Playing about with the SNRM is having no impact on the problem. PN are talking about a "lift and shift" now to see if that helps.

Who knows, but if the issue is on the 'pipe' between the exchange and the POP site, the lift and shift won't fix it. Worth a guess though i suppose.

Heard some gossip though, possible network rearrangement on the EO stuff in Mortimer. Once through a cab, then FTTC, maybe ..... who knows.

That's the kind of gossip I'd like to hear more of ... any timescales with those rumours?

In reply to a post by dompedro:

That's the kind of gossip I'd like to hear more of ... any timescales with those rumours?

How long has this problem been happening and how long have they spent so far rolling out FTTC do you estimate?

It's possible that someone somewhere has been a complete pillock and screwed up a setting in the exchange on the 21CN kit which also transports FTTC traffic for BTw customers - settings such as a QoS policy or something to that degree. Wouldn't be the first time.

Do you have any other performance issues such as throughput? How does that look? Do web pages load like normal?

any timescales with those rumours?

Sadly, no.

Your graphs have bad packet loss, not just high latency, I was surprised this wasn't mentioned.

There also does seem possibly to be a pattern, but I'm only looking at 2 graphs. 3 broad worst periods: 1-4am, 9-11am, 1-4pm. How are the rest of the dates?

The problem started in mid-June but I cannot be sure when the work on the FTTC started at the exchange. The first (and only) cabinet so far to be switched to FTTC happened in August.

Speeds generally aren't affected by the problem. My speedtest.net runs are usually pretty decent even when the latency is really high. So for the most part webpages load pretty quickly.

I've poured over days and days worth of ping graphs to look for patterns (particularly when it was believed this might be caused by REIN). If there is a pattern to it then it's often worst from about midnight or the early hours and it can still be an issue until midday and sometimes later. Unfortunately this is only sometimes a "pattern" so not really something that could be used to diagnose a cause. I've picked a few random dates and shared the BQMs below:

10th September

16th September

24th September

2nd October

Yes there is packet loss but practically speaking isn't that just a ping that has not replied within a reasonable amount of time (4 seconds on Windows though I don't know what kit is running the BQM - Firebrick) and therefore just higher latency?

In reply to a post by dompedro:

Yes there is packet loss but practically speaking isn't that just a ping that has not replied within a reasonable amount of time (4 seconds on Windows though I don't know what kit is running the BQM - Firebrick) and therefore just higher latency?

lost pings (packet loss) when the connection is being maxed out is expected, so the small amount of red is normal. The main question is why you're getting such significant amount of blue and yellow, given your green is stable. If you compare to mine (also on plusnet) you can see that when I'm just using web etc you get almost nothing on the graph, but when I upload/download (or stream video e.g. Netflix) then the latency increases as the connection is used.

As you've already tried turning everything off and its made no difference, it _could_ be that your particular router just returns pings in its own time. The only way to compare would be for someone else using the same router to post, or for you to try a different router.

Another test you could do is set up a third party ping test: F8lure has their own system and also a Firebrick but they are on different networks to Thinkbroadband's. Could be worth setting one up for a few days to see if you get any different data. http://fruk.net/index.php?fruk=f8lure

Plusnet sent a Technicolor router for me to test with but it made no difference to the problem. I also have an old TP-Link that I've tested with.

I'm also running RouterStats to ping "out" from my network and seeing similar graphs really. Tracert also shows that there are problems when the ping graphs are at their worst. It might be worth pointing out that I noticed that there was a problem with ping and latency and then started monitoring the ping graphs in order to try to diagnose whether there was a pattern to it. The real problems are that using a VPN connection into machines in my work's office is terribly laggy and online gaming is badly affected by latency and high ping times.

In reply to a post by dompedro:

Plusnet sent a Technicolor router for me to test with but it made no difference to the problem. I also have an old TP-Link that I've tested with.

Okay, that's interesting, and rules out what I thought.

I'm also running RouterStats to ping "out" from my network and seeing similar graphs really. Tracert also shows that there are problems when the ping graphs are at their worst. It might be worth pointing out that I noticed that there was a problem with ping and latency and then started monitoring the ping graphs in order to try to diagnose whether there was a pattern to it. The real problems are that using a VPN connection into machines in my work's office is terribly laggy and online gaming is badly affected by latency and high ping times.

Yes if you've got high latency that varies a lot (jitter) then even protocols that cope with high latency can't adapt, and it makes VPN and gaming hard

Edited by jchamier (Wed 08-Oct-14 13:35:39)