Intermittent problems browsing - again

I seem to be having another of those evenings when I experience intermittent problems reaching websites. Tonight I've experienced problems with Gmail, Marks and Spencer, and the BBC!

I've never raised a ticket, as it doesn't happen all the time, and I can't reproduce it on demand.

But I'm starting to get pretty sick of it.

It's almost exclusively evenings - but not every evening - and has been happening now and again for months, probably.

There are several bulletins on the service status page that at least might be connected (e.g. 56372, 56197, 56008). But we don't seem to get a final resolution, or even an approach that recognises these may all be part of one ONGOING problem, rather than individual incidents.

It's almost reached the point that as soon as I get a single "page not found", particularly if it happens in the evening, my heart sinks, in anticipation that the problem is in for the night.

T.

I feel it's down to network demand at Plusnet. I view their 'Packet Drop by Gateway' page eagerly and notice packet loss at peak times is getting attrocious, around 10% on some gateways which is going to be felt whichever way they try to traffic manage it.

Of course, it could be other factors but I noted your comment about it only appearing to happen at peak times. You can view the graphs yourself or find out more here http://www.plus.net/support/network_performance/broa...

I'm getting fed up with it to be honest. Couldn't even upload some small databases onto my FTP server last night as it kept timing out. Usenet was running at 2k too!

I am seriously thinking of moving and I dare say that most, if not all of my referrals (some 20 of them) will move with me.

Bad times Plusnet

Have you checked the recent VP history of your exchange here?

Txxx,

Drop me a PM with your username please?

I doubt it is the exchange.

I'm on the RIN trial and can connect either via the normal Plusnet network or the BT RIN network. Recently I've been finding pings and throughput are much better on RIN.

See http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,7605...

The exchange just needs to be ruled out though, so far as possible. That's all I meant .

Recently there was a long thread elsewhere because of the paticular question that was asked, and then it emerged it was VP congestion. Just none of us thought to ask because we were addressing the question posed, not the problem causing the question.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Have you checked the recent VP history of your exchange here?

It is not exchange capacity that is the problem - well not in my case, it is purely lack of capacity on PN's side and they know it. They are simply not keeping up with customer demand and peeps said this was a risk for those heading into a lengthy 18 month contract a while ago and I guess they were right.

See my reply to jelv . Your exchange and the OP's are not likely to be the same.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

See my reply to jelv . Your exchange and the OP's are not likely to be the same.

You're quite right, they probably aren't the same. At any rate, atleast a discussion is forming about PN's capacity issues, maybe we'll get a response from them about how they plan to improve it.

I personally am on Unlimited, where they advertise speeds across the board on all protocols as being (on upstream) Line Speed 24/7. At peak times this is not happening, as an earlier poster said, uploading on ftp or torrents at peak times is impossible.

It surely is a bad state of affairs if they can't even deliver quoted UPLOAD speeds, never mind applying dialup speeds to protocols they don't deem important.