High ping times intermittently with PlusNet

Apologies for the length of this post but there's quite a lot of history to an ongoing problem that I need some assistance with. Thanks for taking the time to read through this and I hope most of it makes sense.

Summary of the issue:
- problem started in June 2014 with high ping times affecting keyboard lag when logged into an office VPN (50 miles away) while working from home and poor online gaming performance (being kicked from ARMA 2 Epoch Mod servers for high ping times in excess of 1000ms) and my kids reporting "bad lag" on Xbox games such as Halo 4/Titanfall.
- plusnet switched me to a static IP address in June to run TBB ping graphs which showed high ping times with no real pattern to when or for how long it would last (could be an hour or two, or all night or all day, or not at all during some days or nights).
- BT Openreach sent two engineers in July with the first suspecting REIN but not finding any other real problems. The second engineer a few days later discounted REIN and tried to fix some anomalies with the polarity of the internal phone extensions.
- the problem seemed to resolve itself in July sometime after the second engineers visit but things we'd tried before that point that didn't resolve the problem:
+ plugged into master socket instead of using extensions
+ new PN Technicolor router tested instead of my usual Billion BiPac 7800N
+ replaced ADLS filter
+ wireless access point disabled and only one laptop connected via ethernet (and no machines connected at all over night)
+ updated firmware on Billion router
- problem returned in early September and PN agreed to send a third BT Openreach engineer (visit 25th September). BTO engineer James discounted REIN after lengthy investigation and replaced the master socket and wiring from the dropline. As a result we have a speed increase and no errors on the line but the problem is still there intermittently.
- issue is still happening as of midnight 26th September ... last 24 hours ping graph:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/eca5f1f948c...
- live ping graph:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/1c294b6d6f6...
- this broadband connection is in a rural area and though we're close to the exchange but on aluminium wiring to the exchange only (no cabinet). Some work has been done over the summer to bring FTTC to parts of the village.


Recent stuff:
BT Openreach were onsite for a few hours yesterday to investigate the intermittent high ping issue and resolve the CRC errors that were being reported on the line. The high ping issue was happening at the time but no major sign of REIN was found. One power adaptor in the house was identified as producing some REIN but once unplugged the problem persisted and no other REIN evidence was found. The BTO engineer agreed to put in a brand new master socket and re-wire from the drop line as some wiring between the drop line and master went through the roof space with the internal extension wiring which is known to be poor quality (as we were losing some sync speed and seeing some CRC errors when connected to the extension sockets). Now connected to the new master socket there are no CRC errors and sync speed is a much better 17351kbps (SNRM Up 6.2/Down 5.9, Line attenuation Up 10.6/Down 20.0). In the evening after the engineer's visit I was able to get the best pingtest.net results I've ever seen on my broadband connection but unfortunately from midnight the TBB ping graphs show that the problem is not resolved with lots of thick blue areas on the graph showing high ping times again.

Example of a good tracert after the engineer's visit:
25/09/2014 - 23:25:21.93
Tracing route to uwsp-webdev1.warwicknet.com [94.125.132.15] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms home.gateway.home.gateway [192.168.1.254]
2 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms lo0.10.central10.pcl-bng02.plus.net [195.166.130.151]
3 20 ms 18 ms 16 ms irb.10.pcl-cr01.plus.net [84.93.249.81]
4 20 ms 16 ms 13 ms ae1.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.0]
5 14 ms 15 ms 15 ms gi3-5.the-scr1.warwick.net.uk [195.66.224.113]
6 15 ms 16 ms 16 ms gi2-1-252.uwsp-scr1.warwick.net.uk [94.125.133.209]
7 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms uwsp-webdev1.warwicknet.com [94.125.132.15]

and a tracert when the problem is happening (exactly the same path but very different timings - and sometimes each hop can take over a second):
26/09/2014 - 8:18:00.16
Tracing route to uwsp-webdev1.warwicknet.com [94.125.132.15]over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 142 ms 206 ms 17 ms lo0.10.central10.pcl-bng02.plus.net [195.166.130.151]
3 43 ms * 39 ms irb.10.pcl-cr01.plus.net [84.93.249.81]
4 380 ms 519 ms 204 ms ae1.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.0]
5 98 ms 127 ms 101 ms gi3-5.the-scr1.warwick.net.uk [195.66.224.113]
6 328 ms 25 ms 26 ms gi2-1-252.uwsp-scr1.warwick.net.uk [94.125.133.209]
7 253 ms 17 ms 288 ms uwsp-webdev1.warwicknet.com [94.125.132.15]

another tracert:
26/09/2014 - 9:52:14.39
Tracing route to uwsp-webdev1.warwicknet.com [94.125.132.15] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 2259 ms * 2331 ms irb.10.pcl-cr01.plus.net [84.93.249.81]
4 2643 ms 429 ms 32 ms ae1.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.0]
5 746 ms 92 ms 23 ms gi3-5.the-scr1.warwick.net.uk [195.66.224.113]
6 244 ms 198 ms 926 ms gi2-1-252.uwsp-scr1.warwick.net.uk [94.125.133.209]
7 23 ms 184 ms 451 ms uwsp-webdev1.warwicknet.com [94.125.132.15]

Questions for anyone who has managed to get this far:
Is there anything Plusnet should or could be investigating from their end to diagnose the problem?
Are there other Plusnet customers that have had similar issues or customers of other ISPs?
Does anyone have other suggestions of a possible cause since REIN, router, microfilters, quality of the line and internal wiring have been ruled out?

Any Plusnet types able to confirm or refute that the hops where the high latency is being seen are on the PN network ?

As Zarjaz says, the first thought is that your problem is within the Plusnet network. Then I did a bit of hunting around and thinking, and now I doubt if it is.

For a start, if it really was within Plusnet we would have many people here on about it. Second, looking at this page there is only one with anything resembling your pattern - Bobsta.

Are you connecting wired or wireless to your router, and have you any Apple devices connecting to it?

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 26-Sep-14 21:56:38)

Have you ever changed the ADSL cable between the router and master socket?

Yes, the ADSL cable changed each time I switched between the Billian BiPac and the Technicolor routers. Most of the time I'm using the WiFi but often I'll switch to ethernet when I've moved the router to go directly into the master socket - this hasn't had any impact on the issue. I've also tested disabling the wifi access point with no changes to the symptoms. There's only one iPhone in the household and there doesn't appear to be any correlation between the problem occurring and the phone being connected - most days the phone isn't here. Most of the devices we have are Android phones/tablets or Windows laptops, but as I mentioned switching off the wireless access point doesn't resolve the issue.

Current status is that PN ran more line tests yesterday and now believe that the SNR might be too low and that the connection speed is too high and that a line reset/retrain is required, which they've done. I've now got to wait 10 days for that to process to complete but this SNR too low/speed too high idea doesn't really make any sense knowing the history of the problem. Will have to wait and see though I guess.

I think it unlikely that the current SNR level has any thing to do with why you are seeing this latency issue so a DLM reset probably wont make any favourable difference , Now if someone said the exchange or backhaul from it,
I would think more likely, either that or something is configured incorrectly remotely to you

Edited by tommy45 (Tue 30-Sep-14 11:16:44)

Hey Dom ! So what have they done now ?? Had it hard reset to 9db maybe ? What's the downstream SNR showing now ? It was 12db at 13 meg at first, and the issue was apparent then also, so that kind of scotches their theory.

As Tommy suggests, I reckon it's a backhaul issue .... how you get PN to address this, I don't know. As far as I am aware your exchange isn't awash with similar faults.

Have you tried sending a PM to one of their reps who posts on here, including the PN ticket ref in the message ?

Malicious traffic or malicious software inside your network can cause router overload on a cheap home router giving those sort of results.

Try unplugging the router from your network (so it's just the only thing connected) for a period and see if the graph stops showing high latency during that period.

Failing that I would try to find another plusnet user or other users from different providers on the same exchange and see if they also have the problem.

If it's not you then could be the whole exchange or just your area with the fault.

Post deleted by tommy45

Edited by tommy45 (Wed 01-Oct-14 13:12:17)