Time-of-day related loss of speed

I had a long thread on this topic at the turn of the year...... As sson as the clocks went back in '09, my line would drop out at roughly 1630 each and every day, and come back in the late evening. In the final analysis it was decided that my DG834 couldn't cope with the loss of line quality, and it was replaced. When the clocks went forward, all was hunky-dory and I've been trundling along at 1.7 - 1.9 24/7 ever since....

Well God bless my soul, here we go again. The clocks go back...... my line goes stupid! It all got a bit techie last time so I haven't done much testing beyond the speedtest available on this site. Compared with last year, I have a Draytek 2710n and, I rather imagine, it hangs on to the line (just) when the old Netgear would just have given up and let go.

Symptoms: a rapid decline from 1.7mbs to 600kbs or less between about 1700 and 1800, and a climb back much later in the evening. Throughout the summer the line has been 1.7 - 1.9 mbs at all times. I expect to find that this happens over the weekend, too, when there is far less likely to be a rush of people going on line on returning from work, and I'll report back after the weekend. Should contention make as dramatic effect as this, anyway?

Can we keep this on a non-tech basis for the moment and allow that nothing has changed domestically (except the clocks!) and that the problem is external? What environmental/BT factors are likely to be at work here? My ISP (Orange) is comprehensively useless, so I'm not going to be bothered with script-monkeys several thousand miles away this time round! How, if at all, can I get to BT on this? Can I make use of the fact that my house actually has two telephone lines inwards, one a relic from having had a separate fax line: a comment in another forum suggested that pehaps one could. And, finally, could switching to a provider who will use the LLU facilities on my exchange (Loose, Maidstone 0162274xxxx) provide an answer? I have no reason to believe Orange uses LLU.

TIA

Phil

Report back..... and Sunday was worse even than a weekday

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/12903...

!

Phil

You could try O2 LLU on a 30-day no quibbles getout. On the second line would be simplest but would probably incur a cease charge from Orange if you then cancelled that one. A straight migration should not incur a cease charge.

You can also get O2 LLU on monthly contract instead of 12-month, for an up-front payment of £30.

A warning though. If O2 LLU is full up you will be offered O2 Access (non-LLU). Avoid that.

Why this slowdown should be related to daylight saving is a mystery to me, but Orange are well-known for poor performance on their non-LLU. You are right in thinking they do not have LLU in your exchange.

There is no obvious exchange congestion there either.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Why this slowdown should be related to daylight saving is a mystery to me

I suspect that's a red herring- the weather tends to be colder when we're on GMT, and it was definitely a bit nippy on Sunday when the OP got poorer than usual performance.

I'd go for interference from central heating systems, either his own or close to his line.

But that ought to upset the sync if anything, not the throughput to any great extent. If a reconnection were caused at a lower speed then assuming IPSTream not Datastream a profile drop would occur, and the speed wouldn't recover so quickly.

Are you connected wired or wireless to the router?

A link to your previous thread would be very helpful, to save anyone covering the same old ground again.

You'd think would suffer, have a router here that can hold onto sync down to 1dB noise margin, but at under 3dB the throughput is suffering, i.e. video/audio becomes an issue, gaming goes laggy.

A manual resync gets a reasonable 6dB target SNR back, and all is well throughput wise.

So while this modem makes my line look stable, many users would be complaining of poor ISP performance at night.

That's logical, but it doesn't always seem to work that way. Using a friend's line, if the SNR dropped below 2-3db then throughput would drop to zero until it recovered, but it didn't lose either sync or PPP... most odd.

Thank You. Roberto - you participated last time round - the url is

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/3766525-tim...
(I used the old thread to try to restart the debate but that wasn't successful). Last time, a change of router 'solved' the problem and took my eye off the ball: this time I have exactly the same symptoms but my newer kit hangs on to the line (just) where my old kit would lose it.

Bill: I think I can rule CH out. During the summer the boiler switches in and out for Hot Water (and the pump runs, it's not a gravity system): the problem is absent. Now, the speed declines BEFORE the evening CH switches in; and it's restored to full speed in the morning BEFORE the CH goes off. Also, last time round, the problem was absent on Xmas day and Boxing day, on both of which the CH was in circuit as usual. I remain convinced that the variable is external, but whether exchange/BT network or environmental remains a mystery. Oh, and it occurs whether the temperature is mild or whether it's cold. The sudden onset seems to rule out temperature. I will go cold deliberately tomorrow or the next day - at least until I know the speed is down and not likely to come back for some hours!!

Thx

Phil

One thing I picked up this time from the previous thread is that your connection speed itself is quite poor. So there looks to be a high background noise somewhere as well.

Any chance you can find the stats from the Draytek? Preferably taken immediately after a day-time reconnection.

Also, the wireless or wired question?

Roberto: The Draytek is connected to my PC by a short ethernet cable. As mentioned last time round, connecting the Router at the House Junction box provides no improvement. Routerstats lite didn't cater for Drayteks last time round, but I'll recheck.

May I enquire, respectfully, tho', whether router statistics are likely to be diagnostic of an external problem? We got heavily into questions of routers last time round - as a result of which I acquired, successfully, new equipment which can deal better with a marginal line. BUT, the recurrence of an apparently identical problem under identical circumstances (reversion to GMT) should surely be directing our thoughts outwards, rather than inwards? I'm satisfied that there's no correlation between my Central Heating and the timing of speed drops. The only difference this time is that my connection speed slows, rather than ceases!

I'd appreciate further advice on LLU. Would migration to an ISP who uses the LLU capability of my exchange (FTTC/Infinity is decades off here) be likely to provide a solution? I have a horrible feeling the answer may be "if the problem is external, the probably not"

Regards

Phil

Router stats can show all sorts of things, but I'm not talking about the RouterStats monitor. The raw figures from the router which may be available from the GUI, connection speeds, attenuations and noise margins.

Error stats are very useful as well. Thiose often take a bit of hunting down.

Does the method in this link work with the 2710?

The wireless thought could very well have been relevant, but as you are wired it isn't. So long as the wireless side is either turned off or properly secured.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Routerstats lite didn't cater for Drayteks last time round, but I'll recheck.

RSL can be set up for almost ANY router - there are instructions on the authors website on how to do it. You just need the actual stats page address plus some text that appears near to the stats figure.

I have edited it before to give the "estimated" figures from a 2wire rather than actual.

It was probably covered last year but assuming it is external the BST/GMT changeover timing would suggest outside lighting on a business premises to provide safety for workers going home.
Where I work the power is switched on to the external floodlight timeswitch at roughly the end of October but a well(over) organised company probably has a "procedure" in place for this event tied to the clock changing.
A modern setup would have a dusk light detector and off time switch tied in so you are probably looking for an old setup or one done on the cheap !

That sounds quite a possibility!

The nearest I had got to with this sort of timing was that the local tip, (sorry, Neighbourhood Recycling Facility - [rant]which is to be closed at New Year and we are expected to go 4-5 miles with some steep hills to its replacement - very ecological[/rant]), closes at 8pm during daylight saving and at 6pm when on GMT.

BST not daylight savings time please

Heh! New-fangled jargon .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The wireless thought could very well have been relevant, but as you are wired it isn't. So long as the wireless side is either turned off or properly secured.

OK, issue here. No. the wireless itself isn't off: my wife's PC is wirelessly connected (but not on when I do speedtests, of course). The problem occurs, of course, independently of whether her PC is on or off. But, as always, I'm drawn back to the question "why only when the clocks go back? !"

Phil

Ever since the BT bloke "fixed" my line it has been solid, with only a power drop and a modem brainstorm stopping my up-time beating my record of 6 weeks. ...Until the last fortnight or so. It has started resynching at around 9-10pm. You will note that the last few weeks have been wet and cold, so I suspect that condensation forms either on the insulation or possibly on some exposed conductor somewhere, altering the line characteristics. The more marginal your line quality, the higher the chance that any environmental conditions will cause problems.

Before the BT line man sorted it (note, the BT ADSL 'specialists' were utterly useless) the modem stats on DMT clearly showed the AM radio stations appearing before sunset, and so increasing the radio frequency noise on the line. Nowadays, for some bizarre reason, I get better synch speeds at night and worse during the day. Weird!

Hmm - bit of serendipity here......

just picked up by virtue of idle curiosity..
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/demon/3909983-demon...

Could there be something of this sort going on here - deliberate load shifting???

Phil

They are talking of throughput speed (Speedtest result), which is different to sync speed (the bandwidth reported as the connection between modem and local phone exchange).

Which are you talking about being worse at the various times of day?

Sync speed should not be affected by ISP congestion,

Quite a few Anons in this thread - some signing off 'Phil' some not.
FWIW It's worth registering on TBB - it's free, you get less ads and it stops confusion

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Which are you talking about being worse at the various times of day?

Sync speed should not be affected by ISP congestion,

Thx Andrew

I'm talking throughput a la TBB test. My Modem reports "down" as 2624000 regardless of whether I'm at a crawl of 200kbps or operating normally at about 1.7 + mbps. Interestingly (having tested religiously every 30 mins or so last evening) my ACTUAL download (of the test file) recovered BEFORE TBB reported my throughput restoration. SNR margin is 16 or 17 when the line is bad, 13 when it's OK (?! shouldn't that be the other way round??? Anyway, it's what the report says!).

Here are the differences between Modem report (200kbps, first) and (1.8mbps second)

Tx rate Bps 9 - 47
Rx rate Bps 8 - 32
Tx CRC Errs 85 - 87
Rx CRC Errs 7640 - 7745
SNR Margin 17 - 13


Phil