Coming back

[DarkStar]

Hi everybody. This is probably my first post since I moved to Zen nearly three years ago. Only left because I needed a phone / broadband package that IDNet were unable to provide at that time and always expected to come back.
I have been on ADSL of some sort since Madasafish days nearly 10 years ago and intend upgrading to Fibre and cabinet is only 100m away so 'should' be capable of a decent connection. After my ongoing experience with Zen I am reluctant to upgrade with them.
My ADSL connection at Zen has never been any more than so so and over the last few months has deteriorated considerably culminating in the sort of TBB BQM reading attached. When I first contacted Zen about it they said my connection was stable and there was nothing wrong with it. Although a BTW speed test showed 3.1 download speed actual downloads on the net were between 0.30 and 0.40. Loading pages like on this site https://www.mu-43.com/forums/  started taking so long that I could literally go and make a drink while I was waiting. When I bumped them to find out what they were doing about it and attached this TBB BQM all they said was that the graph was perfectly normal and was what they would expect to see if someone was surfing the net    Trouble was it was like that even if the computer was turned off and wi-fi off at the router. Bye bye Zen.

I am aware that there were some problems at IDNet a little while ago but that seems to have been resolved? If so I will be coming back because I certainly don't fancy BT or PlusNet.
So, would it be a wise decision to sign up to IDNet again. As I almost never go over 20GB a month I would be going for the Lite option, that is plenty fast enough for my needs.
All opinions / advice welcome.

[Simon]

Hi Ian,

I don't think anyone can guarantee what your connection would be like, as obviously much depends on your line quality, but if the forum is anything to go by, we have had very few complaints of late, and IDNet have just doubled the data allowance on most of their packages, so I would guess are presently fairly competitive as far as cost goes.  Have to admit, your graph does look shocking, and I can't see how Zen could view that as "normal", as there is clearly an unacceptable degree of packet loss.  I guess the question is, what's causing it?

[DarkStar]

Hi Simon,

I realise my connection depends on the line quality, I was wondering if these sort of issues have been resolved, perhaps by IDNet introducing more capacity to their network. I don't want to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.

http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,33103.0.html

http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,33023.0.html

Regarding the TBB BQM. Every graph since this started is almost exactly the same except the packet loss and latency are very slightly less severe at weekends. If you look you will see that between midnight and 7am the packet loss has disappeared and the latency is almost normal. I sat up till 1am one night and after midnight surfing was normal, downloads at 3000kbps+. Along with the fact that on the days when I had the computer switched of at the socket and wi-fi switched off as well the graph was still the same. That would suggest to me that something like a business contract perhaps working from 7am till midnight was hogging all the bandwidth. It seems to be a badly kept  secret that Zen is short of capacity all round.   

[zappaDPJ]

That TBB BQM shows up to 20% packet loss all day long but next to nothing outside of peak hours. That suggests congestion to me. In addition the TBB Zen Internet forum http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/zen.html is awash with complaints of congestion and slow throughput.

I guess it depends where the congestion is as to whether IDNet can provide a better service but I certainly doubt they could provide worse. I also doubt they would lie to you by saying up to 20% packet loss is normal because it isn't.

[DarkStar]

I also doubt they would lie to you by saying up to 20% packet loss is normal because it isn't.

This is extracted from their last email reply:

"our line tests are not highlighting any obvious fault condition, your line is stable and the line statistics are healthy.  We can see some latency but this is not excessive and at a level we would expect to see when the connection is being used."

The point is that it's also occurring when the connection isn't being used. They mention latency but not the packet loss which is the real killer. Yes, the line probably is stable and line statistics healthy, it's when you hit the brick wall at Zens end thats the problem.

[zappaDPJ]

There's a certain amount of conjecture on my part but it appears to me your rise in latency is directly proportional to the increase in PL and not your usage pattern as suggested by Zen. In addition as you said, regardless of that there's no explanation or mention of the PL which is very high.

[psp83]

Zen are currently having problems with their own network and BT part of the network. The issue is mainly causing slow single thread performance and this can cause multi thread to suffer as well.

I'm with Zen and have had issues, but after a couple of months Zen seems to have fixed my problem.

I was getting packet loss and slow speed from 8am to 11pm.

I know they are still having problems with BTo part. They've also done work on their own network in London but I don't know if that's helped.