Sky slowing to crawl

Hi

I have regular sky ADSL unlimited broadband. Since last week I've been having a odd problem. Randomly the internet will slow to a crawl, it's not just webpages so not DNS server. I was rebooting the router and it fixed it, but last few days when it's done it (usually around every 24hours odd) I have fixed it by just going to my WAN and turning it off and then on again. I'm still getting the same connection speed, hoping its just a temporary thing. I use a Asus DSL88U router.

Thanks

When you say "I have fixed it by just going to my WAN and turning it off and then on again" do you mean

a) Wide Area Network, i.e. Internet connection
or
b) Wireless network

If (a) then restarting the internet side may be a case of congestion on some routes into the ISP and a restart moves you to a new less congested one until everyone else joins
If (b) you need to look at what is using all the traffic

I mean Wide Area Network.

It's odd because it happened just now, 15 hours after I last rebooted. So I went to WAN and disabled it then enabled and it started working. I was downloading a steam game at the time and it slowed down and stopped and said no connection.

When WAN was disabled the DSL Link up and ADSL Connected lights in the admin area were still on, I checked the log and it showed it as still connected. I didn't check if the IP address changed but I would assume not if the DSL didn't go down?

I haven't updated firmware for months, it's the latest for the router and was up for 40 days no problems recently.

No known issues for Sky in my area.

Have you tried an alternative router? Symptoms are similar to those experienced with a failing router.

So by dropping the WAN you are breaking the IP side and it is being rebuilt so if the ISP is having issues, this can sometimes see you hoping to a better bit of their network (even if the IP address remains the same) and thus getting better connectivity.

Also its worth pointing out that Steam is massively multithread and may be causing issues with the NAT table on a lot older router, also while a steam download is running any other activity will be very bad, hence why the software has rate limiting options to reduce that impact, but means a download is much slower.

I don't think its Steam as it was only that one time I was downloading it did it, other times I haven't even had it running. My router is a fairly new one and fairly high end, the firmware leaves a bit to be desired, I have guest network and DHCP issues sometimes, but the internet was working fine until about a week ago. I use a wired PC and its the same on laptops too. Hopefully it's just a temporary Sky problem then Thanks

I still have the original black sky router SR-102? I believe, I might try it if it gets worse, it's a bit of a faff to unplug it all and plug it back in

I am not saying the issue is not sky, always dangerous to claim an isp is innocent.

But sky is not an isp with known congestion problems that are severe enough to affect ADSL throughput.

I would at least for now avoid use of steam downloads whilst diagnosing this because as Andrew said, steam is horrifically designed, its not very network friendly at all. It effectively DDOS's a network from within when a download is running.

You can reduce the negative impact of steam by choosing an asian download server or something, on ADSL with the 30+ threads steam uses it will still easily max your throughput.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 07-Jun-18 21:15:04)

What sort of devices have you got connected to the network,
Sounds like a upstream saturation issue.

This causes the symptoms you talk about, and when the connection is lost and restored works ok for a bit.

Look at any cloud based things, iPads, iPhones and windows 10 ect.

Hi

No it's not upstream issue, it can happen when nothing is connected but my PC and it's not doing any updates.

I tried using my Sky router for a while, worked perfectly!

A few days ago I went back to my Asus router and it was OK for 4 days but then it happened again, it wasn't getting to any webpages at all, but was still connected.

FEC errors on Asus router going up a lot now.

Looking at a cheap router now, I just need guest networks and USB/media server and gigabit lan would be handy.