm supposed to be getting, never mind what I WAS getting!

I hope it recovers for you soon. Have you run the BT speed test to see if your profile has changed?

[Niall]

The BT speedtest says:


Download speedachieved during the test was - 23.4 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 16 Mbps-23.59 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 23.59 Mbps


Upload speed achieved during the test was - 3.75Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps

Bit of a change from 34 and 7.4  I think something has gone wrong. Now lets start guessing where it's gone wrong.

[andrue]

Now lets start guessing where it's gone wrong.

I'm guessing it has something to do with a large green metal box about 800 metres from your house 

Hopefully it'll bounce back - I wonder if someone was doing work in your area.

[Niall]

The only thing I've seen going on is the openreach chaps popping up in the mornings on my walk to work, connecting other people. They were also working on the cabinet that's a quarter of a mile nearer my house. Still don't understand why I'm not on that cabinet 

[andrue]

So the 19th of February is coming up. I want to ensure I have diagnostics in place this time. So far I have:

• TBBQM
• Bald-Eagle's modem monitoring

And I've just been accepted for SamKnows monitoring so maybe I'll have that as well. Is there any other kind of monitoring anyone can think of? This might be the last chance I (and support  ) have to track this down before my contract ends. If I can't at least get a sensible explanation I'll probably be leaving and I don't really want that hassle.

[Bald_Eagle1]

So the 19th of February is coming up. I want to ensure I have diagnostics in place this time. So far I have:

• TBBQM
• Bald-Eagle's modem monitoring

And if I can get my skates on & finish them in time, you MAY even be able to use the new programs that are more robust, much quicker and generate more informative ongoing graphs than the scripted versions 

[andrue]

And if I can get my skates on & finish them in time, you MAY even be able to use the new programs that are more robust, much quicker and generate more informative ongoing graphs than the scripted versions 

Woo hoo! I've had to postpone activating the scripts until Sunday evening now. They ran once though - I think I just have to enable the scheduled event. But snazzy new tools will always be appreciated

[mervl]

  Intriguingly Andrue, a few days ago speedtests started getting low and erratic (though I do them rarely these days) and shortly afterwards the modem re-synced with a latency jump to the cab from 8ms to 14ms, with a corresponding hike in TBBQM, with a few resyncs over the next 36-48 hours, before seemingly returning to normal this morning. First time though. Apart from the obvious weather (but would it recover quite so quickly?), the only thing I could relate it to is some new firmware on the modem perhaps taking time to settle down, but if so the "trouble" took a fortnight to emerge. My sync speeds are restricted anyway as I'm on an old package, so not much if any difference there, though. It might just be, I suppose, that my modem is "living on the edge" and doing its job pushing the connection to its limits and quite a latitude of disturbance (as far as I can tell from the stats) is tolerated before a "cliff-edge" fall. Pure speculation.

[andrue]

Muwahaha. Got my Samknows whitebox today. Not had the email giving me access yet but hopefully I now have another source of information.

TBBQM
Samknows
Bald Eagle's excellent tool.

Incidentally BaldEagle came through with the new version. Here are some graphs:

[Bald_Eagle1]

That looks pretty good, as a snapshot.
I'd certainly swap it for my connection any day.

Is there anything of "interest" in the ongoing stats ready for comparing before 19th, during 19th & after 19th?

[andrue]

That looks pretty good, as a snapshot.
I'd certainly swap it for my connection any day.

Is there anything of "interest" in the ongoing stats ready for comparing before 19th, during 19th & after 19th?

Not that I know of. I'm actually expecting the connection to sail through without a murmur. I'm pretty sure the problem is in the network not my line.

[andrue]

And here it comes again 

1. Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.

Download Speed
25.86 Mbps
   
0 Mbps 71.47 Mbps
Max Achievable Speed

Download speedachieved during the test was - 25.86 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 16 Mbps-71.47 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 71.47 Mbps

2. Upstream Test:  -provides background information.

Upload Speed
6.02 Mbps
   
0 Mbps 20 Mbps
Max Achievable Speed

Upload speed achieved during the test was - 6.02Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps

My modem says it's been syncd for a tad over six days which is correct because on Wednesday night I upgraded my extension lead from six- to ten- gang to accommodate my Samknows Whitebox. Bald Eagle's monitoring can be summed up as 'Yawn - nothin' happening here'

The Samknows box hasn't run many tests today (not sure why - maybe that's normal) but the 2pm test was 69Mb/s the 6pm test was 25Mb/s. My TBBQM graph shows increased latency from about 3pm on:



I think the taller spikes are the Samknows tests on the hour.

So it ain't my line. I've emailed Support so it'll be interesting to see how they respond. We could open a book on it. I'm afraid that I can't take any more bets for 'Can you hear crackling on the line?' or 'Have you tried plugging your router into the test socket' 

[mervl]

  So why is it just your connection?