More speed problems today

[Baz]

Dont know if mine is good or not but have noticed for some time now the min latency is higher than it used to be


TBB help says       The minimum latency is higher than average, which suggests a permanently congested link somewhere between the broadband router and our BQM Pingbox.

[Bill]

but have noticed for some time now the min latency is higher than it used to be

So has mine, but I've put it down to the DLM having its usual winter blues... there've been some comments over on tbb that BT may have been remotely updating the firmware on their FTTC modems to handle vectoring when it's introduced.

If it's true, that may be having an effect.

[Tacitus]

Not sure when the release was made public, but looking at the TBB item i.e. 17:24 yesterday we won't hear anything from IDNet yet.

I doubt we would this soon, but iDNet must have been aware of the likelihood of this happening and must surely have some contingency plan in place.  They may already be working on moving stuff over hence the (probably temporary) problems of congestion.  Whether or not they are moving their Be link over to TT wholesale, as the article suggests other small ISPs are doing, must remain conjecture. 

From comments I've seen elsewhere, TT wholesale are not that bad - it's the retail arm that has a poor reputation.

[andrue]

Is anyone managing to get full speed from TBB? I'm finding that the speed tester gives lousy results single threaded (10Mb/s) but normal results multi-threaded (62Mb/s). Downloading test files gives around 900kB/s for each file no matter how many I kick off. This is reminiscent of last October when a configuration error throttled single threaded downloads.

In this case it seems specific to TBB. I can download files from Microsoft at over 5MB/s (over 40Mb/s). Unfortunately trace routes are too different due to my route to TBB being IPv6:

#   Host   Sent   Recvd   Best   Avg   Worst
1    2a02:68:85a3::ffff   15   15   0ms   2ms   5ms
2    gi4-47-10-star1.bdr-rt3.thdo.ncuk.net   15   15   0ms   10ms   133ms
3    4d-gw.thdo.ncuk.net   15   15   0ms   0ms   0ms
4    2a02:390:0:ff00:e25f:b9ff:fe5b:f41b   15   15   0ms   2ms   14ms
5    2a02:390:feed:6c03:4432:4884:4c43:daba   15   15   20ms   21ms   21ms

And the route to Microsoft.com is over 12 hops but I gave up waiting 

[Gary]

So has mine, but I've put it down to the DLM having its usual winter blues... there've been some comments over on tbb that BT may have been remotely updating the firmware on their FTTC modems to handle vectoring when it's introduced.

If it's true, that may be having an effect.

That from what I read seems to be in two stages, one to the cabinet and then to the modem, but seems to be showing up on HG612's most notably as it removes the GUI. ECI cabinets are being updated it seems as well but no idea about ECI modems as you cant tell really. No sure if its for vectoring as ECI cabinets would need major work from what I have read as BT put M41's in not the V41's which can do Vectoring.  Nice and short sighted. Huawei cabs I think are better set to have vectoring turned on.

[andrue]

Huh. Seems to be sorta back to normal now.



Give or take the front of the graph it settles down to the right kind of speed eventually.

What a day it's been.

First the router that's been fine for the last three months gets a cob on and refused to play any more. Then it takes half an hour to work out why my mail server wasn't contactable from outside and could see some but not all the internet(*). Then its web interface wouldn't work on port 80 which turned out to be a web publishing service that up 'till now had coexisted quietly but decided that today it was going to claim port 80 for Queen and country 



(*)The router I'm using now has IPv6 enabled and of course that auto configured whereas the static IPv4 settings were configured to the wrong subnet.

[sobranie]

Speeds down to around 6Mbps again. Ho hum, what's new!!!! 
Time now 11.15, speed dropped to 3Mbps.

[Bill]

Not good on an 80/20 line

[Kobe]

[Steve]

There's a lot of BT issues today, which is no surprise  http://status.zen.co.uk/broadband/

All the TBBQMs from IDNet are showing packet loss that I can see, a plusnet one looks ok which possibly doesn't mean much when you look at the list of BT faults.

[sobranie]

Down to 1.7Mbs now. Fondly eyeing my dial up modem ATM.

[mervl]

There's a lot of BT issues today, which is no surprise

MBORC declaration on its way? 

[patc57]

Just to concur with current observations:

Code Select Expand

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                              FTTC-IDNET -    0 |  151 |  151 |    0 |    1 |    3 |    2 |
|             telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net -    4 |  131 |  126 |   13 |   14 |   32 |   14 |
|                           212.69.63.247 -    4 |  131 |  126 |   13 |   15 |   64 |   14 |
|            redbus-gw2-gi3-331.idnet.net -    5 |  128 |  122 |   13 |   13 |   15 |   13 |
|          redbus-gw1-gi5-0-301.idnet.net -    5 |  127 |  121 |   13 |   14 |   16 |   15 |
|                           www.idnet.net -    4 |  131 |  126 |   13 |   13 |   17 |   14 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|


The loss is occurring before London, or at least before any visible IDNet hops. Same problem as the other day. Got to be with the BT backhaul somewhere? Why are we getting no official word about this? It's not affecting my second (BT) FTTC connection, so something's up with IDNet's specific setup, either capacity with BT or BT's own equipment failing for IDNet customers.

Pat

[Steve]

There has been a response from IDNet in this forum the current problem is due to the lack of capacity on the BT Hostlink to the IDNet network.

[zappaDPJ]

My connection currently has so little throughput on the downstream I can't get a BT speed test to complete.






[EDIT] In fact at the time of posting I've had to resort to using the mobile theme to browse these forums.

[Renfrew]

There has been a response from IDNet in this forum the current problem is due to the lack of capacity on the BT Hostlink to the IDNet network.

Hi Steve,

Can you point me towards IDNet's response because I can't find it?

[zappaDPJ]

Hi Steve,

Can you point me towards IDNet's response because I can't find it?

Hopefully it's here: http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,31430.msg719266.html#msg719266

[zappaDPJ]

My connection seems to be recovering now.

[pctech]

The BT-IDNet connection has been turned up to 11 then 

[cavillas]

https://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/service_status_consumer/ss_cat/2468,2470 Also    I expect windows 8.1upgrading might have an effect as well as Apple.

[sobranie]

Recovering a little now:

[mervl]

Still not sure how this can happen regularly when IDNet say of their service on their "About Us" pages: "All external circuits are duplicated to ensure redundant failover in the event of an outage. ...
The core network and external connectivity is monitored 24/7 with alerts issued to duty engineers in the event of a failure or unusual traffic event. Where a circuit regularly reaches 70% utilisation the capacity of that link is increased to provide sufficient headroom again." My bold. Is that correct? What is an engineer expected to do if notified of an "unusual traffic event"? Or is it just that the 70% threshold no longer seems to provide sufficient headroom to meet the expectations of customers?

I've probably missed it but has their response told us what is shown by their own monitoring, but if someone could draw our attention to it, it might help the customer confidence.

[sobranie]

Still not sure how this can happen regularly when IDNet say of their service on their "About Us" pages: "All external circuits are duplicated to ensure redundant failover in the event of an outage. ...
The core network and external connectivity is monitored 24/7 with alerts issued to duty engineers in the event of a failure or unusual traffic event. Where a circuit regularly reaches 70% utilisation the capacity of that link is increased to provide sufficient headroom again." My bold. Is that correct? What is an engineer expected to do if notified of an "unusual traffic event"?

I've probably missed it but has their response told us what is shown by their own monitoring, but if someone could draw our attention to it, it might help the customer confidence.

What an absolutely wonderful idea........  Come on IDNet, feed us mushrooms!!!!

[Steve]

Their response suggested that they were going to ask BT for more capacity (I presume on the host link). I've no idea on the timescale of this though.

[pctech]

There is a news item over on TB saying that the O2/Be wholesale service is to cease by Feb 2014 and all connections will be transferred to SKY. 

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6127-be-o2-wholesale-services-to-shut-by-end-of-february-2014.html

I believe iDNet used the Be wholesale service and, whilst I may have missed it, I don't recollect any announcement from them about the implications of the SKY takeover for their network.  According to the news item, smaller operators are moving to TalkTalk wholesale.

Could it be that behind the scenes at iDNet they are rejigging the network due to this changeover, and this is currently having an impact on speeds?  Apple updates may just be a symptom of the problems they are currently having as Simon and the gang try to optimise the network. 

Tis why dear friends I posted this http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,31447.0.html as although I'm not on IDNet I do have an O2 Wholesale connection.


I've started discussions with my ISP about my options but they say nothing really needs to be done until the New Year so I'd not panic just yet.

I suspect IDNet have either contacted affected customers as my ISP did or are currently working on a contract with an alternative supplier and/or getting the physical link(s) from said supplier in place to deliver the traffic to their gateways before they do so.