Congestion?

[Simon]

 

[pctech]

How many BT backroom staff does it take to correct a speed fault?

None, they just declare T1 the new standard.

[joe]

same here yesterday:-


speed holding up on this occasion:-

[Simon_idnet]

We've noticed some unusual behaviour with our LNS (login) servers recently so we're going to load the latest software versions on them and reboot one in the early hours of tomorow morning and then the others a few days apart.

[Steve]

Thanks Simon! 

[Simon_idnet]

This work has been postponed 24 hours.

The new software purports to support IPv6 prefix delegation in a slightly different (better) way. It is backwards-compatible so won't affect any exisiting customer configurations but we want to test this some more in the lab before we roll it out.

[psp83]

Hopefully this will fix the problem tonight as its starting from 10am now and clears up around 11pm.

[Technical Ben]

Sounds familiar to one of the other congestion problems a few years back. The software was not seeing some the load/customers for some reason, and thus was not load transferring. Left a few stuck on the congested server, and while other was idle. That only affected ASDL2+ customers AFAIR.

[mervl]

Dunno; but as the doubling of latency/25% loss of top speed/up to 5% packet loss for me is all exactly during IDNet's former "peak" hours, and unique (as far as I can tell) to IDNet's service; with normal "off-peak" service, I'm not sure it is wholly an addressing server issue? Their network must surely be suffering as people max out their new higher daytime allowances to get their money's worth? Anyhow the margins that FTTC gives above what I think any sensible user reasonably requires for a home connection, at least, means there is no practical problem, but perhaps their network doesn't quite live up to its claims. Not surprising really, but I emphasise, not a criticism; just how it is in the real world. Staying on an old package, and keeping most use off-peak, I'm OK! 

[Steve]

Certainly I or should I say we have been streaming old repeats from Sky On Demand recently, something I would never have done before the tariffs changed. It's not for me about getting your money's worth however it's more about having the flexibility to use your connection as you wish to without feeling inhibited by the peak restrictions. I agree this must place an additional strain on IDNet's network but in terms of throughput for myself I'm not seeing an issue in terms of the usability of the service because as you say the margins with FTTC are above and beyond what I need for streaming HD TV.

[psp83]

It's not about speed drops etc, the main issue of this post is the increase in packet loss & max latency.. which on any connection causes issues with gaming, skype calls & ssh connections.

My connection dropped around 5am ish this morning, I take it that was the software update / reboot happening? After that I had packet loss & a higher min latency.

Just before 10am my min latency dropped down to 10ms.

[lozcart]

My connection which has been sound while others have been complaining has gone bad this morning, was the software updated overnight?

[Simon]

We don't know for sure, but it seems at least a couple of people had an outage around 5am. 

[Glenn]

My connection dropped around 5am ish this morning, I take it that was the software update / reboot happening? After that I had packet loss & a higher min latency.

Mine did too Paul, but the latency increased again, it's nearly doubled from this time last week

Now



Last week



I spoke with support yesterday, Brian couldn't see anything wrong with my line.

[andrue]

Just looked at my line and as others have noticed something happened around 8:45am when there was a bump in minimum latency:



Other than that as has been said, come 10am everything goes a bit meh. Still not impacting my use but as on previous occasions I'm struck by the apparent disinterest from IDNet. I know these aren't official forums but the onetwo official responses we have had didn't really demonstrate a keen interest in the phenomena and a desire to get to the bottom of it.

From their web site:

"By refusing to oversubscribe our broadband services, we always ensure that bandwidth investment exceeds customer demand -guaranteeing you the highest possible performance and reliability from your connection."

"Our network ¡s one of the fastest, best connected networks in the UK, with points of presence in London and Amsterdam. At these exchanges we have peering agreements with over 500 networks which enable us to pass traffic at up to Gigabit speeds, delivering the highest performance and lowest latency that is technically possible."

[lozcart]

Looking at Andrue, Glenns and my graphs something definitely happened around 8.45am this morning. Since then the maximum latency yellow plot is trying to replicate Bart Simpsons hair style 

[Simon_idnet]

Please reboot your router to force a conection to another LNS whilst we sort out this issue.

[psp83]

It seems mine reconnected to a good LNS when something happened at 10am



Compare that to yesterdays :-

[Steve]

Certainly mine has changed back to 'normal'  this evening after a forced disconnect. Looks exactly the same as Paul's TBBQM before and after.

[andrue]

Thanks, Simon - it's nice to know someone is looking into it.

Mine has lost the spiky latency peaks and packet loss but the minimum latency is still higher than normal.

Mind you Speedtest.net appears to have got a bit confused:



Been a while since it did that, I'd almost got used to trusting it.

[lozcart]

Mine is also looking better after a reboot.

[jameshurrell]

Mine too.

[Bill]

Please reboot your router to force a conection to another LNS whilst we sort out this issue.

I'll leave mine as it is for the moment, it's not causing me any pain.

FWIW it's showing up on both IPv4:





and IPv6:





It seems to have started about when the idnet.com mail servers became accessible again, no obvious connection with the red spike (PPP drop I think) at ~5am.

[Steve]

I agree Bill the mail servers were unresponsive this morning first thing, I kept quiet since no one else was posting. You may of course have switched LNS server in the early hours when you dropped PPPOE which may explain why your seeing what the others in this thread have being seeing.

[Bill]

You may of course have switched LNS server in the early hours when you dropped PPPOE

I think you're probably right- I hadn't noticed before, but there's a barely visible decrease in ping time after that spike... maybe if he looks up the relevant LNS servers, it might give Simon (IDNet) an extra clue?