Jumping Ship

[Dakota2]

I've decided to jump ship, there have been far too many glitches and "capacity problems" of late, so I'm off. 

[Bill]

I can understand your concerns, but be careful where you jump... this is an anonymised BQM from a Plusnet FTTC user:



Reflect that Plusnet are owned by BT.

[Steve]

I think that just shows to me that the evening period is ISP independent if your local exchange is congested and your using BT's backbone. It doesn't really matter who owns Plusnet,I can show you an anonymised BT FTTC BQM with no evening packet loss over a prolonged period of time. As Bill says be careful as the evening issue is likely to follow unless you get yourself off BTs Backbone.

[Dakota2]

Er, I wouldn't go anywhere near Plusnet, they do traffic shaping and they don't support IVP6! I'm getting off the BT backbone.

[Bill]

and they don't support IVP6!

They (sort of) do... it's on a trial at the moment.

I'm getting off the BT backbone.

I don't know what your connection is at the moment, but remember that it hasn't unequivocally been determined that it's exchange congestion... if you're on FTTC and the congestion is at the cabinet (not likely, but not impossible) then you're stuck with it.

I'm not trying to talk you out of moving if you want to, just saying "be careful"...

[Bill]

Forgot this bit:

Er, I wouldn't go anywhere near Plusnet, they do traffic shaping

They do traffic prioritising (and publish the details), which is not necessarily a bad thing... of the "pile it high, sell it cheap" ISPs, Plusnet are one of the best imo.

[Dakota2]

Well, something has to change and I've doing due diligence now for a while. I don't need FTTC but I do want reliable ADSL+2.

[Gary]

Well, something has to change and I've doing due diligence now for a while. I don't need FTTC but I do want reliable ADSL+2.

Im not sure reliable and adsl 2+ go together. ADSL 2+ will still be congested if its that, also the DLM on adsl2 is fierce compared with DLM on FTTC. Even with all the issues my FTTC is more stable than adsl2+ ever was and DLM does not rear its ugly head that often compared with my old ADSL 2+ line. Also going back adds your E side again which can bring in more problems. Just shop wisely as others have said.

[Dakota2]

Well, I'm about to find out.

[Gary]

Well, I'm about to find out.

Good luck 

[Dakota2]

Thanks Gary.

[Steve]

At least with adsl2+ you can get away from BT exchange equipment and backbone!

[Gary]

Very true, seems less congestion on LLU these days  something is really not right

[Bill]

Very true, seems less congestion on LLU these days  something is really not right

I suspect a large part of it is BT Wholesale's infrastructure not keeping up with packages like these from BT Retail... I wasn't (and am still not) against the splitting up of the old BT, but the downsides are beginning to show

[mervl]

Two alternative backhaul options aren't there: Sky following its hefty investment (if you can bear their rules and regulations, and incorporating O2) and TT's wholesale arm which seems to have a good reputation (sold through resellers) or TT retail itself (with its abysmal reputation though people I know that use it have no complaints)? There might be a third with C&W, bought by Vodafone but I'm not sure what they're doing with it, if anything. I thought IDNet were looking at an alternative for ADSL services, though I don't know if that is going anywhere. It'd be helpful if Ofcom got their fingers out to allow an alternative on FTTC, but I guess that's mired in the intricacies of the ancient Network Plan. Zen also have some PoPs near to exchange level, rather than using the BTw ones which reduces the length of BT backhaul, but it's very limited compared to the TT and Sky backbone.

My two services both use BTWholesale though, one (the IDNet service) gets all the problems; the other hardly any. Occasionally they both get a problem at the same time, but it's over in a couple of minutes, like a router reboot.

[Simon]

I'm still on ADSL2+, and have no intention of going to FTTC.  My connection may be comparatively slow, but it does all I need it to do, and I've not had any of the issues that have been reported on here over the past weeks and months.  I know it's horses for courses and some people's ADSL2+ isn't / wasn't that great, but it suits me fine at the moment. 

[Den]

I've kept out of the discussions about loss of service ect' for the last few weeks but have followed them out of interest. As you know I went down the BT road and plumped for Infinity 1 with much trepidation which has proved to be unfounded. I get a steady download of 37.5 and a upload of about 9.3 with a ping of 15ms so I am very happy. 

[Gary]

I've kept out of the discussions about loss of service ect' for the last few weeks but have followed them out of interest. As you know I went down the BT road and plumped for Infinity 1 with much trepidation which has proved to be unfounded. I get a steady download of 37.5 and a upload of about 9.3 with a ping of 15ms so I am very happy. 

[Simon]

General discussion is fine, but let's not have a 'Which ISP?' thread, please. 

[zappaDPJ]

In addition to what Simon said, this not a discussion about loss of service, more about the quality of service and there's growing evidence to suggest that the blame for that might be placed somewhere within BT's domain.

[Baz]

Very true, seems less congestion on LLU these days  something is really not right

Im LLU and I still get bother sometimes,yeah not like others have but I do notice it.


Well I think im still on LLU....unless IDNet swapped us back 

[Den]

Sorry if I up set you Garry, but I am allowed an opinion of my own. I kept out of all discussions regarding problems in general as I could anticipate what your reaction would be. If I could have stayed with Idnet I would have as I consider them to be the best of the private companies but BT seem to be the Microsoft of the broadband in your eyes. 

[Dakota2]

Technical experience of the changeover so far not so good! I've twice needed to get technical information and it's been like talking to someone who is trying to go to sleep. Embarrassingly I could be crawling back! Hopefully my domain hosts will be more on the ball with their support effort ( they've been OK up to now).

[andrue]

I can understand your concerns, but be careful where you jump... this is an anonymised BQM from a Plusnet FTTC user:

[..snip..]

Reflect that Plusnet are owned by BT.

Yeah but a lot of their graphs are like that including mine. It has no noticeable impact on throughput. I think it's just their traffic management system de-prioritising pings. They claim their traffic management is applied per connection to protect you from yourself but I remain unconvinced. There seems little value in that. More likely there is a system wide component and I can imagine at those times of the day ICMP gets downrated.

[Bill]

I think it's just their traffic management system de-prioritising pings.

No.

BT have acknowledged problems with capacity on their SVLANs and are "investigating"... whether they'll do much about it is a separate issue. Mine was fixed for a few days then, as they continued to shuffle things around, was unfixed again and it's stayed that way.

See the update at the end of this tbb news item.

[Technical Ben]

Does that mean, one reading was saying "enough capacity", but as per usual, the BT systems was not providing/managing/moving it accordingly, leaving some lines (more so than others) stuck without provisions. 

So a move might help, as it could put you on a (virtual) line/ISP that the system had not mistakenly left congested. But it's hit and miss.

[Steve]

Probably a manual shift of of svlan and then the automated system catches you again!

[andrue]

BT have acknowledged problems with capacity on their SVLANs and are "investigating"... whether they'll do much about it is a separate issue. Mine was fixed for a few days then, as they continued to shuffle things around, was unfixed again and it's stayed that way.

But that should impact my throughput and it doesn't. As a new PN customer I can assure you that I've investigated this and there is no change in throughput during these periods of increased latency. Others have said the same. It's possible it would affect latency sensitive applications like games but I have no way of testing that.

[Bill]

But that should impact my throughput and it doesn't.

It's exchange-dependent (ask Zappa), so quite likely it doesn't affect you.

But it sure as hell affects me, I've had several BT speedtests below 5Mbps in the evening, and I think Zap has had worse problems than me.

I've had several (amicable!) email exchanges with support about it- take my word for it¹, it's BTw and they have SVLAN capacity issues.



¹ Or don't, it makes no difference.

[Steve]

Zappa's keeping quiet as his TBBQM is looking good at present but then again he's a day or two behind you.

[Bill]

I hope his BQM stays that way, I wouldn't wish mine on anybody


(Actually that's not quite true, I can think of one or two over in tbb )

[andrue]

It's exchange-dependent (ask Zappa), so quite likely it doesn't affect you.

But that PlusNet latency does affect me - that's why I wrote "Yeah but a lot of their graphs are like that including mine". However I don't see any throughput consequences:

TBBQM (latency increase just started, TBB speed test spike at right edge):


Speed test:


Full speed, flat graph (ignore the spike on the x6, that's an artifact of Kaspersky AV). So whatever is causing the TBBQM latency on my PN connection it doesn't show up anywhere else. So I don't think it's related to the BTw congestion. I think it's something weird that PN are doing but apparently it has no practical adverse effects.

[zappaDPJ]

I've got to agree with Bill, we both appear to have been hit by local congestion and everything seems to point to a SVLAN capacity issue. I'm also sure that the issue was further compounded by the capacity issue within IDNet's network a week or two ago. In my case, when these two problems coincided I had no measurable throughput on the downstream at peak times. BT speed tests when working recorded speeds of about 1Mbps during this time (on an 80/20 connection).

I've had three rather pointless engineer visits in the space of two weeks but my connection has been back to its usual self since I was disconnected for 30 minutes at 2am one morning. That said I'm now being plagued by DNS issues and email failures (both send and receive). I've been rather quiet recently because I've lost two major business clients. No Internet equals no income for me so I've had to get my head down in an attempt to drum up new business. It's not all doom and gloom though, I just sold one of my forums for over 15x what I paid for it 18 months ago. There's a lot of money in active automotive forums it seems.

[Bill]

So whatever is causing the TBBQM latency on my PN connection it doesn't show up anywhere else. So I don't think it's related to the BTw congestion. I think it's something weird that PN are doing but apparently it has no practical adverse effects.

As you will.

BQM:



Speedtest:

[Bill]

BT speed tests when working recorded speeds of about 1Mbps during this time (on an 80/20 connection).

Ouch, mine were never that bad... the worst was about 3.5Mbps iirc. Not that that's in any way satisfactory.