Thinking of moving from O2

Hi,

I have been with O2 for over 3 years and I think is time for a change, specially now that Sky will be taking over. Last week O2 upgraded the network on my line and I experienced a 5ms increase on latency, not much I know. I'm just wondering how the pings would be in my line with Plusnet compared to O2. Also, would the pings be better with Unlimited Fibre Broadband than with just Unlimited Broadband? I'm looking for good stable pings all day but fibre speeds would be also considered if pings are going to be better. I need to decide soon as I have seen really good offers on Plusnet. Any advice would be kindly appreciated.

See the BQM link in my sig. That's on interleaved fibre.

Give me a target site to ping and I'll check that for you.

I'm on the Stepping Hill exchange - where you are makes a difference to your pings, so it might be a good idea to post your exchange, so anyone on Plusnet in the same area can reply?

Thanks for your reply, I thought noone was going to.

Are you allowed to choose fastpath on Plusnet? Your BQM looks good but looks like you are having the peak time latency issues aswell. I nearly ordered Fibre Unlimited the other day and I'm glad I didn't as looks like they had them for a long time now and they are taking to long to fix them.

Could you please ping to 95.211.225.168, is where I normally play online. Would your ping be the same on the ADSL2+ instead of Fibre? I think, 18 months are way too many months of contract. Today is my last day to get 3 months free and some cashback.

I'm on the Bradwell Abbey exchange in Milton Keynes. I live about 50m from the cabinet and my estimated was 80/20.

Looking at the tracert below, as well as the ping result, the slowing from my bog standard 21ms seems to be outside the Plusnet system. In the leaseweb internals.

I've no idea about differences between ADSL2+ and FTTC on Plusnet, sorry.

C:\Users\Bob>ping 95.211.225.168

Pinging 95.211.225.168 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=57
Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=57
Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=57
Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 95.211.225.168:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 32ms, Average = 30ms

C:\Users\Bob>tracert 95.211.225.168

Tracing route to hosted-by.leaseweb.com [95.211.225.168]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     5 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.11.1
  2    22 ms    22 ms    22 ms  lo0-central10.ptn-ag02.plus.net [195.166.128.191]
  3    22 ms    23 ms    25 ms  link10-central10.ptn-gw02.plus.net [84.93.248.178]
  4    21 ms    21 ms    21 ms  hsrp.pth-gw1-2.plus.net [212.159.1.62]
  5    33 ms    21 ms    21 ms  ae2.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.4]
  6    30 ms    30 ms    30 ms  ten4-0.lon.leaseweb.net [195.66.225.56]
  7    35 ms    34 ms    57 ms  te0-6-0-0.hvc3.evo.leaseweb.net [85.17.100.23]
  8     *       35 ms     *     te6-1.hv16.evo.leaseweb.net [95.211.171.231]
  9    36 ms    37 ms    37 ms  hosted-by.leaseweb.com [95.211.225.168]

Trace complete.

No ISP can control Fast Path v Interleaving on FTTC connections. Not even Sky or TalkTalk. It is decided by the Openreach DLM in the cabinet DSLAM . Unlike O2 where they have direct control, or even BT Wholesale ADSLx connections where the ISP can at least request it.

At 50m from the cabinet you should get the full 80/20 sync giving an IP Profile of just over 70Mbps. So true download speed a bit below that.

Thanks, I also get 29/30ms there.

Would Plusnet let me request fastpath if I were on ADSL2+?

I think I will wait to see if they fix the peak time latency issues before I change ISP but taking that long to fix them doesn't look promising. You didn't say if you are also having same issues

Just to add to RobertoS's reply, so you have two data points to judge:

PING 95.211.225.168 (95.211.225.168): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 95.211.225.168: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=15.100 ms
64 bytes from 95.211.225.168: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=14.704 ms
64 bytes from 95.211.225.168: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=15.116 ms
64 bytes from 95.211.225.168: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=14.884 ms
64 bytes from 95.211.225.168: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=14.881 ms

--- 95.211.225.168 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 14.704/14.937/15.116/0.154 ms

traceroute to 95.211.225.168 (95.211.225.168), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.68.1 (192.168.68.1) 0.501 ms 0.315 ms 0.320 ms
2 lo0-central10.ptn-ag04.plus.net (195.166.128.193) 7.905 ms 11.803 ms 8.023 ms
3 link3-central10.ptn-gw01.plus.net (84.93.248.228) 6.729 ms 8.706 ms 10.610 ms
4 xe-10-1-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net (212.159.1.44) 13.596 ms 9.353 ms 7.414 ms
5 ten4-0.lon.leaseweb.net (195.66.225.56) 15.515 ms 19.410 ms 17.972 ms
6 85.17.100.25 (85.17.100.25) 14.966 ms 14.809 ms 16.138 ms
7 te9-3.hv16.evo.leaseweb.net (95.211.171.227) 21.637 ms
te8-3.hv16.evo.leaseweb.net (95.211.171.225) 21.854 ms
te6-1.hv16.evo.leaseweb.net (95.211.171.231) 22.014 ms
8 hosted-by.leaseweb.com (95.211.225.168) 16.342 ms 15.542 ms 26.097 ms

I'm on a SW London exchange, FTTC with an IP profile of 77.44 Mbps ie maximum line rate (about 100m from the cabinet).

On the PN peak-time latency/throughput problem, I haven't experienced much of an issue. Over the past month I've experienced it on only 2 evenings and a gateway hop solved it straight away. On the other hand, some customers seem to experience it most evenings and spend ages gateway hopping before it goes away. Very odd!

What was your estimate Bright?

Also to add xtermy i have just made the jump from o2 to Plusnet install date for my fibre is the 18th phone switches 2/3 weeks after, hopefully the switch goes well as i have no bother from o2 for 5 great years put off getting fibre for a good few months because i was happy with their service but i ain't moving to Sky !

Think the 3 months half price fibre ends at midnight? Not sure about the cash back.

Edited by deleted (Sun 10-Mar-13 21:31:31)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I've no idea about differences between ADSL2+ and FTTC on Plusnet, sorry.

From readings I've seen here, I would say you get same latencies on WBC ADSL2+ and FTTC from any BTw ISP: To usual UK sites like BBC ~11ms Fast or ~22ms Interleaved.

Data-point 3 from a WBC ADSL2+ just like PN, when on Fast Path:

Pinging 95.211.225.168 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=55
Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=55
Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=55
Reply from 95.211.225.168: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 95.211.225.168:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 17ms, Maximum = 18ms, Average = 17ms

Tracing route to hosted-by.leaseweb.com [95.211.225.168]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms OrangeRouter [192.168.1.1]
2 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 213.1.112.200
3 9 ms 8 ms 8 ms 213.1.117.45
4 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 213.1.67.230
5 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 213.1.78.252
6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 213.1.79.22
7 * 11 ms 11 ms 87.237.20.240
8 22 ms 19 ms 20 ms ten4-0.lon.leaseweb.net [195.66.225.56]
9 18 ms 18 ms 17 ms te0-0-0-1.hvc3.evo.leaseweb.net [85.17.100.21]
10 19 ms 18 ms 18 ms te8-1.hv16.evo.leaseweb.net [95.211.171.229]
11 18 ms 17 ms 17 ms hosted-by.leaseweb.com [95.211.225.168]

Trace complete.

Just to let you know I have ordered Unlimited Fibre just before midnight I hope I don't have to regreat my decision in the future. Let's hope I can have a happy gaming in the end, at least as good as O2's

Thanks to all of you for your help.