Internet slow in evening

Its my first post here so wanted to say hi before i got started picking peoples brains so... HI !!

I have been with Bt for about 4 years now and only had a few minor problems over the time and have been generally very happy with the service. Im on the £24 option which is 8mb and unlimited usage

I play alot of online games and my ping has been really bad lately, its not a problem in mmos, but playing FPS like Call of duty MW2 and Left4dead2 im really suffering. I used to get a ping of about 20-40ms however its now between 150-220ms until about 1.30am at which point it drops right down low again to low-mid 20s.

I have used speedtest.net and pingtest.net and its always the same, crappy until 1.30-2am then suddenly its awesome again.

I have contacted Bt and been told the line is fine and its the server im playing on's fault, which is clearly not the case as im connecting to a different server quite regularly and the CoDMW2 works on a p2p based system as far as im aware.

has anyone else had this issue or could be aware of what is causing it?

thanks in advance for any help

Over subscription. BT have thousands of victims and barely enough capacity to go around, so they throttle like crazy and latency is one of the first areas to suffer. I would think all you can do is to keep complaining.

Edited by Finguz (Sun 03-Jan-10 23:18:21)

It could be to do with the exchange you are on. Possibly a move to WBC, or simple exchange congestion.

Can you post the link to the result from samknows please?

Hi Primeh

I can check your line and broadband service to make sure that everything is working as it should be. Please drop me an email to [email protected] with your BT account details and forum username. I can then take a look at the network side of things.

Regards David

Afternoon all, thanks very much for the replies so far im very grateful

RobertoS i have just used that samknows site , it looks really good and i have bookmarked it ! When i entered my postcode it came up with http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EALGH im very close to the exchange as i only live about 3 roads from it.

I will send you an email shortly BTcare, thanks alot, i have my fingers crossed its just a temporary problem

i have attached a screenshot from speedtest.net , it has the date and times of the tests on it and you can see the ping is much higher.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a387/Primeh/adslpr...

thanks again

Edited by Primeh (Mon 04-Jan-10 13:42:02)

i just ran a traceroute to bbc.co.uk and here are the results

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Dan>tracert www.bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.253.67]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 5 ms <1 ms <1 ms voyager.home [192.168.1.1]
2 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms 217.32.146.65
3 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms 217.32.146.110
4 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms 213.120.177.34
5 79 ms 78 ms 78 ms 213.120.176.13
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 79 ms 76 ms 75 ms 213.120.176.121
8 73 ms 73 ms 75 ms core1-gig1-0-0.faraday.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.4.1
77]
9 77 ms 80 ms 79 ms 62.172.103.1
10 80 ms 78 ms 78 ms core1-pos14-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.12
5.225]
11 78 ms 76 ms 80 ms 194.74.65.42
12 80 ms 76 ms 74 ms 212.58.238.153
13 81 ms 80 ms 79 ms te12-1.hsw1.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [212.58.239.234]
14 81 ms 79 ms 75 ms www.bbc.co.uk [212.58.253.67]

Trace complete.

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 217.32.147.97
3 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 217.32.147.126
4 17 ms 17 ms 16 ms 213.120.181.102
5 17 ms 16 ms 16 ms 213.120.179.5
6 46 ms 44 ms 64 ms 213.120.179.178
7 48 ms 50 ms 51 ms 213.120.179.113
8 50 ms 50 ms 49 ms core1-gig8-0-0.sheffield.ukcore.bt.net [217.32.1
71.81]
9 39 ms 39 ms 40 ms core1-pos-0-14-5-0.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [62.172.
102.53]
10 56 ms 53 ms 50 ms core1-pos9-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.
114]
11 50 ms 48 ms 50 ms 194.74.65.42
12 47 ms 45 ms 46 ms 212.58.238.129
13 42 ms 37 ms 37 ms virtual-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138]

Similiar story here last few days - tho not as bad - MW2 is playable as its pretty laggy anyhow but other fps games aren't. Web browsing is incredibly slow. I'm also still doing the 300+ mile round trip of the country to get to London when I'm down in the south west HINT BT Somerset might begin with an S but its nowhere near Sheffield.

EDIT: It literally took 30 seconds from hitting submit on this post for the action to have any noticeable effect its that bad.

Basically I think BT's "virtual" paths for "heavy" users have far too many users on them for the allowances setup - rather than BT's core network being under provisioned... they'd rather just punish people than work with them to manage traffic.

EDIT: Bah now I can't get in any game under 150ms on MW2

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-Jan-10 20:17:13)

I checked that exchange with one of the VP (Virtual Path) congestion checkers and no known problems, though there can be other sorts of exchange congestion.

See how you get on with BT_CARE.

If you aren't happy at the end of that you have a number of options for a new ISP, including monthly contract LLU and low-contention ADSL Max.

Get back to me if you need to know more. I would need to know how much you download/upload per month, and your router stats would be useful. See here for help finding them if you need it.

thanks alot for all of your help guys, and your website is an excellent resource RobertoS

The problem seems to have magically disappeared, i didnt ask for interleaving to get switched off, i just ran a btspeedtester thingy whilst on the phone to a dude called Rodney from BT_Care and then a day and a half later the problem went.

I still have no clue as to the problem as while on the phone he said that he could trace no problems! Very strange, but yeh im happy so i thank you all again !

Good luck, let's hope the improvement continues.

You can always come back if it doesn't.