Ping increase

On the 29 Nov my Sky latency (Samknows box), went from 14-16ms to 29-31ms and has stayed there ever since. I have spoken to Sky on several occasions who have said, there is nothing they can do, as they have no access to systems that can investigate this. It appears to be a widespread problem (going by alternative forum posts) but the Sky "techies" seem to know nothing about it and cannot help. I know it may not sound like much of an increase but being a sad old gamer I like to have a nice low ping.

Ive had Sky fibre since the 3rd week of Oct when they mistakenly put me on the 40/2 package and this took nearly a month to sort out. It turned out the only people who could fix it was BT, who finally sorted it out for me a month after ordering. Any possibility that BT could be responsible for latency increase and Sky have their hands tied in sorting it out?

The link between you and the exchange is Openreach, their GEA product. It is handed over there to Sky via ethernet and it's Sky's baby from then on.

It could be the Openreach DLM in the cabinet that has put interleaving on. Have you also lost any speed? (Probably not if you get over 70Mbps, but if less than that you might have lost about 8%).

It could be crosstalk as more people near you have been conencted to fibre. It could be Sky getting more heavily loaded at that exchnage.

Not a lot to be done I'm afraid.

Thanks for the reply RobertoS.
It does seem a bit strange, that other exchanges all over the country experienced this increase and Sky seem to know nothing about it.
Going back to my 40/2 problem. When Sky could not sort it, it was eventually passed on to a BT person in Leeds who called me and talked through her process of checking my line and changing the profile there and then. What took Sky nearly a month to try and rectify took BT a few minutes to actually fix it.
Just how much influence does BT have on other companies fibre, it seems to go further than just the exchange. If this is the case.
In regards to crosstalk, can that actually be blamed for such a sudden increase in latency, it wasnt a gradual increase it happened immediately.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It could be crosstalk as more people near you have been conencted to fibre. It could be Sky getting more heavily loaded at that exchnage.

29th November is a touch early, but it could also be that annual bugbear- interference from cheapo Christmas lights.

In which case the DLM might relent some time into the New Year and take the interleaving off.

I live in a pretty quiet village connected to a cab 350ms away. On the 29th of Nov there were no Christmas lights up in my small street, with no obvious sign of any between my house and the cab, (near to the bus stop I use daily for work). Although now, the place is lit up like the preverbial.

Ah well, it was a thought.

My neighbour put up his usual half-megawatt of lights around then, but so far (crossing everything I've got two of that can cross) it hasn't caused any problems. It has in the past, maybe he's bought new ones.

In reply to a post by HiPing:

When Sky could not sort it, it was eventually passed on to a BT person in Leeds who called me and talked through her process of checking my line and changing the profile there and then. What took Sky nearly a month to try and rectify took BT a few minutes to actually fix it.
Just how much influence does BT have on other companies fibre, it seems to go further than just the exchange.

Being passed on to a BT person in this situation is highly unusual. It should have been possible for Sky support to liaise satisfactorily with the appropriate BT department. Almost certainly someone in Openreach. All I can say about that is I'm glad it got sorted for you.

Regarding the general setup, this slightly out of date page might explain a lot to you. Sky Fibre is not true LLU, (I'm assuming you know what that is, but on the same site is a "What is LLU?" page), as that would need them to cable out to the cabinets in the same way as Openreach have done. Billions of squidoodles.

So whereas on LLU they have almost complete control of the line, relying only on Openreach for the physical maintenance of the copper from the exchange, on fibre they basically only control it from their LLU kit in the exchange back to themselves. Although they can request a few performance settings. The 40/2, 40/10 and 80/20 settings are simple Openreach products that they order on your behalf, and the performance settings are simply stability increases, QOS settings, and suchlike.

Interleaving and underlying latency are set automatically within Openreach systems. There seem to be no systems for any ISP to request alterations to those. Further variable latency can of course arise within the Sky backhaul system.

Similar to you but not as dramatic, 24 November, after 18 months or so on fast path, interleaving was applied to my line, latency rose by about 4ms, and I lost 10Mbps downstream. 19:45 on 14 December the latency dropped back toi the original value, but the interleaving and the speed loss it causes remain. No known reasons . WIth a bit of luck, in a while it will revert to fast path and give me the speed back.

Not even worth pursuing with my ISP. Or any ISP if it happens to one of their customers. I fear it is the consequence of getting the ludicrously high speeds and allowances we now have compared to the past. It would be just impossible Openreach to keep everyone happily on the highest tight-rope seeing as they can provide small performance decreases that stabilise everything.

I hope that helps explain things. I know it doesn't explain why you have had such a big change.

Thank you very much for the in-depth reply, filled in a fair few gaps in my knowledge there.
So swapping to another provider, along with all the hassle this causes, chances are, I would'nt see any change anyway.
Ah well, no real option but to hang on and hope for the best then.

My top three for fibre - BT, Plusnet and Sky. Though I'm beginning to downgrade BT in my estimation.

I expect Zen are OK. I did my first year with IDNet and had no complaints, but from keeping my eyes open here decided I would risk Plusnet for far less money. Ten months into Plusnet I feel I did the right thing, to the point where I'm about to commit to another 18 months from January 13.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

My top three for fibre - BT, Plusnet and Sky. Though I'm beginning to downgrade BT in my estimation.

Likewise - I've been more impressed with BT (Infinity) than I thought I would be

The interleave I believe was applied to my line on day 2 and has never been lifted. Judging from the fact my lowest ping to a bbc site (on Windows 7) is 18ms and other people report 8ms. :-/

Edited by jchamier (Tue 18-Dec-12 07:49:56)