Connection hanging intermittently

[Reya]

I thought this issue (which was a common problem for me when I was with Talk Talk) had sorted itself out after joining IDnet, but it's returned recently, which makes me wonder if it's not a fault with my line, or other equipment somewhere (I know I need a new phone because the old one's on the blink but I never hear any noise on it).

My connection hangs intermittently. Usually I remain online, connected to games such as Second Life; everything simply stops responding for anything from ten seconds to a minute. Some days it happens two or three times and that's it, other days it happens every few minutes.

Tonight has been an absolute nightmare. Trying to stay logged into Second Life is nigh on impossible. My avatar keeps freezing in place, then jittering back to where she should be (good old lag) but it's worse tonight than I think I've ever seen it before. Normally the hangs aren't enough to disconnect me from the game, but tonight I've been logged out three times in less than an hour. I've been running Pingtest.net off and on, and it's supporting the intermittent hangs. Here's one during a slow moment:

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33698016.png

Three minutes later:

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33698302.png

Pinging the server that I'm logged into in Second Life is showing considerable packet loss (1/4, then 2/4, then 1/4 again). Pings are, again, intermittently high. Average is usually high 100s anyway (servers are all in SoCal), but I'm reaching into low 200s tonight.

I'm afraid I'm not that techie-minded so 'for Dummies' type instructions for anything you need me to check would be appreciated! Also, since I get up for work at the crack of sparrowfart I'll need to be getting to bed soon, but since this problem is so bad tonight I thought it best to report it when it's in-progress. 

[Holodene]

Tonight is bad. Latency is low but a lot of sites fail to load or take ages.

[Reya]

I'm getting the slow site loading too, Holodene, but the connection hangs that I'm experiencing have been going on for several weeks. Admittedly, they're only bad enough to log me off SL repeatedly tonight, but since this isn't a one-off I just wanted to see if anyone could suggests some checks I could run here to make sure it's not on my end of things (router, etc).

[RCS2K4]

I'm getting this issue too, see here:
http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,24598.0.html

I think it's a wider issue with IDNET...

[Reya]

I just saw that, RCS2K4! Gaming is horrendous. I was having problems with URU Live last night, too. More hangs, which resulted in falls into lava and repeated trips back to Relto. I quit in frustration in the end 

[Simon]

Sorry, guys, I'm not one who's able to help, but until someone more technical comes along, you might find something useful in the forum FAQs:

http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,1904.0.html

[Reya]

Thanks, Simon. I've left that tab open in Firefox and I'll take a look at it tomorrow after I get home from work

[Simon]

You'll have more replies here by then too. 

[Steve]

What I've found out is that AAISP have an alert out for LINX peering, this will most likely also be affecting IDNet customers,  routing on from IDNet though LINX will have been re routed though different peering and transit routes and is therefore likely to be sub optimal.

[Lance]

Although that wouldn't explain any problems experienced prior to tonight.

[RCS2K4]

You'll have more replies here by then too. 

I hope so too, but this really does look like something in IDNET's server stack is going a little flakey. No amount of re-syncing, using new routers, changing settings, pulling out the phoneline, trying new microfilters or flashing your routers firmware (all things I was patronisingly told to try when I called them up from work earlier) will work.

The issue is definatly outside of my control. Anyone familiar with a trace route to a website will clearly see a fault if the "hops" never reach the site in question. I am seeing this a lot with internet traffic that gets sent through telehouse-gw5-e4-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.245]. This server sits in the middle, between me and the site I am trying to reach. Loads of tests to various sites show this IDNET server ever doesnt bother to reply (this means your packets of data to request a website never made it to the host site after they left your computer. the ISP effectively "lost" them), or this server's response time (latency) is measured in minutes! Hence why in a web browser you would get a timeout / page could not be found message.

Why do they have a hard time understanding this?

[Simon]

Have to admit, I get one or two of those most evenings, but it's Bern happening for so long now, I've grown accustomed to it, and just hit refresh.  I can understand the frustration if you're in the middle of a game, though.  

[Rik]

Loads of tests to various sites show this IDNET server ever doesnt bother to reply (this means your packets of data to request a website never made it to the host site after they left your computer. the ISP effectively "lost" them), or this server's response time (latency) is measured in minutes!

I'm not sure I follow you. In any traceroute, you are likely to see hops that time out, either because they are programmed not to respond to ICMP traffic, or because they give it low priority. Is this not what you're seeing, or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

[Simon_idnet]

There was a period of serveral hours of instability on the Linx network last night which caused widespread disruption. Linx report that they have now resolved the issue.

[Rik]

Thanks, Simon.