Increasing consistent small packet loss

[Baz]

trace routes and pings to where.

[Steve]

Anywhere you perceive there is evidence of poor throughput would be a good place to start, sadly I can't recall which IDNet IP addresses have 'ping response' set to a high priority.

[SimonM_IDNet]

Hi all,

Any website should be fine (as long as they respond to pings) Google DNS is a good one (8.8.8.8) You can try our DNS as well 212.69.36.3
212.69.40.3. Those are just examples but anything like that should be fine.

Kind regards
Simon Mulliss
IDNet support

[Steve]

None of those are currently showing any packet loss for me!

[davecollins]

The packet loss is kicking in - AGAIN.

I'm sorry but I'm fed up with sending technical details to Idnet. I've lost track of how many times I've done this. I no longer want to waste the time. They just fob you off, and I'm out of patience.

Nothing happens. Nothing is done.

Really, really terrible service.

[Steve]

Dave can you suggest an IP address which is showing packet loss . I've just checked the 3 listed above and packet loss is zero on my line, I've just done a BT Speedtest which is fine for me at 40Mbps. Whilst I can see packet loss appearing on my TBBQM I can't prove it's effect unlike last time when it was clearly paralleling a slowdown in my throughput.

[Gary]

I can see the loss kicking in on the graphs, looking at plusnet and BT but they don't have any but BT has different peering points I believe and huge amounts of bandwidth. My Speed is fine though at a steady 68.10Mbps down and 17.43Mps up

[davecollins]

I just had to download a fairly hefty data file from a client in Germany. They're hosted on Rackspace. I usually download their files at a steady 70 Mb/s. I've just downloaded at 35 Mb/s.

I also ran a speedtest at thinkbroadband - I usually get around 72 Mbps - now getting 22 Mbps.

And my upload is now at 8.9 Mb/s instead of around 16-18.

My role isn't to understand what's happening here, or whether it's related to packet loss. But my speeds are dropping - not just in terms of arbitrary speed tests, but in terms of a noticeable drop in performance.

A video conference call yesterday was close to unusable.

[Gary]

Where about in the UK are you, Dave? Sobranie has similar massive slowdowns as well, when I still can download at full speed  Ping that German address and do a traceroute and send it to SimonM_IDNet

[davecollins]

I'm down by the coast-end of the New Forest. Between Bournemouth & Southampton.

[Gary]

I'm down by the coast-end of the New Forest. Between Bournemouth & Southampton.

Not hugely far from me I'm between Portsmouth and Chichester. I guess its dependant on how your traffic is routed, it seems the further west you go the worse it gets, but tbh that is a generalisation at this point.

[zappaDPJ]

I'm seeing some packet loss but even the command prompt doesn't see it as significant... or fails at maths

Ping statistics for 212.69.36.207:
    Packets: Sent = 999, Received = 995, Lost = 4 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 8ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 8ms

[andrue]

You got a major new residential development in the offing too, in the locality?

Actually yes. Sometime soon a couple of hundred houses in the fields near me.

You'll have to move with that extra pay from the new job!

Sadly the job change was out of necessity and in order to accelerate the process I had to take a bit of a pay cut. I'm also commuting to Birmingham which costs the thick end of £400 a month.

I'm concentrating on topping off my pensions for the next 8 years so sacrifices have to made. For now

As for the connection I'm not seeing very much packet loss on my graphs today. Speed still seems fine.

Edit:Oooh, yes. Now I see a speed difference. Throughput isn't even hitting 50% of normal. Might be TBB though - it complained of being busy when I first tried it.

[mervl]

  Hope you realised I was only joking Andrue. Pensions are a minefield.

For several months I've found it near impossible to get consistent speedtests, or sometimes to correlate them with packet loss shown by a TBBQM on my IDNet FTTC service. The only thing I can say with certainty is that the TBBQM (mine for some reason incorrectly appears under dedicated/server on Craig's site) correlates with the others for IDNet on that site and much of what is generally reported here, and if the modem can be believed (and I have no reason not to) the line is consistent in terms of DSLAM sync, SNRM, INR/interleaving and attenuation  to the cab. Neither (except once which exactly correlated) can I find any evidence of a problem at the exchange. And a second service (not landline) but which I understand uses BTw backhaul, almost invariably shows no packet loss, and consistent speeds, even with the restricted wireless channels and potential for contention to kick in easily.

Three things seem to be consistent: on the landline throughput speeds vary regularly with a reduction of up to 50% (on download as the  upload is much more consistent but I am restricted by a low DSLAM maximum attainable limit due to line conditions) connected by ethernet cable and measured downloads are consistent with the tests now as I've always had trouble with the tests apart from the BT Wholesale one which remains consistently good; maximum pings can go very high up to 200ms on the landline broadband (with IDNet) and the average is 26ms consistency (which eliminating the 8ms measured by the modem/router to the cab) are both double what the alternative fixed wireless service shows with no significant variation in throughput speed. As I'm not aware of exchange congestion from any other source and given IDNet's assurance, my assumption was that this is probably all down to BTWholesale congestion, given IDNet's lack of seeing any problem identified by their monitoring. Could I be wrong? Like others I can't get over this being "unique" to IdNet. At the moment pings are about as good as I've seen and better than the TBBQM average but speeds still suffer. I'll try to help with some stats when I can.

I'm paying IDNet's bills, but have reverted to using the fixed wireless service mostly as although it's slower, it's just better (more reliable) on quality of service. VOIP on the landline also seems to suffer, at times being almost unusable which could be down to the reported high latency and jitter although I've not ruled out the router as responsible. Sorry for the ramble, everyone; in case it helps. In terms of my use, apart from the VOIP irritation, none of this matters much to me, though. That's my problem.

[davecollins]

How did I know the slowdown would kick in again this afternoon?

[psp83]

Getting half my usual speed as well.

[andrue]

Hope you realised I was only joking Andrue. Pensions are a minefield.

Yeah no worries

If I can stay in employment for another 8 years I should be in a position to retire at 55 if I want but anything can happen over that length of time. Unfortunately I'm definitely getting that 'are we there yet?' syndrome. Have to keep reminding myself that 8 years is still a long time and I can't live like a hermit 

[sobranie]

Down from nearly 75 to around 18Mbs. Am now accepting this as the IDNet norm. Packet loss starting to kick in as well.

[Baz]

yeah Ive noticed a small speed loss today and had 2 dropped connections this morning about 7:30 and 8:00.

main thing for me is high latency but its been that way for ages....I just forget about it unfortunately until I see things posted here then start checking again

[mk1]

Jumping in on this conversation, I am also experiencing poor connections with packet loss and time-outs on loading webpages, I am guessing my connection has reverted back to BT Wholesale from LLU, which was a much more stable connection for my line. Unfortunately I don't have the TBM running but i don't need it to know something is not working when it takes 5-6 attempts to load a webpage correctly for example the BBC webpage, might only load the text and no graphics until i have refreshed the page several times! 

Going to set up the TBM to get some more info on this, but i hope a fix is found soon has its been like this for the last week or so.

Added my TBM, just waiting for the results for the next few hours now...

[SimonM_IDNet]

Hi MK1,

I checked your line out and it is still on LLU currently. I have seen a number of disconnects and a few errors on that circuit. I would advise (if not done so already) testing with the router on the test/master socket checking all the cabling swapping filters and if possible an alternate router. If all of that has been done please let us know as we can schedule a line test to see if there is any potential fault showing on this circuit.

Kind regards
Simon Mulliss
IDNet support

[mk1]

Simon,

Thanks for the quick response, mine line has always been a bit iffy, as the router logs disconnects all the time, but mostly when I'm not using it. The last week also it's been worse with web pages timing out etc. I did in the summer have my router directly connected to the test port as I don't use the landline but hadn't made a big difference previously. I will test it again now and see what happens (although I have an iplate thing installed).

I guess I should also check my router as I have had to reboot it occasionally as it would not connect of for out any internal IP address even when directly connected. I'll try a cheaper router I. The test port and see what happens, doing a test on the line would I guess result in calling an engineer out (this was the advise last time but I didn't want to risk the £100 charge).

Looking at the TBM so far it's all other the place! 

[mk1]

Ok different router is plugged in (hence the red block on the TBM) Its an older Netgear DG834g. Interestingly this router picks up less noise than the other router (a netgear DGNG3300), but less throughput (although i guess that is down to the d/c):

DGNG3300  (original router) stats:                            Old Netgear DG834g:
ADSL Link                   Downstream   Upstream         Downsteam        Upstream
Connection Speed   3656 kbps           1105 kbps        3059 kbps           1019 kbps
Line Attenuation      57.0 db              33.9 db            52.0 db              17.0 db
Noise Margin           9.2 db                6.4 db              7 db                   5 db

I'll leave it for an hour or so to see that the TBM does.

[andrue]

My TBBQM still shows some packet loss but the speeds I'm getting are, frankly, glorious. I'm really not sure what to make of it other than accepting that packet loss apparently means nothing 

[davecollins]

I'm getting almost no packet loss today - for a change!

In general, however, the correlation between packet loss and poor speed is clear and obvious.

That said, I have no idea what's happening on your end :-)