FTTP Packet Loss, normal?

Hi All,

Hope everyone had a good new year!

Can someone please reality check me and tell me if this is normal for a residential FTTP connection?

I own a IT Company myself that deals with DataCentre, so i'm not a novice here by any means, but Virgin Media are making me feel that way!

I have a FTTP connection with Virgin Media (2000mbps symmetrical), and im experiencing packet loss on my connection.

Although tiny, the BQM still picks this up

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

Ignore the 100% packet loss at the start, that was a billing issue (oops) but does anyone else experience these little packet loss spikes?

I know from my experience in the world of IT. any form of packet loss is bad news. Virgin Media came out and replaced a bad internal cable to the router as the previous engineer used an external cable (not sure of the difference) but apparently its different and doesn't bend well, there was -5dBm light difference over the internal cable, so he replaced and now it matched the external light levels. - But other than that he cant find a fault.

Connections been on now for a few hours and already seeing little packet loss spikes.

I'm starting to wonder if its the router dropping the BQM requests? - It never happened on my VDSL connection with Vodafone, and that was a terrible line!

Any suggestions? - Router upgrade not really possible with the VM XGSPON network, i do have the XGSPON ONU stick, but it never worked prior as the light level was too low at the SFP end, but maybe now its worth a try as that internal cable has been fixed.

Cheers!

Edited by suttonscloud (Sat 11-Jan-25 05:40:19)

Looks like there was another 100% loss event around 7:30am for 15-20 mins - do you know what that was about?

Just in the short space of time I've been looking at your BQM there remains large ongoing packet loss from the event early this morning from approx 7:20am onwards. There is some recovery, but then goes back to full loss after 8am

Right now at 8:15am it looks pretty terrible.

This is definitely not right for an XGS-PON based connection (that has been installed and is operating correctly). Yellow latency spikes are normal and to be expected, especially on a well utilised connection. However there should be no red on that graph at all.

You have an installation issue. I could be wrong, but given the initial installer didn't cover themselves in glory, I would think you may have other/further optical loss issues. These can be intermittent too. Or you could have a duff combo ONT/router.

I left VM (1gig HFC) for similar issues they could never work out what caused it but only started after going onto the Hub4 (DOCSIS3.1)..

With mine the only place I noticed it other than my BQM was gaming (stuttering and latency spiking) or Twitch used to buffer with it. Was a strange one.

Edited by BuckleZ (Sat 11-Jan-25 20:01:55)

This is beyond a ‘classic’ virgin HFC issue though -> this is categorically an installation fault / equipment fault. Definitely not a congested bit of local coaxial segment.

Take a look at the snapshot from today.

Also VM congestion typically pushes up latency and jitter, might also slow throughput, when you see packet loss on VM graphs for coax its usually noise ingress not congestion.

What this issue is, I am scratching my head, I think its just going to have to be reported, and go through the motions until they find what the problem is.

Equipment / installation fault. There is prolonged loss of service going on in between periods of lower but continued packet loss.

The OP needs to deal with the Virgin Community Forum team whom can get things resolved better than any call centre.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 12-Jan-25 13:43:22)

Coax on an XGS-PON service

Wow. New one on me 😂

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Wow. New one on me 😂

Oh dear, I missed the "symmetrical" comment. Shoot me now 😳😁