Congestion?

[mervl]

happily, nearly enough customers have now left the dodgy server for things to have almost returned to normal for those of us who didn't! 

[psp83]

I've been noticing a slight increase in maximum latency and packet loss over the last 2 days again.

All be it small, but it's how it happened last time.. Anyone else?

Again, seems to start from around 10am and get worse before correcting itself.

[Steve]

I've had a look at the staff's and I'm not convinced I'm seeing anything like what we saw before, there's the odd pixel of red however.

[psp83]

I've had a look at the staff's and I'm not convinced I'm seeing anything like what we saw before, there's the odd pixel of red however.

Yeah, as I said, it's a small increase.



It's how mine started before I made the topic. I will keep an eye on it though.

[Steve]

Paul, that's exactly what I'm seeing.

[andrue]

I'm not sure it's solved properly yet. I had cause to do some downloading recently for a change and noticed that my single threaded downloads never go above 3.5MB/s - from anywhere. In discussions elsewhere it was suggested I try a download accelerator and lo and behold - I can get 7.2MB/s again using one of those.

Now sure some sites throttle but two of the sites affected are the Ubuntu download site - usually given as a good test example - and more significantly the TBB test files (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/download.html). Clearly TBB is unlikely to be throttling those    The TBB tester is also apparently capped all of a sudden and the mods have confirmed that their tester is single threaded. Meanwhile speedtest.net is unaffected and it uses multi-threading.

I've sent an email to support and also pointed out that it started on the 15th which is when I rebooted and lost the congestion spikes.

[Steve]

If the download accelerator can supply the throughput does that not suggest that the 'bottleneck' is not between you and IDNet?

[andrue]

If the download accelerator can supply the throughput does that not suggest that the 'bottleneck' is not between you and IDNet?

Not quite as I understand it. It just suggests that something (and it could be almost anything) is imposing the cap. Some possible causes could be:

My router.
My cabinet (I think).
BT Wholesale.
IDNet's servers.

Basically anything that is monitoring and 'directing' TCP/IP traffic is capable of throttling on a per-connection basis.

Given that it impacts all the servers I try - one of which is very unlikely to have such throttling - it seems it must be something fairly close to me so one of the above. It seems more than a coincidence to me that this seems to have started after the recent congestion work. My connection's latency as reported by TBBQM has never recovered and nor has my upload. You can see the change here:



I'm not suggesting deliberate throttling but I do think this suggests a configuration error with IDNet's network.

[Steve]

OK , so if I understand it correctly your suggesting that somewhere there is a throttle on single threaded downloads. Hopefully support will shed some light.

[andrue]

OK , so if I understand it correctly your suggesting that somewhere there is a throttle on single threaded downloads. Hopefully support will shed some light.

It sure seems that way to me.

It all seems like being That Night Of The Year(^TM).

Not only have I been investigating network problems but that showed that my email server still wasn't happy talking to IDNet's. So I decided to apply an upgrade. Avast! decided it looked dodgy so the install failed half way through 

Thankfully after swearing at Avast and telling it where to stick its behaviour analysis the second install went through successfully and all is working well. But as is typical for That Night Of The Year(^TM) I'm about to try and go to bed while being hyped up from computer problems.

[andrue]

Lol (or not). Got my first response from Support. "Could I please run the BT speed tester". Sigh. I will when I get home but I can see how this is going to go.

If it's single threaded it'll report 28Mb/s with an acceptable range of 0 to 76 and Support will shrug and tell me there's nothing they can do.
If it's multi threaded it'll report 76Mb/s and Support will say everything looks good.

I really do want to 'like' IDNet but it's not easy. I sent quite a lengthy email last night including a link to this thread and all I got back was one paragraph asking me to run the BT speed tester. Looks a classic 'one-click boilerplate' response. It doesn't bode well 

[andrue]

Well the good news is that Simon has responded so hopefully I've gone beyond stage one. He's suggested I connect direct to the BTor modem to eliminate my router which is a good idea. I can't really see it being the router since I haven't done anything with it but it's one less link in the chain.

[Technical Ben]

Hope you find the reason for it. Remember to check on a second PC/Vanilla PC to confirm it's not software (Sorry if you've already done this ).

Also, normally I'd guess it's a limit on outgoing servers. FTTC/H is outstripping demand for download, is outstripping the services ability to upload/deliver.

But in your case I'd guess there is something else at play.

PS, routers can have quality of service settings. Also they can have "bugs" or slow data processors. I wonder if the Fiber connection is too quick for your router to handle? But we will see once you've eliminated the closes possible causes.

[andrue]

The plot thickens!

I plugged my laptop directly into the BTor modem and the problem was still there. I ran the BT speedtester and got:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 67.93 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 12 Mbps-0 Mbps.
IP Profile for your line is - 77.43 Mbps

So either the BT test is multi-threaded or else..I dunno. But ISTM that puts the ball firmly in IDNet's court. BT say I can hit nigh-on 70Mb/s. I can indeed hit that with multi-threading but on single threading I'm stuck at about 28Mb/s.

Would someone else care to try one of these files:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/download.html

Not that I think there's going to be any TBB side throttling in play. It'd be pretty damn' stupid to throttle the speed of files that exist purely to test your download speed

[Simon_idnet]

We're not capping any services. I recommended that you try a different computer and OS. But if you're getting better throughput with multi threading enabled then I'd recommend that you leave that setting turned on.

[psp83]

@andrue I think it's something local to you..

I can easily do a single thread download at around 7 MB/s which is around 60 Mb/s & my profile at the mo is just slightly higher than 60 Mb/s

[Steve]

I think it's difficult to quantify why on a download one is unable to achieve maximum throughput, I had a quick check last night and concluded that I've no idea why some sites/servers do not give my line maximum throughput. A BT Speedtest was giving 40mbps (5Mb/s) so was Speedtest.net I agree they are only relatively small files but does this not prove my connection is capable of the speeds displayed. However file downloads from Apple and TBB test files were limited to around 2Mb/but that's not unusual for my line downloading from Apple. It seemed on this occasion I was limited by the server's ability to give rather than my ability to receive.

[mervl]

Yep on an IDNet FTTC connection (though a connection on the old 40/10 profiles) I use a automatic regular speed tester which uses the TBB files, and over 15 months there has never been any difference between single and multi-thread testing, also using another download server (as it offers that option). Apart from the slight erraticism a couple of weeks ago the TBBQM has been utterly consistent too - no changes to latency, packet loss nor irregular latency spikes other than those accounted for by the use of my connection. It is useful though having a modem which provides (limited) stats - the connection is suffering a significant increase in all reported errors across the board recently (I suspect due to adverse weather, damp then cold on an old underground local loop line) - but it's not triggered any resyncs, INP change (which might show a higher level of interleaving being applied, perhaps?) or noticeable changes to the bit loading, although there is a bit more fluctuation in the range of reported speeds (+/- 20% rather than +/-10%). (Just seen other posts - downloads of Apple software are as quick as anything else though a Windows OS/IDNet DNS; though ITunes does seem to run at 50% of max throughput otherwise reported (and which is achieved on BBC iplayer/SkyPlayer)  - I'd always assumed I was using it at busy times).

Is there any evidence that the higher 80/20 profile is less stable?

[Gary]

I have a simiar situation Steve but on ADSL2+ I sync at 15447 now downloading from Sky on demand is quick, but Apple is always slow. I use a different DNS to idnets like you do, (I use Symantecs DNS servers) maybe the Akamai system comes into play here and we are not getting the nearest servers from some sites (even though both Open DNS and Symantec both have servers in London) although whether they use them all the time is another issue as they balance the servers usage There is an Article saying that fast DNS resolution comes at the cost of slower download speed, especially from Apples servers. http://lifehacker.com/5721188/fix-itunes-and-other-slowdowns-by-ditching-third+party-dns-servers

[Steve]

Certainly the DNS choice seems very relevant as what we think is a local download could well be intercontinental . Simon@idnet has clearly stated their position so any slowdowns must be due to other factors.

[andrue]

Yeah it's odd, I'll grant. Also I'm not suggesting deliberate throttling by IDNet.

However I didn't use to have this problem. I mostly gave up on the TBB tester a while back but that's because of a known issue with upstream throughput. I don't download much so I don't know when this actually started. The last thing I remember downloading at full speed was the last Win8 RC DVD.

I can say that it affects all three of my computers: An Acer laptop, a Fit-PC2 server and an HP desktop. They do all run Windows 7 but neither the laptop nor Fit-PC2 have Windows Update enabled so are essentially unchanged from months if not years ago. The HP machine is employer provided and Gawd alone knows what configuration that ends up with since it's controlled by corporate IT. Connecting the laptop direct to the BTor modem didn't change anything.

The other oddity is my upload on Speedtest.net. Simon didn't think there was anything significant there but that's surely an obvious difference that we know happened on the 15th as a result of this thread. What do other people get from speedtest.net? The BT tester said I could get 16Mb/s so how come I only get 12Mb/s all of a sudden 

Anyway to re-iterate I'm not trying imply anything underhand by IDNet but I would very much like to get to the bottom of this.

[mervl]

I was going to ask about leaving the router out of the equation, but you've done that! (I recall I found that the Netgear wnr100 I (I think)  - supplied by IDNet could halve my upload and download speeds (during downloads the TBBmeter graph was up and down like a yo yo compared to the "block" graph shown using my current router/modem). I also gather that some people have had faulty faceplates installed by OR (though as you're recent, I think, they should have sorted this) - can I believe be checked by using the master socket which still lies behind the frontplate if you're that interested? I know it's convenient to link it to the recent erraticism (which didn't affect my test result on speeedtest.net when it was happening); but things don't necessarily have the same cause just because of timing, I've found.

PS I may be wrong (usually am) but I think the "faulty faceplates" issue may sometimes not affect results on the BT speedtester and may be even speedtest.net which show peak speeds, but affect "real world" performance?

[andrue]

I was going to ask about leaving the router out of the equation, but you've done that! (I recall I found that the Netgear wnr100 I (I think)  - supplied by IDNet could halve my upload and download speeds (during downloads the TBBmeter graph was up and down like a yo yo compared to the "block" graph shown using my current router/modem). I also gather that some people have had faulty faceplates installed by OR (though as you're recent, I think, they should have sorted this) - can I believe be checked by using the master socket which still lies behind the frontplate if you're that interested? I know it's convenient to link it to the recent erraticism (which didn't affect my test result on speeedtest.net when it was happening); but things don't necessarily have the same cause just because of timing, I've found.

Oh too true. Computers can be pernickety beasts and one fix doesn't necessarily address all instances. I do have a wnr1000 but mines a v3. Also the latest firmware since the night before last (post dating this problem BTW). If it was a problem with 'horsepower' I'd think it would be there all the time but last night in some tests my download accelerator was hitting over 8MB/s with some Microsoft stuff. I think at one point it had 4 threads running at 2.1MB/s. Whatever the problem is it's not with the physical FTTC side. Something be it my computer, my router, IDNet's routers, BT's routers or Uncle Tom Cobbly(**) just doesn't like single threads going faster than ~3MB/s.

So it's possible to deliver 'bits' to my laptop(*) at over 8MB/s it's just how you do it that has issues. I've just found this which sounds interesting:

http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php

Again I'd like to distance myself from the overall tone of the article but it'll be interesting to see what it says.

(*)For the record before someone queries it my laptop is wired. I gave up on wifi shortly after getting FTTC. Around me there's just too many other people hogging the airwaves(** again probably ).
(**)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom_Cobley

[andrue]

Well - how interesting. Glasnost said there was nothing wrong although it could only run at about 20Mb/s. However the problem has improved. Well..mostly. The TBB tester is still only saying 38Mb/s but the test files are coming down at over 5MB/s. It's not what it has been but the mysterious 3MB/s barrier seems to have been broken. And for the record I haven't done anything. Just got home and fired up my laptop. Meanwhile the same file multi-threaded screams down at 8.5MB/s.

I think that eliminates any equipment I own but beyond that I don't know.

[Simon_idnet]

Thanks to input from Andrue we have identified a possible issue with one of the LNS servers so we're going to reload it at 04:30 tomorrow morning. Consequently those customers currently connected will see a brief PPP drop as your connection is shifted to one of the other LNS servers.