Increasing consistent small packet loss

[exxos]

Not keeping up with this thread, but myself and my girlfriend had problems playing games over the net due to packet loss problems. It only seemed to start about 2 weeks ago though. Before that our old netgear routers was causing problems, so once we kicked them out for the Asus ones, it had been fine for a few weeks.

What we did is put the MTU speed down to 1462, as I think it was on 1500, theres a small prog tcp optimiser  which can test for fragmented packets. Though once we changed that setting to 1462 all the connection problems went away. Games connect first time everytime, on 1500 it "used" to work.  Solved no end of odd connection problems with general stuff like file transfers and all sorts. 

[Gary]

Anyone noticing packetloss again tonight, I'm down to 44Mbps from 67Mbps tonight.

[sobranie]

Me too!  Speeds halved at times since around 4pm and still up the creek. Pkt loss evident too! However, still a little faster than carrier pigeon at the mo. Anyone care to advise me why I pay £45 per month for this service??

[sobranie]

 Here we go again, what the devil is causing it.

[Gary]

No idea, it seems bad tonight, I didnt really notice anything last night as I was not online that much.  I hope its just  glitch. Maybe ongoing issues at Telecity?

[Technical Ben]

Hmmmm. BT are apparently installing Fiber right now. I'd really like the extra upload speed (download is of no concern) for the occasional Youtube Video upload. But is it worth it if Openreach/BT can't get their act together on the infrastructure/hardware/backbone?

PS, is optical susceptible to supernova or normal neutrinos? 

[Gary]

Hmmmm. BT are apparently installing Fiber right now. I'd really like the extra upload speed (download is of no concern) for the occasional Youtube Video upload. But is it worth it if Openreach/BT can't get their act together on the infrastructure/hardware/backbone?

PS, is optical susceptible to supernova or normal neutrinos? 

I just asked my next door neighbour to try his, he is on BT infinety 2 and he is having no such issues or packetloss So the backbone is working fine with some it seems. As to download, its of concern to me as I like to download films via Sky on demand and a HD film is sometimes as much as 4.5GB so this kind of issue ruins that. Its not like the loss of speed mean everything works well pages just dont load and thats at 44Mbps so in theory this weird loss of speed should not be an issue, yet when I do a ping it shows no packetloss. In the day it flies along at 67Mbps. This seems for me to have started tonight although looking at the TBB graphs it happened last night too.

Edit: 22:30 back to full speed again. Hopefully that's the last of it and tomorrow night will be back to normal.

[sobranie]

[
PS, is optical susceptible to supernova or normal neutrinos? 
[/quote]

Well, I've been watching Star Trek for quite a few hours so maybe it's that which is causing the prob.

[Gary]

[
PS, is optical susceptible to supernova or normal neutrinos? 


Well, I've been watching Star Trek for quite a few hours so maybe it's that which is causing the prob.

probably just needs some dilithium crystals

[Bill]

Well, I've been watching Star Trek for quite a few hours so maybe it's that which is causing the prob.

You and a lot of others maybe... I think you've given yourself the answer- this is typical of mine every evening, but I'm reasonably sure it's my exchange rather than anything IDNet can do much about:

[Steve]

Whilst I agree it's a possible answer Bill, and I can only see a small sample of TBBQMs. However all IDNet ones looked the same last night and with the recent history it's not surprising people are keeping an eye on throughput. I note Gary's comment regarding his neighbour where I presume both FTTCs users are on the same exchange but with a different ISP.

[Gary]

Whilst I agree it's a possible answer Bill, and I can only see a small sample of TBBQMs. However all IDNet ones looked the same last night and with the recent history it's not surprising people are keeping an eye on throughput. I note Gary's comment regarding his neighbour where I presume both FTTCs users are on the same exchange but with a different ISP.

Same cab, same exchange different ISP's, Steve. Looking at other TBBQM 's  this particular pattern seems to be idnets own. Until last night I had no issues at night.Speeds  remained constant. I'm partial to some OCD speed tests you see. I'm hoping it was a one off, as I have never gone below 67Mbps at night beforel, and at one point last night I was down to 22Mbps. 

[zappaDPJ]

You and a lot of others maybe... I think you've given yourself the answer- this is typical of mine every evening, but I'm reasonably sure it's my exchange rather than anything IDNet can do much about:

Here's mine taken from yesterday for comparison.



Twins!

And here's a speed test taken when the packet loss was first reported.



Here's another one taken later when I started to notice slow response times from various websites.

[Gary]

The TBBMQ looks very much like the pattern that occurred during the earlier part of the day to early evening when we had this issue before things were fixed, now it seems to have just moved on a few hours. Well it does to me on one coffee, more may be needed. 

[psp83]

To be honest, I've started looking around and asking questions with other ISP's.. these problems lately and the small bandwidth caps & high prices for FTTC product is the reasons.

[andrue]

Something quite nasty seems to have happened to my connection yesterday although I didn't notice.



Just about to look and see if I'm unique. Ah, yeah just me. The 3pm/4pm drop looks like a re-sync to a lower latency (maybe the new DSL cable has had an effect although it's odd to have a resync at that time). The fact it lasted an hour is interesting but I've noticed that whatever router I use it now seems to take a long time and sometimes multiple attempts before I get a PPPoE login. Normally I just keep trying but perhaps this shows that the router will eventually sort it out anyway.

The later spike is me running a speed test although at the time it didn't show any significant improvement but perhaps that was due to the prevailing packet loss.

[sobranie]

....... and here we go again!!!!!

[Gary]

My speeds have slipped by over 10Mbps already, I'm to frustrated to even begin to think about this anymore this right now. 

[Technical Ben]

Could any of these be related? (Will be outdated later as it's a live feed, but currently showing Fiber problems on BTs network around the UK.)
https://www.bt.com/consumerFaultTracking/public/faults/tracking.do?pageId=31

[Gary]

Could any of these be related? (Will be outdated later as it's a live feed, but currently showing Fiber problems on BTs network around the UK.)
https://www.bt.com/consumerFaultTracking/public/faults/tracking.do?pageId=31

Looking on the craigswebsite its only the idnet TBBQM graphs that are having regular packetloss issues, Plusnet and BT show pretty much nothing at this time. Make of that what you will.

[Technical Ben]

Well. While it can be the IDNet backbone, I kind of understand it. I don't see how they can either compete in investment (load balancing across a larger company is easier than a smaller one I would assume), or in "influence" of the key operators. Not that I expect BT to cause any problems, but they have little to no incentive to not cause problems or to sort out problems they cause for others (such as the BT server deleting IDNet login fiasco they caused a few years back).

[mervl]

We will all have our conspiracy theories. That is inevitable. I suspect things are rather more prosaic. The people who post here are, I suspect, a small minority of IDNet's users: many of the rest don't see a problem and a few of them may be causing the problem. Companies and individuals whose use causes problems for, or whose needs are not met by, other mass-market ISPs will tend to gravitate towards the IDNet's of this world and their business model is designed to attract them. Quite rightly. IDnet don't have, as far as I know, the scale and resources of Zen nor the exhaustive monitoring resources of AAISP, so they don't have the flexibility nor the ability to respond as quickly as their competitors. Nobody's fault. It's frustrating. So is much of life. We've three realistic options: work around it, leave, or wait for IDNet to sort it out. Sorry. I'm sure they'd welcome any practical suggestions, but so far as I can see none of us have any to offer beyond what they're doing (which is an incremental increase in capacity)? And there simply is no contractually guaranteed speed or quality of service on residential broadband, whatever you expect. Ask questions, of course, but often there won't be an obvious or clear answer. (And actually I've never found one to any decent IT/comms question, anywhere, from anybody).

[Simon]

I think that just about sums it up, Merv.

[Gary]

Edit: Post removed. I cant be bothered.

[Technical Ben]

We will all have our conspiracy theories. That is inevitable. I suspect things are rather more prosaic. The people who post here are, I suspect, a small minority of IDNet's users: many of the rest don't see a problem and a few of them may be causing the problem. Companies and individuals whose use causes problems for, or whose needs are not met by, other mass-market ISPs will tend to gravitate towards the IDNet's of this world and their business model is designed to attract them. Quite rightly. IDnet don't have, as far as I know, the scale and resources of Zen nor the exhaustive monitoring resources of AAISP, so they don't have the flexibility nor the ability to respond as quickly as their competitors. Nobody's fault. It's frustrating. So is much of life. We've three realistic options: work around it, leave, or wait for IDNet to sort it out. Sorry. I'm sure they'd welcome any practical suggestions, but so far as I can see none of us have any to offer beyond what they're doing (which is an incremental increase in capacity)? And there simply is no contractually guaranteed speed or quality of service on residential broadband, whatever you expect. Ask questions, of course, but often there won't be an obvious or clear answer. (And actually I've never found one to any decent IT/comms question, anywhere, from anybody).

Oh I don't mean it like it's a conspiracy. Mainly it's down to business A wanting to make money, business B also wanting to. Like the post office and one of our own companies. We want the Post office to send a parcel, we pay for it, but don't of cause pay £100s each parcel as we could not sell at those prices. But the post office want to make more profit so sits on the parcel for as long as possible. Who gets the irate customer, hint, not the post office.

Likewise, I see less and less ability for IDNet to do much with the infrastructure, if it moves around them etc. If it's not a problem directly with the connection from Openworld, then I'd assume it's either in IDNets own hardware or that which they rent. I can trust IDNet to do their best, but even then, I wonder how they are coping in the current climate.

I understand the problem might be right at the heart of IDNets own service. It might be their fault. I'm sure though if it is, they are not avoiding "fixing it" if there is a fix available. If they are quiet about it, well, I consider that a bad sign. Either there is nothing they can do, or if they do act, it will have a big effect on their service (prices/competitiveness?).