Packet loss after migration

[cs]

First of all, just wanted to say 'hi' to everyone. I have just migrated to IDnet, like many others, from the burning ruins of Nildram.

Unfortunately my migration has not gone as well as I had hoped. It has now been 6 days since the switch occured on my line and things are not looking to good. Hopefully someone here can offer me some advice.

Background info - my house is only about 500 meters from the exchange so I normally get a rock solid, full speed ADSL connection and until I got moved onto Tiscali, my connection was perfect for 3 years. I got 7,000kbps speed tests most of the time and could download at 900kB/s all day long. (Although I didn't, but you get my point)

Since the migration to IDnet however, my speeds have been all over the place, speed tests on TB or Speedtest.net ranging from 6.8mbps to 0.5mbps within a matter of a few minutes.

I appear to be getting packet loss from all over the place from anywhere within the first 5 hops of my routing. Browsing seems to support this, as general browsing is very hesitant and then flys along for a while, then stops randomly again, although the connection never actually drops out.

Uploading to the FTP server has been virtually impossible to maintain a connection.

Unfortunately my job requires me to do a lot of RDP and VNC stuff from home. This has been nigh on impossible this week and I have had to go and waste money on a 3G modem for my laptop to get round the problem.

Any suggestions anyone? I am pretty convinced that there are no problems with my end of the wiring. The line is used for broadband only and has nothing but the router straight into the master socket. Nothing has been physically touched for months. The router is a Netgear 834DG that is a few years old but has served me well.

OK here are the line stats from the router:

Downstream:
Connection Speed 8128 kbps
Line Attenuation 23 db
Noise Margin 8 db

Upstream:
Connection Speed 8128 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation  7 db
Noise Margin 21 db

I have attached a screengrab from Pingplotter, pinging www.idnet.com, showing lots of packet loss.

I really hope someone can help me out here and am grateful for any advice.

Best Regards
Chris


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Rik]

Hi Chris and welcome to the forum.

Your stats look fine, and I'd expect you to be running at full tilt. Have you been able to do a BT test to establish your profile? Were you LLU with Tiscali?

At the moment, my thoughts are you need to talk to IDNet asap - they're there for the next half hour 0800 0267237, as it looks like there's a fault somewhere, and it's not likely to be with your equipment (though, if you have an NTE5 master socket, the type where you can remove the bottom part of the faceplate, it would be an idea to try the test socket that reveals).

[cavillas]

Have you checked your MTU setting.  I think 1458 and 1430 seem to be the recommended ones with IDNET.  Set your router to 1500 and the computer to one of the others mentioned to see if that improves things.

[cs]

Thanks Rik

Sorry forgot to put that in the original post, BT Speed test errors everytime, saying "Unexpected result received when querying the network to find your services connection details"

I was not on LLU before thankfully, I moved before they got the chance.

I did remove the faceplate and plug directly in the socket earlier, it made no difference. I have ordered an Adslnation master socket, which should be here soon, but I doubt it will have much effect to be honest, but I thought I would give it a go anyway.

Thanks
Chris

[cs]

Have you checked your MTU setting.  I think 1458 and 1430 seem to be the recommended ones with IDNET.  Set your router to 1500 and the computer to one of the others mentioned to see if that improves things.

The MTU on the router is 1500 already. My main PC is running Vista64, I thought the best advice was to leave the TCP stack alone on Vista?

[Rik]

It is, Chris. I'd seriously advise a quick call, they'll test the line for you immediately.

[cs]

Ok thanks, I'll give them a call now.

Would you believe it, but I have been trying the BT speed tester over and over for the last 5 days, and it has errored every time, but just this very minute it worked for the first time!

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
    IP profile for your line is - 7150 kbps
    DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)  8128 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 841 kbps


Doesn't look too hot, I will call and see what they say

[Rik]

Profile is fine, so it's unlikely to be an issue between you and the DSLAM.

[cavillas]

It is, Chris. I'd seriously advise a quick call, they'll test the line for you immediately.

'Twas just a thought.

[Rik]

Always worth a look, Alf, but the mismatch in Chris' case is more than just tweaking, I suspect.

[cs]

OK, just got off the phone with Support, they tested the line and pinged my router and said everything appears to be fine. They were not seeing any packet loss when pinging my router at all and constant 20-30ms pings.

They then monitored the pings whilst i was doing a speedtest and they said it was extremely slow ping times (even more so than normal) whilst i was transferring data.

Very odd, they have asked me to run the BT speed tester a number of times tomorrow and get back to them.

To be honest, I wish they had found a problem so I could stop scrathcing my head about it

Rgs
Chris

[Rik]

At least they'll take you seriously from the outset, Chris. Whereabouts in the country are you?

[cs]

Indeed, it was really nice to speak to someone that knew what they were talking about and afforded me the same compliment.

I am in Swindon, Wiltshire btw, where for once, it has been a reasonably pleasant day!

[Sebby]

There's certainly nothing that stands out as being wrong. I know what you mean about wanting them to find a fault; I've felt the same in the past. I've no doubt that IDNet will get it sorted for you, they probably just need a bit more data before they raise it with BT.

[Rik]

I am in Swindon, Wiltshire btw, where for once, it has been a reasonably pleasant day!

Ah well, that blew one line of thought out of the water...

IDNet do treat their customers as people, not numbers. If you have knowledge, they'll use it, if you don't, they'll take you through things differently. We tend to be on first name terms with everyone, it's family.

[Lance]

Welcome to the forum, Chris!

I would say there is definitely a fault somewhere on BT's network. Proving it, though, is the problem...

[cs]

Well the plot thickens........

At 19:07 I had a connection drop out which is pretty unusual on my line. The router reconnected straight away..........and since then everything has been perfect!

I am now getting speed tests like this one consistantly.


Ping plotter has been running for 3 hours and not a single packet has been dropped.

Well I can only speculate that BT have been fiddling around in my exchange or something. They announced last week that my exchange is in the first wave (Feb 09) for roll out of 21CN, so I suspect there will be more tinkering to come before then.

Fingers crossed, thanks for the advice everyone

Rgs
Chris

[Rik]

It sounds likely, Chris. We are seeing a number of reports from members who have had perfectly stable lines and then suddenly start to get packet loss, high pings or PPP session drops. It has to be BT tinkering, we just haven't found the smoking gun yet.

[Sebby]

Well I can only speculate that BT have been fiddling around in my exchange or something. They announced last week that my exchange is in the first wave (Feb 09) for roll out of 21CN, so I suspect there will be more tinkering to come before then.

I suspect this is the case. There do seem to be a few users that have speed issues, but they just seem to magically disappear, which is why it does look like BT are doing maintenance. Let's hope your speeds stay consistent now.

[David]

Hi Chris I know nearly nothing about all this but know how to say

[Inactive]

Ditto above, 

Have a Karma.

[Gary]

After a week of snr changes and loss of PPP and a throughput of 600 at one point, magically my snr changed back to 6db today, and this morning I had lost sync and resynched at 2424 or something like that, never had a line that slow, rebooted router and now its 5323 and snr suddenly change mid morning back to 6db, really odd, I would love to know what's happening, at least IDNet do take notice and help unlike many

Spoke to soon syncing at 4323 ish and have a profile of 2500, no loss of sync though, it just happened when I used the BT speedtester, seconds before it was ok  I am really getting annoyed with this now

[Danni]

I hope that IDNet can help you. From the things I'm hearing I think BT are playing with things and not letting anybody know, and it's affecting all sorts of stuff.