Trying to resolve throughput issue

andrue · Jun 24, 2012, 21:31:31

*On hold *

Apparently I have some contact via TBB. Looks like my emails may have been blackholed for some reason.

Well that's weird. Apparently their mail server doesn't like mine. Just found this in the logs:

"Got SMTP Response - 450 <xxxx@xxxxx.me.uk>: Sender address rejected: Greylisted for 3 minutes"

Looks like some half arsed anti spam measure but I don't know if my mail server retries or not. There's nothing in the logs to say that it has.

andrue · Jun 24, 2012, 22:18:49

I think it might be the email address I used. I give everyone their own address and I suspect IDNet's support mail box is set up to reject anyone it doesn't know. I've just sent an email using the address I gave Sales and so far there's nothing in the log which suggests it's not gone through this time.

If so I think it's a rather poor way of cutting down on spam.

My fault I suppose for not using my registered address but I can't help thinking it's a bad idea by Support.

Simon · Jun 24, 2012, 22:59:08

The anti-spam greylisting was a little aggressive at first, but we thought they'd got it tamed a bit better these days. Is it not possible for you to call them during their support hours?

Bill · Jun 24, 2012, 23:47:17

Quote from: Simon on Jun 24, 2012, 22:59:08
The anti-spam greylisting was a little aggressive at first, but we thought they'd got it tamed a bit better these days.

How can a greylisting server be aggressive?

All it does is to say "I'm busy, please try again shortly"

It's up to the sending server how long it waits before retrying.

THBS, I've known sending servers that waited 12 hours

Simon · Jun 25, 2012, 07:13:09

I don't know the technicalities of it, Bill. Perhaps I've got it wrong.

andrue · Jun 25, 2012, 07:44:20

Quote from: Simon on Jun 25, 2012, 07:13:09
I don't know the technicalities of it, Bill. Perhaps I've got it wrong.

I think the problem is that by default my server only retries according to its sending schedule. The default when it has a LAN connection is not to schedule anything. I've changed that so that it has a schedule and the emails have gone through. As you say on TBB I'd have had that problem with any one else using grey listing. The only comment I'll make is that I've been using that server software for over a decade and this is the first time the issue has cropped up.

Anyway I do hope that you can sort out the connection speed. I see from TBB that you're a bit sceptical but something has changed somewhere. 30Mb/s on a 76.7Mb/s profile is surely not right. It coincided with a big latency drop from 35ms to 17ms.

Bill · Jun 25, 2012, 09:35:38

Quote from: andrue on Jun 25, 2012, 07:44:20I see from TBB that you're a bit sceptical...

Different Simon

The people who work for IDNet have "_idnet" in their usernames (eg Simon_idnet), the Simon here is just a common or garden bbs Administrator

Lance · Jun 25, 2012, 10:08:50

Greylisting is a very common initial defence against spam. As you run your own server I'm sure you know how it works (and I'm surprised you don't use it yourself), but for the benefit of anyone else reading this essentially it works by telling the sending server to go away and try again later. Normally this would only happen the first time an email is sent from an address not recognised by the receiving server after which the server will remember it as a good address for a defined period of time. Often, spammers don't want to have to wait to try again later so give up and move on.

Simon_idnet · Jun 25, 2012, 10:16:13

Our office hours are 8am to 6:30pm and outside of those hours a message can be left for us to make contact on the next working day. Business services that have subscribed to BT's Enhanced Care can be logged to BT outside of normal office hours.

Once a mail server has responded to ours it is then whitelisted for future messages.

I'm a bit surprised to hear 30Mbps described as "very poor" - I suppose that's a sign of the times we live in.

andrue · Jun 25, 2012, 10:26:52

Quote from: Bill on Jun 25, 2012, 09:35:38
Different Simon

The people who work for IDNet have "_idnet" in their usernames (eg Simon_idnet), the Simon here is just a common or garden bbs Administrator

Oops. Sorry about that

andrue · Jun 25, 2012, 10:33:16

Quote from: Simon_idnet on Jun 25, 2012, 10:16:13I'm a bit surprised to hear 30Mbps described as "very poor" - I suppose that's a sign of the times we live in.

Lol, well I'd say it was poor if the modem was connected at 80Mb/s.

Let's see:

When I was on IPStream I sync'd at 8Mb/s and got 6.5Mb/s throughput.
On BeThere I sync'd at 13Mb/s and got 11Mb/s throughput.
Initially on IDNet with 40Mb/s sync I got about 38Mb/s throughput.
After the 80/20 regrade for about a month I got 60Mb/s to 70Mb/s throughput.
Since last Tuesday I get around 30Mb/s throughput.

I can see the humour in me claiming 30Mb/s is poor in general terms but I would hope that the support department of my ISP wouldn't consider a 24/7 30Mb/s from an 80Mb/s connection to be 'business as usual' . Especially if that connection delivered 70Mb/s for a couple of weeks previously.

Simon_idnet · Jun 25, 2012, 10:52:13

We would hope that the throughput would fairly closely follow the connection speed. But I'm afraid that I must stress "hope", becuase BT will only guarantee up to 12Mbps and your throughput is more than double that.

There doesn't appear to be a problem with your physical line because your connection speed is unaffected. We know that there is no problem in our network because any such problem would affect all customers. Which only leaves either the Exchange or your router. If the Exchange were congested you would be unlikely to see the effects of that outside of the peak hours. Are you able to try a different router to rule that out?

Simon · Jun 25, 2012, 10:56:04

Topic title changed, as requested by OP.

andrue · Jun 25, 2012, 11:03:31

Quote from: Simon_idnet on Jun 25, 2012, 10:52:13
We would hope that the throughput would fairly closely follow the connection speed. But I'm afraid that I must stress "hope", becuase BT will only guarantee up to 12Mbps and your throughput is more than double that.

There doesn't appear to be a problem with your physical line because your connection speed is unaffected. We know that there is no problem in our network because any such problem would affect all customers. Which only leaves either the Exchange or your router. If the Exchange were congested you would be unlikely to see the effects of that outside of the peak hours. Are you able to try a different router to rule that out?

Tonight I'll dry a direct PPPoE session to the modem. Although you didn't supply the router it is the same NetGear model. I might also wander round to a neighbour's since I know that one of them also has FTTC now.

It seems highly suspicious that the latency dropped. Looking at my TBQM the change appears to have occurred Tuesday at 6pm:

It's subtle but from that time on the maximum latency has been a lot more spiky. NB - the connection is rarely used during the day. But note that after Tuesday PM there are latency spikes all day long. I'm pretty sure it's not the budgie using the connection

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Ignore the latency Wednesday evening - that was me pushing 8GB to a server in Minneapolis

But yeah - I think it's the exchange or some other BT routing. I'm just frustrated at having my brand new superfast connection underperforming so badly. It's rather pathetic(*) if there's truly nothing can be done to at least get BT to look at it.

(*)I'm not having a go at you here I know how it is with BT but still. It sucks at the moment.

mervl · Jun 25, 2012, 13:54:30

I did mention it on your other thread, but are you in southern England and perhaps connected through BT's Faraday PoP, which seems to have an on-going problem which is not yet sorted - manifested I gather by increased latency and slow throughputs? There was a much advertised specific outage last Thursday, but I gather the problem is on-going and has been manifested for some people for at least a couple of weeks. It's supposed, I gather, to be "common knowledge" amongst a number of ISPs?

andrue · Jun 25, 2012, 14:56:55

Quote from: mervl on Jun 25, 2012, 13:54:30
I did mention it on your other thread, but are you in southern England and perhaps connected through BT's Faraday PoP, which seems to have an on-going problem which is not yet sorted - manifested I gather by increased latency and slow throughputs? There was a much advertised specific outage last Thursday, but I gather the problem is on-going and has been manifested for some people for at least a couple of weeks. It's supposed, I gather, to be "common knowledge" amongst a number of ISPs?

Yeah, I saw that. It's possible although I think my issues started before then. Also I'm seeing reduced latency - at least according to speedtest.net for whatever that's worth. The latency to TBB appears unchanged looking at the monitor. The original latency reported by speedtest.net was poor in the first place mind you. I never thought 35ms was very clever. I originally had to choose the London server because the default was up in Manchester based on pings but gave poor throughput.

The whole thing is weird but now that I know I can communicate with IDNet I'll keep investigating. It's almost verging on interesting now. It was just the 'crying in the wilderness' that was annoying me. Tonight I'll try and get my laptop talking direct through the modem to cut out my router as a possible cause. I doubt it will change anything though because the router can provide far higher throughput to my server. Still - you never know. It might at any rate result in a connection to a better gateway.

psp83 · Jun 25, 2012, 15:19:51

Don't trust speedtest.net for pings.. Try pingtest.net..

I've heard netgear routers (the one IDnet sale) do struggle with throughput, someone else on this forum mentioned this before that they get better throughput when connecting directly to the modem.

andrue · Jun 25, 2012, 16:44:46

Right. Got some more info.

Connecting directly to the modem makes no difference.

According to Netmeter throughput sometimes hits 70Mb/s but is usually lower than that. Curiously in the several tests I've run (to different speedtesters) the Netmeter output looks like a mountain. It ramps up to a peak (usually at least 50Mb/s, but several times it hit 70Mb/s) then it drops back down again. This is mirrored up to a point by the speedtest.net graph although it shows several other peaks on either side of the main peak.

This now explains what the 'out of XXXMb/s' figure is that the Visual Ware test displays. It's tell you the maximum speed it saw:

http://mcslhr.visualware.com/myspeed/myspeed_line_capspeed.html

Pinging bbc.co.uk is giving a fairly consistent 12ms.

andrue · Jun 26, 2012, 19:25:43

So that's it apparently. Support have nothing further to suggest. The only explanation they can come up with is congestion but the problem I have with that is that implies 24/7 congestion. I get the same naff speeds no matter what time of day I test. Today's test at 7am was essentially the same as one I did in the evening a couple of days previously.

So I just have to ignore it and hope it spontaneously recovers.

The sooner Be provide a fibre service the better. Hopefully they'll go with a purely GEA solution and dump BTw

Glenn · Jun 26, 2012, 19:34:55

What profile does a BT speedtest give you?

andrue · Jun 26, 2012, 20:13:11

Quote from: Glenn on Jun 26, 2012, 19:34:55
What profile does a BT speedtest give you?

This morning's speed test result:

"Download speedachieved during the test was - 21.6 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 12 Mbps-76.76 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 76.76 Mbps"

lozcart · Jun 26, 2012, 20:33:16

I wonder if your BT modem is failing Andrue, do you know which version it is and does if seem to be running hot?

Some of the older modems were changed as they started causing problems, I don't suppose you know someone who could lend you theirs to see if it helps.

andrue · Jun 26, 2012, 20:41:38

Quote from: lozcart on Jun 26, 2012, 20:33:16I wonder if your BT modem is failing Andrue, do you know which version it is and does if seem to be running hot?

It seems okay. It's quite warm to the touch but not shockingly so. It's an HG612 and it's mounted on the wall. Presumably it's ventilated the way the manufacturer intended. I've only had FTTC for a couple of months so presumably it's a later model.

lozcart · Jun 26, 2012, 20:45:11

On the back it should have a version number mine is a 3B, I think some of the version 1 and 2s were found to have a chip which could overheat.

The 3B has an all white power supply and lead.

andrue · Jun 26, 2012, 21:02:10

Quote from: lozcart on Jun 26, 2012, 20:45:11
On the back it should have a version number mine is a 3B, I think some of the version 1 and 2s were found to have a chip which could overheat.

The 3B has an all white power supply and lead.

Yeah, you're right. It's has 3B on the back. The area around the LEDs is quite warm but nothing particularly alarming.