Strange ping / speed problem

[TMA]

It's a bit strange this - in the last few weeks (or longer come to think of it) every time I connect I either get a 'good' or a 'bad' connection, whereby on the good connection I get high speeds (6000kbps+) and low pings (14ms to BBC website) and on the 'bad' connection I get lower speeds (3000-5000kbps) and 26ms+ pings to the BBC website.

Using my rudimentary knowledge of how ADSL connections are initiated I can only assume this is down to the performance of one of the (presumably 2) IDNet pipes. Are the termination points in geographically separate locations?

This isn't a interleaving problem as I'm not resyncing between disconnecting and reconnecting the router via its web interface (i.e bouncing the PPP/L2TP session).


'Bad' Connection:

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.253.70]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    30 ms    99 ms    99 ms  10.0.0.2
  2    43 ms    26 ms    28 ms  telehouse-gw2-msdp.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]
  3    28 ms    26 ms    26 ms  rt-lonap-b.thdo.bbc.co.uk [193.203.5.91]
  4    26 ms    25 ms    26 ms  212.58.238.133
  5    27 ms    28 ms    27 ms  fe0-0.rt0-frontpost.prodgw.bbc.co.uk [212.58.239.222]
  6    27 ms    26 ms    26 ms  www1.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [212.58.253.70]

Trace complete.

'Good' connection:

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.251.201]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    67 ms    99 ms    99 ms  10.0.0.2
  2    13 ms    14 ms    14 ms  telehouse-gw2-msdp.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]
  3    18 ms    14 ms    14 ms  rt-lonap-b.thdo.bbc.co.uk [193.203.5.91]
  4    15 ms    14 ms    13 ms  212.58.238.149
  5    16 ms    15 ms    14 ms  212.58.239.62
  6    14 ms    15 ms    15 ms  www1.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.251.201]

Trace complete.

These were taken about a minute apart in which time I'd bounced the connection. (ignore the first hop, it's a speedtouch, they're not fond on speedy responses to ICMP)

Anyone had similar experiences?

[Simon]

When you say "every time I connect", can we infer that you are regularly disconnecting and reconnecting?  I think this may have an impact on your connection speeds, but someone more technical than me will be around later to confirm this.

In the meantime, I note you haven't received a welcome karma, which is now rectified. 

[Lance]

Welcome to the forum.

I used to get this when my old router was starting to fail. Sometimes the connection was good, sometimes awful.

I would be very surprised if it was down to one of the IDNet pipes.

You state on a bad connection, you get a lower sync then a good connection, but then go on to say that you don't resync, but reset the PPP session? I'm confused!

Would you be able to see if your line stats (obtained from the router) change much between good and bad?

[Rik]

Like Lance, I'm a bit confused, as dropping the PPP session should not initiate a re-sync. Based on what you say, my gut instinct is that the lower speed connection is seeing a lot of errors, which are impacting on ping times.

If you can post detailed stats, we'll do our best to help you, but you might want to talk to support, as they can look at what's happening to your connection in real time.

[TMA]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies all. I wasn't clear that by lower speeds I mean via a speedtest and not lower sync speeds. My sync (which never drops until I turn the router off last thing at night) remains at 8192kbps because I live about 120 metres (straight line) from the telephone exchange. I was actually geeky enough to check where the telephone exchange was before I bought my house!

Stats as a result of the line length are good, no CRC / HEC errors on the line. When I have the 'bad' connection, it's still very consistent (as you can see from the traceroute).

I was attempting to sound out if this was a generic problem and evidently it's not based on the confused responses, so while further suggestions are welcome I might bounce this one off support and confuse them with it also, because I can't understand what's happening (just as a bit of background I used to work in the ADSL faults team for an ISP)

[Rik]

Have you done a BT speed test to establish your profile? Support will probably ask you to do one, so it won't do any harm to be prepared.

Have you checked whether your exchange is showing red?

http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

I note that step 4 onwards of the two tracerts differs - could this be where the problem lays?

[Simon]

I was actually geeky enough to check where the telephone exchange was before I bought my house!

Nothing wrong with that, in fact, it was one of the criteria when I moved a couple of years ago, along with a Freeview signal.  Wouldn't have bought the place otherwise.