Increasing consistent small packet loss

[Baz]

hasnt made any difference to mine but saying that I didnt really have the bother others have.My main concern is the high min latency, why is it that way, has been for a while. Also heres a graph from yesterday with nothing used between 1pm and 8pm as we were out

[davecollins]

Anyone else getting that familiar sinking feeling?

[Lance]

Here is mine  - definitely packet loss still showing from 4:30pm onwards as indeed it is on most other ones I can see too.

[psp83]

Getting it as well

[Bill]

Ditto, speed is fine though.

[sobranie]

Snap!!!!!

[Bill]

Time of day makes me think of a company doing a large off-site backup... interesting to see if it's a regular occurrence.

It's not enough to bother me.

[andrue]

Could it be that the higher frequencies used for FTTC are effected more than the ADSL frequencies?

But that's a local issue. For FTTC it's only between your house and cabinet. For ADSL between house and exchange. After that your data has been encoded as optical pulses and is on its way across BT's network. There's no difference there between ADSL, FTTC or even voice for that matter. Just a collection of 0s and 1s pulsing their way across the country like millions of fireflies trapped inside glass tubing

Such an effect can't be network-wide. Unless there happens to be a significant increase in EM noise across the entire country in the afternoon. That would effect every ISP's customer, medium wave or maybe even VHF radio and would probably have made the news headlines

[joe]

ditto, upgrade appears to have had little impact

[davecollins]

Let's see how today pans out. Tuesday was great, so I don't know what happened yesterday. I wish Idnet kept us informed.

[Gary]

Let's see how today pans out. Tuesday was great, so I don't know what happened yesterday. I wish Idnet kept us informed.

<sigh> I guess the more bandwidth they purchase the more the big business users will suck up and in the end its vicious circle, they cant keep buying more and more it makes no sense financially. I am wondering with FTTC and unlimited business user packages if the days of the niche provider are numbered 

[Ray]

on the few occasions I get any packet loss it usually seems to occur in the evening.

[Steve]

I wonder if that"s the local exchange then Ray?

[Bill]

on the few occasions I get any packet loss it usually seems to occur in the evening.

I sometimes get a little packet loss in the evening, but routinely get increased latency (yellow on the BQM, sometimes enough to show a bit of blue) from about 6pm to 11pm, which I've put down to a lot of online viewing through my exchange, which is probably also the cause of my packet loss. In other words- BT's fault, not IDNet's.

I've also heard that FTTP is available around here in some areas (Didcot exchange), if it's true then it's unlikely to be helping

[Simon]

<sigh> I guess the more bandwidth they purchase the more the big business users will suck up and in the end its vicious circle, they cant keep buying more and more it makes no sense financially. I am wondering with FTTC and unlimited business user packages if the days of the niche provider are numbered 

Wouldn't that follow for all providers though?  Surely the bigger the provider, the more customers they have, and the more bandwidth those customers will use. It's just a question of proportion.

[Gary]

Wouldn't that follow for all providers though?  Surely the bigger the provider, the more customers they have, and the more bandwidth those customers will use. It's just a question of proportion.

True though maybe bigger providers have bigger pipes for the business side who knows 

[Ray]

I wonder if that"s the local exchange then Ray?

I suspect it is, Glenn, there are a lot of complaints from BT customers in the area about poor speeds and hopefully our exchange is in line to be upgraded to fibre under the BDUK scheme in the next 12 months.

[Technical Ben]

Wouldn't that follow for all providers though?  Surely the bigger the provider, the more customers they have, and the more bandwidth those customers will use. It's just a question of proportion.

The bigger providers can just 1) Not provide the service, who's going to do anything about it? 2) Kick the users off, who's going to do anything about it? 3) Change the terms, it's not like they stick to them anyway 4) Add small print.

I know people paying BT or Vodaphone/Virgin or TalkTalk etc who don't actually get a service (constant drops, 215k etc), but for some unknown reason, they have still been paying them £15-£20 or more a month for years now. 

[Lance]

I think the bigger mainstream providers may have a greater mix of customers. Some may be high bandwidth users streaming films etc, whilst some may just use their broadband for a few emails and a little web browsing. This means there may not need to be a proportionate increase in network capacity to users.

[karvala]

Coming late to the party, but just wanted to add that this has also been affecting me (and most other IDNet customers by the looks of it).  My graph from Monday is attached.  Small packet loss, only on week days, always in the afternoon.  Still had it yesterday, though not quite as bad as in recent weeks, so it's possible the upgrade did something but not enough, or it may just be a blip and nothing has changed; only time will tell.  I'm on FTTC, getting (when it's at working properly) around 65-70Mbps.

Monday's Graph:


P.S.  If anyone can think of a plausible likely cause for the regular latency spikes I see (from the graph appear to be every 30mins), then do let me know.  I've had them ever since FTTC was installed a couple of years, and they appears regardless of whether or not any devices are attached to the router (i.e. even with all connected devices powered off and the router log confirming no activity, I still see them).  The router is a Netgear WNDR3400 if that's any help.  They're not causing an obvious problem; I'm just curious as to why they're present. 

[andrue]

P.S.  If anyone can think of a plausible likely cause for the regular latency spikes I see (from the graph appear to be every 30mins), then do let me know.

One of the technicolor ADSL modem/routers used to do that and it was thought to be because the CPU was underpowered and running some regular housekeeping task.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/bqm.html#310

[zappaDPJ]

A couple of days ago I upgraded my service from 40/10 to 80/20. Naturally I've been conducting speed tests to see how much of a speed increase there's been.

This was typical of my 40/10 connection before the upgrade...



This was what I was getting after the 80/20 upgrade was applied, yesterday afternoon during a period of mild packet loss...




This is typical of what I was getting last night...



I've not been able to do any testing today except for one test just now which matched the test from last night. I will however try and test again tomorrow mid afternoon.

[Bill]

P.S.  If anyone can think of a plausible likely cause for the regular latency spikes I see (from the graph appear to be every 30mins), then do let me know.

One of the technicolor ADSL modem/routers used to do that and it was thought to be because the CPU was underpowered and running some regular housekeeping task.

I get that (tho' not as obviously) on my Asus RT-N66, and I don't think that's short of CPU power

It happens with several routers, and Andrue isn't far out- the usual thought is that it's doing some housekeeping with a lower priority than normal traffic but higher than responding to a ping.

[karvala]

One of the technicolor ADSL modem/routers used to do that and it was thought to be because the CPU was underpowered and running some regular housekeeping task.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/bqm.html#310

I get that (tho' not as obviously) on my Asus RT-N66, and I don't think that's short of CPU power

It happens with several routers, and Andrue isn't far out- the usual thought is that it's doing some housekeeping with a lower priority than normal traffic but higher than responding to a ping.

Thanks guys.  I've got QoS enabled at the moment, and so I will increase the priority of ICMP packets just out of curiosity, to see if that has any effect.

[mervl]

Barely discernable packet loss at the same time as others this week. I'm coming to the view that it's the "cost" of having no traffic management. Coincidentally at the same time as my IDNet connection has improved, my second fixed wireless connection is suffering from continuous higher average latency - I assume that a new heavy user has joined in my sector: same sort of problem on an unmanaged service.

Other "reliable" major ISPs either don't "allow" business use (Sky) or traffic manage (Plusnet), or perhaps with BT and TalkTalk have specific business services. And Zen have ratcheted up investment by multiples, A&A manage by having very specific and tightly drawn allowances. IDNet are in the uncomfortable middle, squeezed between the demand for bigger allowances and their commitment to no other restrictions. With IDNet do we all go into the same "pot"? Benefit: home users get a business class service; Disbenefit: home users can get affected by heavy business users. You pays your money and takes your pick. Whilst IDNet seem to do doing all they REASONABLY can with capacity and balancing traffic  to accommodate everybody, whilst avoiding traffic management, and for me the benefits still outweigh the disadvantage, I'll hang on whilst I can, financially. Everyone has to reach their own conclusion for their own use, though. It seems to me that with the advent of higher speed services and some pretty hefty investment by the mass-market ISPs the correlation between the higher price specialists and quality of service is by no means as strong as it once was. Same as the groceries, loyalties count for less as markets mature. By accident or design though, I seem to contrive to be off-line when the problems occur.