Very bag lag spikes, can the BQM help?

My parents are blessed with ADSL1 @ 1.7mbps sync. Its market 3 (i think thats the word for bt wholesale)? Probably the furthest house from the local telephone exchange at a whopping 5 miles. (BN8 - Plumpton).

When I lived at home there were never ending problems with every ISP. Now on PlusNet the problems continue, its a long story that I don't really want to get into because it will take me a very long time to post it.

Anyway, since I have been back to visit them, trying to game and use the internet has been nothing short of horrendous. I thought this problem was fixed last time I was here when I discovered the speed was dropped so low it was barely measurable. Anyway, they reset whatever it is they reset and it worked again, but I didn't test gaming.

As an example, you will be playing an online game. Everything is fine for a few seconds and then there is a large spike in lag, up to 500ms sometimes. Normal ping seems to variate between 30 and 60.

Does this BQM offer any help? Please ignore the initial packet loss, this was measured when I didn't have the plusnet router open to accept wan packets.

My Broadband Ping

How can I approach plus net about it? I am really sick of having so many problems and needing to contact them multiple times a year. They say there customer support is good, but it my experience it has been terrible, namely due to the horrid system they have to communicate with wholesale.

If someone was using it during day BQM looks normal, suggestion is someone stopped at 7pm. Peak time hump then due to isp

With slower lines and gaming you need to ensure no devices other than game are using connection

It's never been this bad though. Right now my sister came home and is watching Netflix. Every other device now won't even load web pages.
My game is unplayable and my Skype won't even sign in.

Before it was possible to game and stream with minor lag. I don't know what's happened or how to get it fixed. It's dreadful.

I see now on the graph there is another bit of packet loss.. Maybe it could be the router?

Edited by Dodgexander (Sat 31-Jan-15 12:45:44)

What are the full router stats and what router is in use?

In reply to a post by Dodgexander:

Every other device now won't even load web pages.

Assuming you are using wireless, we should test the wireless stability as well. If you're on a computer rather than phone/tablet, then try a ping to the router, if you know the web page (192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1) that is the number we need in the next command.

Assuming Windows, open a command prompt and type

ping -t 192.168.0.1

(replace the numbers if needed)

This will test the connection between your computer and the router. You should have lots of lines similar to:

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

The time on mine above is less than 1ms (millisecond). If you get missing lines or that number is high and keeps changing, then you likely have wireless interference.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 31-Jan-15 16:32:12)

Thanks for the replies guys.

Here are the router stats:

Link Information

Uptime: 12 days, 16:16:42

DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.1

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 1.856

Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [GB/GB]: 1,25 / 1,99

Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11,9 / 17,2

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31,5 / 63,5

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 11,0 / 5,6

System Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / ----

Chipset Vendor ID (Local/Remote): BDCM / ALCB

Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / -

Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / -

Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / -

Loss of Link (Remote): -

Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 2.757 / -

FEC Errors (Up/Down): 2.634 / 2.876.178

CRC Errors (Up/Down): 1.737 / 4.598

HEC Errors (Up/Down): -.737 / 4.598 / 17.344

My ping to the router is always 1-2ms, at most its been <5ms. The problem also exists on wired computers.

This problem never use to exist when we first joined plusnet and not with Xilo before that..it didnt exist even until our telephone line and then internet broke a couple of months ago...when we reported that they said they couldnt see anything wrong with the line and just reset something. The reliability has always been a nightmare here ever since we first got adsl. For a while It was perfect, but now these horrible symptoms are back again.

To be expected if streaming netflix that will use every bit it can until you get a connection of 5Mbps and faster

A router with qos to share the connection more fairly msybe one solution until you can get a faster connection

The downstream attenuation of 63.5dB indicates the connection to the exchange is long, which means you will only get stable syncs to the exchange around the 1800-2000kbps mark.

Using MrSaffron's calculator found in CoolWebHome it suggests that the sync is good, plus the uptime of over 12 days from the router stats suggests the connection is reasonably stable at that sync speed.

I'm not a gamer myself but I would suggest the best bet for gaming from that line is to have a wired connection to the router and if possible or in fact it may be necessary to have no one else using the connection whilst gaming.

And turn off any in-game voice chatter

Thanks for the help guys. Sadly its not looking promising when it comes to a faster connection here. Lines like ours (3%)? Of the population without ADSL2 are suffering whilst others get upgraded to Fibre.

On top of this, services and games just don't think of lower connections when developing. even some websites. So if you are on a slow connection like my parents you are out of luck even more than you were in the dial up days. The difference is even greater now.

On top of this, although plusnet say they don't throttle certain traffic below certain speeds, I am sure the slower speed BT wholesale connections suffer as a result from traffic shaping, even though technically they shoudnt. I suppose I should be greatful it isn't as bad as the days of o2 or tiscali internet here.

A few minutes away in the town I have a 60mbit connection. Its just not fair for those living in the country. 3G is faster here, may as well pin our hopes on 4g.

Even if you look at the graphs when there is no usage I get massive ping, that can't be right?

Edited by Dodgexander (Sat 07-Feb-15 01:18:25)