Dropouts worse than ever

[Clive]

I know the red spikes were outages because I experienced them but can anyone explain what the small yellow spikes represent and the level of the near continuous green band that hovers around 90% ish?  To be fair, Think Broadband were incredibly helpful in resurrecting my account - very impressive. 

[Clive]

I can see that the yellow spikes refer to latency which is very low. The green band also refers to latency but 90 is quite acceptable.  Yet again I've had three dropouts in a short period of time this afternoon although we were not present to notice them.   

[Postal]

If I understand the BQM correctly, the left hand scale gives the latency in ms which applies to the green and yellow entries while the right hand %age scale refers to the red sections which show packet loss on the round trip from TBB to you and return.  Obviously when your connection is down the loss is 100% and the red fill goes from top to bottom of the graph.  The green section is the normal base latency of your connection with the yellow overlay indicating that the connection is busy and the latency is a bit longer as the connection works a bit harder to send and receive data.  For example, if you stream any video (maybe You Tube or a TV feed) you will see a heavy yellow section while that is happening.

As a side note, looking at the green band it seems that the drop outs are re-connecting to different Zen gateways as the latency is normally governed by the laws of physics so the distance to the gateway is the limiting factor.  The lower latency sectors are presumably when you are connected to the near at hand gateway and the higher latency when you are connected to the further away gateway.  I think the gateways are in London and Manchester.

[Clive]

Thanks very much for the explanations Postal.  Are you saying that I'm being kicked off one gateway then reconnecting to a different one?  Why do you think that might happen?  Is it my fault or some dastardly plot to get rid of me?   

[Postal]

I am assuming that IDNet have put you on Zen backhaul (otherwise this is all irrelevant)!

There is a lot of talk around t'internet about Zen and their gateways.  The gist of it seems to be that gamers look for low latency so if they end up on the wrong Zen gateway they drop the connection and re-connect.  If they are still on the high-latency connection they rinse and repeat until they get onto the nearer gateway.  Given the population distribution this means that the London gateway gradually gets overloaded.  Zen remedy this by forcing some of the London connections back to Manchester.  However the reports are that such a process normally takes place at about 02:00 so I have no idea what is causing your problems.

[Simon]

Clive, just a thought, but would it be worth seeing if any of your near neighbours experience the same sorts of dropouts, which could indicate something going on within the building?

[zappaDPJ]

I've seen a lot of BQMs but I've rarely seen one that's so clean/angular/digital (for want of a better phrase) in appearance. I'd say your problem is being caused by an event rather than a poor quality line. I don't think that's a live graph so I'd post another/new link to it for comparison.

[Clive]

I know the building better than anyone because I manage it and I know of nothing that happens in the afternoon.  Apart from a security system and communal lighting we have a passenger lift, car lift, water pumps and garage gates.  The car lift is out of action at present as someone has driven into it and we are waiting for parts from Germany.  Ill wait until this evening and paste today's stats here.  Many thanks for all your help. 

[nowster]

My suggestion is to compare the graphs over a few days. If you're still getting disruption regularly between about 4.40 and 5.15pm, maybe turn on a portable medium wave radio at about 4.30pm, tune to a very weak radio station and listen for half an hour. You may hear a crack or buzz about the same time as the dropout on the DSL.

[Clive]

 My Broadband Ping

Strangely, no dropouts today for the first time in ages.  The weather has been dismal with constant wind and rain blowing off the sea.  Temperature indoors 24C.

Thanks for the radio advice Nowster, I have a multiband set that I can charge up and tune to a weak station. 

[Clive]

I won't be able to carry out the test tomorrow as we have visitors in the afternoon but I certainly will on Thursday. I've just put my little XHDATA on charge.   

[Clive]

I did manage to carry out that experiment this afternoon but once again there have been no dropouts recorded on the graph in the past 24 hours.  It was back to warm sunshine this afternoon.

[nowster]

I did manage to carry out that experiment this afternoon but once again there have been no dropouts recorded on the graph in the past 24 hours.  It was back to warm sunshine this afternoon.

A watched pot never boils. 

[Clive]

So after two days of perfection it all went haywire today with five dropouts during the usual time slot.

[Clive]

 My Broadband Ping

[Simon]

The dropouts look almost exactly every 15 minutes between 5 and 6pm, Clive. 

[Clive]

I don't know of anything that could have caused them.  We were here all the time but had a visitor for part of that time frame and only experienced two of the dropouts.  The immersion heater turns off around 4pm and we had no appliances on at all as we were chatting to a neighbour.  I've not put the callblocker back because since removing it I've only had one spam call on my landline. 

[nowster]

That seems impressively regular. The problem might not be in your own house, hence the MW radio suggestion.

[Clive]

I don't think it is either but I can't for the life of me think what could be the culprit.  Where the router is situated is an end wall of the building outside of which is a narrow lane and then a restaurant which is well below as we are on the 4th floor.  Opposite is a theatre which really only comes to life in the evenings.   

[Simon]

Would it be possible to relocate the router as an experiment?

[Postal]

I don't think it is either but I can't for the life of me think what could be the culprit.  Where the router is situated is an end wall of the building outside of which is a narrow lane and then a restaurant which is well below as we are on the 4th floor.  Opposite is a theatre which really only comes to life in the evenings.   

Does the theatre start prepping up before they open (e.g. turning on the auditorium lights, testing the stage lighting etc.)?

[Clive]

The router is plugged into the main socket coming into the house which I understand is the best place for it.  We have another socket in the main bedroom but I would not be popular if there were flashing lights all night in the bedroom.

They do test all the sound and lights etc in the afternoon before a performance but they don't have a show on every night.  At this time of year they have a lot of daytime activity for children and I should imagine they would run their tests before them too yet the outages rarely happen outside the usual afternoon slot. 

[Clive]

Two today within the usual parameters. 


My Broadband Ping

[Postal]

Two today within the usual parameters. 


My Broadband Ping

So has it been resolved in the last three weeks or is it still ongoing?  If resolved, was the cause identified or was it one of the mysteries of the internet?

[Clive]

Thanks Postal.  I've been in London these past few weeks enjoying wondrous superspeed hyperoptic broadband.  But now it's back to reality.  I left the router on during my disappearance and the monitor shows no dropouts occurred today.  We didn't get home until 5 pm but presumably it gets the information from the router not the computer.  I'll continue to monitor it but only the router was left on so that may be significant!