In reply to a post by Taras:

I loaded this page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-32041119

item request times ! I've seen slower website loading and or times outs effectively

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/image/ZKca

alot of webpages are coming out like this!

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/image/ZKcz

That's definitely a problem, but I'm not getting that here. :-/

In reply to a post by tommy45:

For it to be a issue with BTW then it would also be affecting customers with every isp that uses BT WBMC shared for Backhaul . and there has been a distinct lack of such reports , The core network from what i have read would be the least unlikely place to see congestion, The place it most probably lies is at the handover points, or is a bottleneck within plusnets network including their DPI kit,

Of course that Plusnet have as many WBMC shared customers as every other ISP put together may contribute to that perception.

As far as congestion on the BT Wholesale core goes the issue I had earlier in the year wasn't my exchange, it was deeper into the network on a metro node, and of course there's this.

MR-DH isn't an exchange, it's the BT Wholesale POP located in Dial House, Salford. I'd call congestion out of a POP core congestion.

Previous to this there was congestion affecting multiple exchanges in the South Wales / South West England region.

BT Wholesale do seem to be struggling to keep their network in shape right now.

For me 2014 was mostly ok, only occasional issues solved by a single ppp session hop.

Since dec 2014 the current issues started becoming apparent. In december initially it was a small drop of download throughput and nothing was affected, netflix etc.

Then in january it suddenly escalated and upload also started been affected, I also started to need multiple ppp session hops to recover performance. In addition during 2015 the peak time on tbb graphs started getting worse after a big improvement in q3/q4 2014.

On multiple occasions I have not noticed by doing speedtests but by services suffering e.g. iplayer stuttering and taking minutes to buffer 10 seconds of content, netflix stuck on SD, youtube taking ages to buffer etc. Everytime these issues occured I was always able to resolve by hopping the ppp session. Also speedtests were slow on tbb half the time upload speeds were also affected.

Then during march I managed to find a good endpoint (or good bTw routing if thats the issue) and performance was solid for a number of weeks, I even started to wonder if something had been fixed. Then last week I by mistake hopped my ppp session and BAM problem was back.

I thought I found the good routing/endpoint again after approx 10 hops one night bu tthe problem was back the next night, then after another 20-30 hops I found good performance again and I have sat there since.

In my case plusnet confirmed my SVLAN has blue status. I have also 'always' been able to recover performance by hopping even tho it now needs much more hops to do this as if the problem is getting worse.

I do think igniotion has a partially valid point when he says plusnet are within their rights to have network saturation, however where I think he is wrong is they should be open about it, if their equipment is the source of the problems then they should say so and make it clear the current performance is now the norm for plusnet. As jelv has pointed out multiple pages of the website say expected performance at peak is line speed, and it also should be made clear plusnet have stated multiple times an advantage of using their servise is their QoS system helps the user at the line level, but of course if the line cannot reach line speed then plusnet's QoS doesnt work as it relies on the line been able to reach line speed, not to mention that plusnet staff have stated multiple times in normal situations their network will not be the point of congestion.

Aside from marketing reasons I suspect a reason why they are not been open is the new ASA rules, a isp selling unlimited usage can only do moderate throttling, and deliberate congestion can be seen as a form of throttling. So it could be a plausible deniability game.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 25-Mar-15 03:19:36)

Every consumer ISP has to have deliberate congestion, i.e. NO isp can afford to sell consumer services if it has NOT sold a lot more connections than capacity it actually has.

As far as I recall nothing that outlaws congestion from the ASA rules, will only get sticky if different types of traffic are behaving differently, but even then ASA is useless because a video CDN on an ISP network may run perfectly but an external service be slow due to lack of peering links. The ASA ruling is very very simplistic and not a law set in stone.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Every consumer ISP has to have deliberate congestion, i.e. NO isp can afford to sell consumer services if it has NOT sold a lot more connections than capacity it actually has.

Have to be cautious there and ensure the difference between contention and congestion is made clear.

I would recommend those confused to check the AAISP page.

It is possible to manage a contended network and ensure it doesn't hit congestion and hence has no visible contention and appears to be uncontended.

Extremely debatable whether it's possible at Plusnet's price points though! Those guys will definitely be hoping their mass-market status dilutes their average usage per customer strongly. If they were at the kind of levels Virgin Media have their network would definitely be melting down.

My speeds are lower than they were a few weeks ago.
My main problem is that I get the error message "Server not found" trying to access various websites. Testing my connection through the Technicolor Gateway shows no problems.

Nothing seems to be time or date specific!

you confused congestion with contention.

Its very possible to have contention without congestion.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 25-Mar-15 11:21:50)

I may mess them up now and then but know the difference, not sure its something that will have even been considered by ASA

Not experienced any problems on Plusnet, Thinkbroadband Speed Test was 73.15Mbps down 18.15 up the other day, so would definitely say no meltdown from what I can see on my connection. Admittedly it is a Business package though so may vary slightly if traffic management is coming in to effect, but again never really experienced that in over a year being with Plusnet.

Edited by fenlandbroadband (Wed 25-Mar-15 12:17:09)

I've certainly had significant problems all day Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I had been running ping traces and had raised the issue with PlusNet during Sunday. In the early hours of Wednesday morning I became fed up with the situation and decided to go for a reboot. Since that point I have had no problems whatsoever. I have run a ping trace throughout the night and all day today and there has not been one single issue.

The server I was connected to from Saturday to Tuesday was lo0.11.central11.pcl-bng04.plus.net [195.166.130.178].
I am now connected to lo0-central10.ptw-ag02.plus.net [195.166.128.196] and the difference is unbelievable.