Since I was moved to Manchester my FTP connections between my two VPN locations sometimes just randomly drop during a large file transfer, which is annoying. This didn't happen before the move.

Still not heard back from their technical department regarding my connection dying yesterday afternoon either.

I think that once my 18 month contract expires, I'll be looking to try a new ISP unless things change for the better soon. It's not been a good start for me with Zen.

Everything is definitely pointing back to a fault, likely to be within the Zen network (I’m not referring to your service outage).

You never know, they may have tried shifting your connection to London, which is causing the issue you currently have. We can hope! If this was initiated by CityFibre (hence the lack of updates), you could be terminated onto a piece of Zen equipment in London that isn’t configured for your FTTP. This is all wishful thinking though.

I’ve found Zen to be ok, apart from when you need support. I tend to find if they can’t fix it immediately, it quickly becomes a bit of a nightmare, as nobody takes ownership of the issue, me the end user ends up organising them in order to resolve things.

I think it's a bit worse today. But I might blame most of it on youfibre.

London: Youfibre just now
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16362672552.png

London: Zen just now, considerably better
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16362675394.png/url]

Manchester: Exascale
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16362678030.png/url]

So still Manchester getting top speed when London gets various values below. Maybe I should do these tests daily for a week and make a graph.

I would need to check a traceroute to see if it is using Zen's network for the North/South transit though. It could be peering with someone else in Manchester and then using their network to London.

In reply to a post by agent_r00t:

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Makes zero sense to me either,Maybe it's due to city fibre pop's ?

My initial thought was that they only had termination for cityfibre in the north. But I suspect there'd be more complaints if every single cityfibre user on Zen had this issue. There's people way more sensitive to latency than me, for sure.

I think I was somehow assigned to pop out of cityfibre's network in the north. With Zen I remember I used to have a similar problem with VDSL quite some years ago now. For probably a year I would always connect to Manchester pppoe endpoints. Then one day it fixed itself. No amount of support tickets would fix it for me.

Maybe something similar here.

Zen only take the CityFibre local product. That means the handover from CityFibre to Zen is in your local CityFibre exchange in your City, this is the site the OLT for your connection is in so very close to your home.

How it gets to Zen and why it prefers Manchester is 100% down to Zen and their network. CityFibre don’t have anything to do with it. Other ISPs use national services from CF but not Zen.

In reply to a post by Ad_G:

Zen only take the CityFibre local product. That means the handover from CityFibre to Zen is in your local CityFibre exchange in your City, this is the site the OLT for your connection is in so very close to your home.

How it gets to Zen and why it prefers Manchester is 100% down to Zen and their network. CityFibre don’t have anything to do with it. Other ISPs use national services from CF but not Zen.

Well that makes even less sense regarding what is happening. Since my local exchange was already on Zen's network for VDSL and I was connecting via London. When I swapped to cityfibre, that's when it changed. It's very visible on my BQM for the day. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Pretty clear what time I swapped that over.

CityFibre have just been and fixed my connection. To be fair to Zen once they actually answered my emails things moved a bit quicker but it took a couple of days before it was fixed. The CityFibre guys said it looked like a squirrel had chewed through the fibre by the pole. It wouldn't surprise me as the pole is half in the trees and the lines go through several more trees and shrubs over the neighbour's property.

Anyway, the interesting thing is I'm back on the London connection, speeds are up, latency is down to what it was originally, and a few quick speed tests show my site to site VPN speeds are back up to were they where before the switch to Manchester. So all is good at the moment, but not sure for how long.... will the squirrels return or will Zen switch me back on to Manchester at some point... 😬

In reply to a post by timo_w2s:

Anyway, the interesting thing is I'm back on the London connection, speeds are up, latency is down to what it was originally, and a few quick speed tests show my site to site VPN speeds are back up to were they where before the switch to Manchester. So all is good at the moment, but not sure for how long.... will the squirrels return or will Zen switch me back on to Manchester at some point... 😬

I wonder if the extended disconnection did it for you? Cleared out any configuration that was being sticky. It was the advice when this happened with the VDSL/ADSL connections.

I did try disconnecting it overnight once. Which is about as long as I can get away with (two people working from home on the connection). That didn't do anything.

In reply to a post by agent_r00t:

I wonder if the extended disconnection did it for you? Cleared out any configuration that was being sticky. It was the advice when this happened with the VDSL/ADSL connections.

I was thinking the same, which is why I'm not holding my breath. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up back on the other one sometime.

In reply to a post by timo_w2s:

I was thinking the same, which is why I'm not holding my breath. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up back on the other one sometime.

I tried turning it off overnight again (1am to 8am). Still on Manchester. So, not sure how long it needs to be off to clear whatever it might be.

I'm so not sure whether to email them again though. It's so random now whether you will get someone that wants to help, or someone that just wants to close another call to keep their stats up.

In reply to a post by agent_r00t:

I tried turning it off overnight again (1am to 8am). Still on Manchester. So, not sure how long it needs to be off to clear whatever it might be.

I'm so not sure whether to email them again though. It's so random now whether you will get someone that wants to help, or someone that just wants to close another call to keep their stats up.

If I end up back on Manchester I'll post back on this thread. The fact that you are still connected via Manchester makes me think I might end up back there too. I've only been with Zen since CityFibre came along in our area earlier this year but I do get the occasional brief disconnect at night and it was after one of those disconnects that the switch from London to Manchester happened.