Business Premium FTTC - Poor Speeds and High Latency / Congestion

[Seadog]

Hi Everyone,

My first post on the forum so hello to everyone. I've just been connected up to the Business Premium Fibre Service and I must say I'm very dissappointed so far.  All went well on Monday, 20 Minutes install by the BT Engineer and off he went, he checked the line and said I was running at full speed (only 200m from the Cab).

I did a quick speed check myself on speedtest.net with download speeds anywhere between 30 to 35Mb Down and 8 Mb up. Also checking the BT Speedtester it showed a steady 36 Down and 8.2 Mb Up with an IP Profile of 38717 / 10000 perfect. However later during the day I noticed a slowdown of the download speeds on various sites so did some checking. Downloading some service packs from the Microsoft Websites my speeds were varying from 6 to 12 Mb. I then tried downloading some Linux ISO's and again the speeds were not much better. TBB Speedtest Speeds were also all over the place. I just though it must be Contension i.e sharing with other Businesses etc. I work from home so checked in the evening and the problems were exactly the same.

The following day on Tuesday at around 1330 for no apparent reason my Latency had also jumped from 14ms to 30ms, confirmed by pinging the BBC and DNS 4.2.2.1 which is pretty reliable. Again the download speeds were very slow 6 to 12Mb so I decided to Contact Support. I'm afraid no help at all, all I was told is that as long as it passes the BT Speedtester above 12Mb which is the BT Guaranteed Minimum for Business then that is fine. I was also told that the increase in latency from 13 to 30ms was fine also 

Not happy so I did some tests myself and found that the problem seems to be between myself and the Gateway 212.69.63.51. Pinging this my pings varied between 30ms to occasionally over 100ms, absolutely awful! A quick trace route shows the path;

Tracing route to telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  home.gateway.home.gateway [192.168.0.1]
  2    31 ms   142 ms    54 ms  telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]

Trace complete.

This looks very much to me like congestion, can anyone please confirm this and what if anything I can do about it??

I've just left Be Broadband and although it was a slower ADSL+2 Service I have never seen pings as poor as this,
complete and utter rubbish comes to mind.

To quote the IDNet Advertising on their website;

40Mbps Fibre Broadband
Super-fast speeds, super-high bandwidth, super-low latency  (I dont think so) 

I am sure this is against the Trade Descriptions Act, they should make it clear that these speeds will never be
acheived and nor will the speeds achieved by the BT Speedtester Website be achieved on the Internet
generally.

FTTC is nothing more than a bit of a con at the moment, I'm so dissappointed. All I can hope for is that the LLU
providers like Be will be able to upgrade their networks and provide a proper uncongested FTTC Service in the
next 12 months or so.

I'd be interested in everyones comments - 

[.Griff.]

Unfortunately any FTTC/VDSL2 connection, whether it's provided directly by BT Retail in for the form of BT Infinity, or via one of the many resellers such as Idnet, is at the mercy of BT's DLM (Dynamic Line Management) and as you've had the service less than 48 hours this will be constantly monitoring and making any adjustments to your connection it deems necessary.

The sudden increase in latency is almost certainly the DLM increasing the level of interleaving on the line in an attempt to lower errors and/or lower dropped packets. If you had a Thinkbroadband Quality Monitor setup you'd be able to confirm this by seeing a "stepped" increase in the minimum latency. The monitor would also help record any re-syncs and enable you to keep a log of suspected profile changes.

Unfortunately as the BTO Huawei modem is completely locked down there's no way of accessing it and retrieving any line stats so with FTTC/VDSL2 connections it's hard to investigate the potential causes of any line problems.

Just out of interest what router are you using?

[Glenn]

 

Was SimonD able to shed any light on the issue over at Thinkbroadband?

[Seadog]

Hi Griff and Glenn,

Yes I have the BQM running in fact and it did show a sudden jump in latency. As you say we're at the mercy of BT at the moment so probably the DLM kicked in. None of this nonsense with Be, you have almost full control of your line the only problem is it's an ADSL+2 LLU provider at the moment so not too good on long lines. As soon as LLU FTTC becomes available it will be a no brainer.

Hi Glenn, No I never heard back from Simon D on Thinkbroadband, he said he would ask support to check my line but as only BT can fully monitor my line I guess not much support can do! Either it works or it does not..Humm.

Even worse you can't get stats from the VDSL Modem, Oh well only 12 months of this and hopefully I'll be back with Be but on Fibre, that will be very nice 

Oh well, make do I guess.

Cheers

[.Griff.]

I was also a Be customer from their very first days until I jumped ship and joined Idnet so I know how it feels to go from a connection where you can control your own level of interleaving and alter your own line profiles to a connection dominated by BT's draconian DLM.

Unfortunately I can't see Be entering the FTTC market anytime soon and certainly the latest update by Chris Stening didn't sound too promising.

Give it a few more days and you may find your connection settles down. I know when I first joined Idnet my FTTC connection was awful and like you I was extremely disappointed but a couple of weeks and a new router later it was much better.

[Steve]

  Seadog  Not a FTTC user but we have seen before with forum members with fibre that things seem to settle down and I hope they do. As .Griff mentioned we've seen the odd router overload as well,which router are you using?

[Ray]

 

[Seadog]

Hi Griff,

Yes I agree that the last update or none update from Chris Stening MD re FTTC made me decide to leave Be at least until they have a new product out. When that will happen is anyones guess but I imagine at least a year so I'll have to suffer with the BT system management for the time being. They will have to massively increase their Network and Backhaul before they can provide a Fibre service equivalent to what they have with ADSL now. Imagine 1:1 Fibre with no contention, maybe they will have to Cap the speed to something like 25 or 30 Mb to make it viable and it will be expensive but so is what I'm paying at the moment!!

Yes lets hope things settle down over the next week or two for sure, I hope your right 

Hi Steve, Thanks yes I hope things do settle down, I'm only 200M from the Cab so hopefully can stay stable thereafter. My Router is a Billion BiPAC 7800N with ADSL+2 and EWAN Ports and 4 Gig Network Outputs plus the usual N300 Wireless so should be pretty future proof.

Hi Ray, Have a Karma, no I'd prefer a drink after this week 

[Holodene]

Link to BQM?

[David]

 

[Simon]

Welcome, Seadog.  Hope the choppy waters calm for you soon. 

[Lance]

Can you post the results of your BT speedtests, and any others you do?

You need to remember that with things such as downloading from MS and downloading linux ISOs, the throughput you get is just as dependant on the remote server load and the connection at their end as it is on your connection from home to the exchange and on to the isp.

[Seadog]

Hi David and thanks for the welcome 

I'm getting awful download speeds again tonight, just tried TBB Speedtest and it was down to 1.3Mb down see below;

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/130272764477217212598.png

Hi Holodene, sure my BQM link is below;

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/e73db8d2a3dc8be173fdf7ae2043fe6b-13-04-2011.html

Anyone else getting poor download speeds tonight??

Thanks

Simon J

[Steve]

Mines ok for adslmax

[Seadog]

Hi Simon and thanks, Yes very choppy waters  

Hi Lance, sure I can try a BT Speedtest again, it was fine earlier and post here give me a few minutes;

1. Best Effort Test: -provides background information.

   Download Speed
   23429 Kbps
   
0 Kbps   38717 Kbps
Max Achievable Speed

> Download speedachieved during the test was - 23429 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 16000-38717 Kbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is -38717 Kbps

2. Upstream Test: -provides background information.

   Upload Speed
   8047 Kbps
   
0 Kbps   10000 Kbps
Max Achievable Speed

>Upload speed achieved during the test was - 8047 Kbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 10000 Kbps

This is quite a change from earlier this evening, I was getting a solid 30 to 35Mb Down   and looking at the Network Task Manager it was not a steady download at all, Upstream was stable as usual however.

I assume this is due to congestion at the exchange? Any ideas?? As I have said before in the real world speeds seem a lot lower than on the BT Speedtester


Thanks - Simon J

[Seadog]

Mines ok for adslmax

Thanks Steve, Appreciate your reply, maybe it's just affecting the FTTC Service.

Cheers - Simon J

[.Griff.]

Me again Simon.

Two things I've learned after 8 months with FTTC is -

A, Thinkbroadband's (Java based) speedtest is next to useless. Do not place any trust in it whatsoever. It may be accurate for some ISP's and IPstream or LLU but for FTTC/VDSL2 I simply don't trust it at all.

B, BT's speedtest can give some really weird results as well and in 8 months I've never seen it properly reflect "real world" speed I see everyday elsewhere.

http://www.speedtest.net/ (Specifically the Milton Keynes server) has always been accurate for me as has http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

Usenet and HTTP (from decent sources) give me consistent throughput and I can download at 4.6Mb/s without a problem.

Griff

EDIT - Some bedtime reading for you -

Me after 72 hours with Idnet - http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,21762.0.html (You'll probably sympathise and see some similarity)

Me some weeks later - http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,22424.0.html

[Seadog]

Hi Griff,

Thanks for the info wt...., I've just read those old posts, it's like history repeating itself exactly the same problems I'm having with my download speed and graphs. Absolutely awful download speeds and steady upload, umm. I had
a message from Simon at IDNet and he suggested I change my package and downgrade to the Home package if I was not happy. Sounds like a good plan, it can't be much worse than this.. Oh dear a BT Infinity Advert on T.V while I'm typing this, I think its time for bed.

I'll report in the next few days if things improve but I can't see it as it seems a congestion issue, let me quickly try something, um pinging the gateway seems ok at the moment.

Have a good evening Griff and G nite and thanks for the links 

[Seadog]

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick check past midnight and my download speeds have dived so I guess everyone is downloading over night, see stats below;

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/130273861558239414343.png

2.8Mb is pretty much half the download speed I got on Be ADSL, pathetic. Let's try speedtest.net just in case;



Ok, so that's a little better at 8Mb down and 7/8 up.

Finally lets try BT Speedtester again;

1. Best Effort Test: -provides background information.

   Download Speed
   18552 Kbps
   
0 Kbps   38717 Kbps
Max Achievable Speed

> Download speedachieved during the test was - 18552 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 16000-38717 Kbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is -38717 Kbps

2. Upstream Test: -provides background information.

   Upload Speed
   8189 Kbps
   
0 Kbps   10000 Kbps
Max Achievable Speed

>Upload speed achieved during the test was - 8189 Kbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 10000 Kbps

As you can see even the BT Speedtester has slowed right down to 18552, half the maximum possible and the slowest result so far!!

Ok it's late and I'm off to bed but hopefully I've proved that overnight downloading has a severe impack on the BT Speedtest results which did not show up during the day.

Cheers

[.Griff.]

For the sake of comparison -



(Same server you tried minutes earlier)

Will try a BT speedtest and edit my post.

EDIT -

[Seadog]

Hi Griff,

Thats very depressing but I'll check again tonight and post the results. One interesting thing I noticed was that during the evening at the most busy  times also coincided with the highest packet loss which was interesting as you can see from my BQM below;

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/a187295b5b8f0a2e17f2f3d27d1e432f.html

Also one good bit of news as you can see is my latency has gone back down to around 13ms, ignore the end of the graph when there router was temporarily powered off.

I'll post a little later again

Cheers

[.Griff.]

Hi Simon,

Glad to see your latency has dropped as a result of the DLM lowering the level on interleaving but I suspect it may be an ongoing story.

Just as your latency has dropped mine has increased (again) -



That's the problem with an automated DLM system. It doesn't appreciate that I would much prefer to keep my latency low and my IP Profile at maximum even if it meant the sync dropping once or twice a week. No of course the DLM knows better and it intervenes changing my IP Profile and interleaving level at will (which ironically causes the connection to drop each time it makes changes).

You were a BE customer like me and I'm sure you'll agree it's much better having personal control on your connection rather than a machine somewhere dictating to you what it thinks you want.

[Seadog]

Evening Griff,

Ok not sure if something has improved tonight but speeds are much better and the BT Speedtest was perfect at almost full speed see below;

[.Griff.]

Hi Simon,

I think your problem last night was compounded, in no small amount, by you performing a BT speedtest just after "off peak" usage had kicked in.

What you'll see in the future is that come midnight everyone starts their downloads and from midnight to roughly 2am the TBB QM will show an increase in packet loss and various speed tests will also reflect this.

Obviously your BT speedtest tonight is excellent but it may be worth running another one at the same time you did last night as a comparison.

[Seadog]

Hi Griff,

Here's another quick test, I must be seeing things but the speedtest.net results just 'Flat Lined' at Full Speed Wow  Milton Keynes Server.
Forgot to mention the BT Speedtest also Flat Lined.



I might just try TBB but I doubt it will be as good as that, standby here goes;

Wow TBB Speedtest also almost Flat Lined 

See attached Screenshot below, I need a drink, I must be seeing things !!