New Vodafone / CityFibre connection

This week we switched from Sky FTTC (@60Mbps) to Vodafone CityFibre (@150Mbps) and this is the BQM from the first day:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Two questions:
1) I was surprised that the minimum latency has doubled compared to Sky FTTC?
2) The evening peak period was horrendous, even without any streaming from our side?

(The latter has improved though the last couple of nights and is more acceptable!):

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Edited by dgilbert2 (Sat 05-Apr-25 09:25:13)

The last link is broken. Can you edit it?

The first evening looks pretty dire, there’s even some packet loss evident. Be interested to see if the latency ‘mountain’ has reduced or gone in subsequent snapshots.

Can you also post a live BQM?

Thanks for your reply, I'm not sure why the last link is broken as it works at my end but I'll try this way:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

My live link (hopefully!):

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Aha can see it now after the edit.

Well that’s looking a whole lot better. Pretty much a normal BQM there.

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 05-Apr-25 10:01:25)

Still not wonderful ...

Mine from yesterday when working during the day and streaming for most of the evening:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

and Thursday - video conferencing for most of the working day plus normal working activities and streaming for most of the evening:
IPv6 https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...
IPv4 https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Well that’s looking a whole lot better. Pretty much a normal BQM there.

Agreed, if it stays like the last couple of days I'll be quite happy. Just hoping that the first evening was a one-off event, but a google search on Vodafone throttling says it might not be. Fingers crossed though! I'm certainly not used to seeing an increase in ping in the evening when no one here is using the internet.

I'm still surprised that the minimum latency on FTP is around 20ms compared to Sky FTTC at 10ms. However, in the "real world", its nothing

What I am really impressed about with this FTP is that when I watch a Sky Stream channel, there is no impact on the BQM!

Edited by dgilbert2 (Sat 05-Apr-25 11:20:54)

In reply to a post by MHC:

Still not wonderful ...

Mine from yesterday when working during the day and streaming for most of the evening:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/... ..................

Wow, I've never seen a BQM as good as yours before. Which network / ISP are you on with such low ping times?

Edited by dgilbert2 (Sat 05-Apr-25 11:15:53)

This is mine on Aquiss 550/70 FTTP

Ignore the red band, I hadn't set it up properly... thanks to MHC for the support

My Broadband Ping

In reply to a post by CJT:

This is mine on Aquiss 550/70 FTTP

Ignore the red band, I hadn't set it up properly......

Ummm, again, another one with lower "Minimum Latency" than I experience with Vodafone / City Fibre 150Mbps.

In reply to a post by dgilbert2:

Ummm, again, another one with lower "Minimum Latency" than I experience with Vodafone / City Fibre 150Mbps.

Mine is via OR FTTP, but I think they offer services via CityFibre as well.

Out of curiosity was Vodafone the only choice available?

So if I understand what I'm doing!? and carry out a trace to the Vodafone gateway I'm connected too, it does seem that its the time from the router to this where the bulk of the 20ms come from..

Tracing route to 84.65.192.1 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms vodafonePH.powerhub [192.168.1.254]
2 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms 84.65.192.1

In reply to a post by dgilbert2:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Well that’s looking a whole lot better. Pretty much a normal BQM there.

Agreed, if it stays like the last couple of days I'll be quite happy. Just hoping that the first evening was a one-off event, but a google search on Vodafone throttling says it might not be. Fingers crossed though! I'm certainly not used to seeing an increase in ping in the evening when no one here is using the internet.

I'm still surprised that the minimum latency on FTP is around 20ms compared to Sky FTTC at 10ms. However, in the "real world", its nothing

What I am really impressed about with this FTP is that when I watch a Sky Stream channel, there is no impact on the BQM!

I wouldn’t get too hung up on minimum latency. Pretty much it’s distance and backhaul network dependent. For example little point me boasting about a 0 to 1ms average ping in London as most of the main internet exchanges, CoLo’s and datacentres are only a few miles away. A bit different if you were located in the Highlands for example.

The key things with any BQM, in order
1. no packet loss
2. no sustained or clearly repeating average or minimal usage spikes or patterns. Little spikes here and there are normal depending on your router and network actual load.

As long as minimum and average latency are stable and relatively clean then you should be fine.

In reply to a post by CJT:

Mine is via OR FTTP, but I think they offer services via CityFibre as well.

Out of curiosity was Vodafone the only choice available?

We cannot get Openreach FTTP.

CityFibre offered 23 ISP's in total, a lot I'd never heard of TBH. I short listed Vodafone / 4th Utility / Beebu, but went Vodafone based on name/generally positive reviews / cost, but accepted customer support was their let down! As for Aquiss, CityFibre didn't offer them but just looked them up direct and they will provide CityFibre at our address, a missed opportunity unless I jump ship within my cooling off period.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I wouldn’t get too hung up on minimum latency. Pretty much it’s distance and backhaul network dependent. For example little point me boasting about a 0 to 1ms average ping in London as

The key things with any BQM, in order
1. no packet loss
2. no sustained or clearly repeating average or minimal usage spikes or patterns. Little spikes here and there are normal depending on your router and network actual load.

As long as minimum and average latency are stable and relatively clean then you should be fine.

Perfect, thank you for your time posting this information, most helpful.

In reply to a post by dgilbert2:

We cannot get Openreach FTTP.

CityFibre offered 23 ISP's in total, a lot I'd never heard of TBH. I short listed Vodafone / 4th Utility / Beebu, but went Vodafone based on name/generally positive reviews / cost, but accepted customer support was their let down! As for Aquiss, CityFibre didn't offer them but just looked them up direct and they will provide CityFibre at our address, a missed opportunity unless I jump ship within my cooling off period.

Out of the companies listed by CityFibre I have only head of Vodafone, however if Aquiss do offer you a service, within your price point, I can recommend them.

How far into the cooling off period are you?

In reply to a post by dgilbert2:

Out of the companies listed by CityFibre I have only head of Vodafone, however if Aquiss do offer you a service, within your price point, I can recommend them.

How far into the cooling off period are you?

Today is the 4th day, so was going to see how things went over the weekend

In reply to a post by dgilbert2:

Today is the 4th day, so was going to see how things went over the weekend

Sounds like a sensible idea. You can always call or e-mail Aquiss on Monday.

Martin is very knowledgeable and helpful.

BT ...

And to add that I don't see any large yellow blocks of increased latency. If there are two on video calls and TV streaming, there might be a very small bump caused locally but not network based issues.

My router does an automated speed test daily and will flag any issues with up/down/latency to me on email.

In reply to a post by dgilbert2:

I'm still surprised that the minimum latency on FTP is around 20ms compared to Sky FTTC at 10ms. However, in the "real world", its nothing

If you're north of Birmingham, or in Scotland or over in Belfast, then its nothing. My Virgin Media connection in Hampshire is over the old coax cable (DOCSIS) technology and the minimum ping is higher than most FTTP providers. Doesn't really affect anything unless you are worried about gaming.

(link in .sig)

My BQM is in north west of Ireland, on Youfibre and it's lower.

In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

My BQM is in north west of Ireland, on Youfibre and it's lower.

Then possibly its just down to how the Vodafone ISP run their network.

Sure. As said, above, it’s typically distance but also backhaul network dependent. I can shift minimum latency by swapping providers on the same fibre network.

The physical distance remains unaltered but the difference is how the packets traverse the tangled heterogeneous thing we know as the internet.

Moving on a few days, ignoring the first day, the evenings were not too bad, typically as below. I can still see though when Vodafone are getting loaded in the evening, even when we're not doing much.

Typical Day:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

HOWEVER, Sunday night was a different story with the evening peak being quite bad:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

I guess you get what you pay for, but Vodafone really should be better in my opinion. Need to have another look around to see what alternatives I can get.

I think this min latency thing is an interesting thing we should be looking into.. obviously will depend on locations but for the major altnets we should be able to do something feature wise on this.. If all things are well there shouldn't be a difference.. but I would expect B4RN say to be higher from our London location

I'm looking at adding BQM nodes on other networks too

Sounds interesting. How would you present the data?

In reply to a post by dgilbert2:

I guess you get what you pay for, but Vodafone really should be better in my opinion. Need to have another look around to see what alternatives I can get.

I ended up staying with Vodafone, time will tell if I've made a bad choice . At least I'm not getting CGNAT, which may been a problem if I'd have jumped ship. I guess I could have gone to the more expensive / premium end of the ISP market, but at the end of the day I couldn't justify the cost. What I have does at least work without causing noticeable problems for our usage (mainly streaming) rather than ping sensitive applications.