constant packet loss since 'upgrade' to 21cn

Hi,

I've always had a flaky internet connection as my Exchange is 5km or so away (I'm connected to Kennford exchange) and often goes down when the phone rings (15 or so engineers not been able to fix), anyway my connection was last week upgraded from 20cn to 21cn but ever since I've been 'upgraded' I've had constant packet loss all the time (hardly ever packet loss before and when I did it was very small like 1 or 2% not the constant packet loss I'm getting now).
I've (hopefully) attached a pic showing it happening.

My Broadband Ping

The issue I have is that I use my internet connection to work as I trade on Betfair on the sports markets and have streaming graphs for it etc and this constant packet loss is causing big issues with it as I now get big ping spikes every 5 seconds or so that cause my software/graphs to freeze for a couple of seconds making it impossible to trade, I also like to game and it's impossible to do so online with it, pingtest shows up results like ping of 265 with a jitter of 450 for instance where as before it was 40 and 2 at worst.

I've got my ISP looking into it for me but wondered if anyone knew what the issue could be?.

thanks
Mike

Can you post you stats from your router (SNR, Attenuation, connection rate).

It could just be the distance is not good for ADSL2+ and requesting the connection to be set back down to ADSL may give you back the stability (or an increase in target SNR may have the same effect).

Hi,

thanks for looking, my router stats are

SNR 6
Attenuation 58 down 31.5 up
connection rate 3456 down and 608 up

I should point out that the exchange was due a BT 21cn upgrade in May 2013 but when BDUK was signed for this area it was stopped and on samknows and BT availability checker it now says it's due March 2014 (same time as fibre is due on exchange due to BDUK). The connection now is on the Talk Talk 21cn back haul and it's currently been set to ADSL, we've also tried it with a noise margin of 15 and even set it to a fixed line 512kbs line which gave a noise margin of something like 27 and nothing has changed.

Regards
Mike

In reply to a post by IranianGiraffe:

I should point out that the exchange was due a BT 21cn upgrade in May 2013 but when BDUK was signed for this area it was stopped and on samknows and BT availability checker it now says it's due March 2014 (same time as fibre is due on exchange due to BDUK). The connection now is on the Talk Talk 21cn back haul and it's currently been set to ADSL

In that case, you're not on BT 21CN at all, but on the TalkTalk network. Your line will be connected to a TalkTalk MSAN at the exchange (not the BT Wholesale 20CN DSLAM or 21CN MSAN), which provides the ADSL service on your line and connects you to the Internet via TalkTalk's network.


There's two possible ways your line is configured.

One is 'full LLU', where TalkTalk rent MPF (a pair of wires) from BT Openreach, and the TalkTalk MSAN provides both voice and ADSL service - in this case you pay TalkTalk for both voice and broadband.

The other alternative is 'partial LLU', where TalkTalk rent SMPF (the ability to put broadband on an existing voice line) from BT Openreach, and the TalkTalk MSAN provides ADSL service whilst another company rents wholesale voice service from BT Openreach and bills you for voice phone service.


In either case, you need to take broadband faults up with TalkTalk, who use their own engineers to work on their equipment and request BT Openreach engineers to repair faulty BT Openreach assets.

Have TalkTalk moved you to another port on their MSAN? It's possible the line card port or the DSL/voice splitter is faulty.

So are you now with AAISP, or have you moved on. If so, to which ISP please?

When you said you were "upgraded" to 21CN, you are slightly confused, as many are at first by the term.

It sounds as though you are on TalkTalk Wholesale with your new ISP? That is ADSL2+, but not 21CN. 21CN, properly known as WBC, is merely BT Wholesale's ADSL2+ service.

Assuming the upgrade was either a migration or a change of package, your connection will have been moved to a different piece of exchange equipment. I'd put my bet on either a bad contact in the rewiring there, or a faulty line card, which is what your line actually plugs in to in the end.

Pretty much "Snap" . You must have been about to post as I started typing.

Hi guys,

Many thanks for your replies, I am indeed with AAISP and the first part of the email I got from them said

"We currently provide broadband to you using older ADSL1 technology using
BT back-haul. Wherever possible we have an ongoing programme to upgrade
lines to newer ADSL2+ technology (21st Century Networking)."

Sorry about the confusion when I put I've been upgraded to 21cn, After reading the first part of the email they sent and the fact I've never really looked into the details of ADSL2+ as I'm a long way from exchange and saw speed wise it wouldn't benefit me, I (like a fair few it seems) assumed that 21cn was ADSL2+ but from reading your replies I see that it's a BT fancy name for their ADSL2+ service like Infinity is for their fibre service.

I should also point out later on in the email they do mention Talk Talk wholesale as now being the back-haul provider and my connection will be down for a few minutes only (which it was) while it is rejumpered at the exchange.

So it looks like it's either a bad contact in the rewiring or a faulty line card then?

Thanks again
Mike

I should also point out later on in the email they do mention Talk Talk wholesale as now being the back-haul provider and my connection will be down for a few minutes only (which it was) while it is rejumpered at the exchange.

So it looks like it's either a bad contact in the rewiring or a faulty line card then?

That's what I reckon Mike, if it started with or soon after the swap.

I would have thought AAISP could sort this out given their reputation for good support.

So would I seem to, but what I'm suggesting doesn't seem to be something that occurs to any ISP's first line support.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 30-Sep-13 12:26:20)

I think the problems are a bit deeper than the backhaul switch

In reply to a post by IranianGiraffe:

I've always had a flaky internet connection as my Exchange is 5km or so away (I'm connected to Kennford exchange) and often goes down when the phone rings (15 or so engineers not been able to fix)

Many thanks for your help guys, it did indeed start as soon as it was switched over and I never had the problem before.

I should point out that AAISP are looking into the problem for me, and have been helpful so far, I just knew someone on here would be able to tell me what it looks like the issue is before talk talk get back to AAISP.

Now if only other websites/places were as helpful as you guys/gals on here so I could find out if indeed my connection was being upgraded to FTTP by march 2014 as connectingdevonandsomerset will not tell me even though I know that fibre is coming from another exchange into my village and I can see 2 cabinets being installed and that apparently the connections that are connected to my cabinet are going to be upgraded to FTTP instead (from a Aggregation Node close to these 2 cabinets I would imagine), just a simple yes it's planned or no it's not planned would do even if it was subject to change but nope basically been told tough you will have to wait and find out.

Anyway enough ranting

Thanks once again

Mike

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

I think the problems are a bit deeper than the backhaul switch

In reply to a post by IranianGiraffe:

I've always had a flaky internet connection as my Exchange is 5km or so away (I'm connected to Kennford exchange) and often goes down when the phone rings (15 or so engineers not been able to fix)

Hi Batboy,

I've always had the issue when I was with my old ISP and was connected to a service providing the higher upload of 832kbs (max premium I think is what BT call the service), since I moved it back to the standard upload it happened far far less and thinking about it the week or so I've been upgraded to talk talk back haul I've not noticed it at all (although that could be because I've not used it as much because of the constant packet loss issue that I didn't have before).
I've kind of given up on the phone ringing issue ever getting fixed as because BT had called out so many engineers (many times the same engineer) it basically got to a point where BT said to my ISP well you can either have the internet with the issue or we can cease the service for you.

thanks for your input as well.

Mike

Are you sure the issues are not at your end?

Are you wired to the master socket?
Do you have any extensions?
Do you have other devices such as a Skybox connected to the phoneline?

Have you tried different filters?

What router make/model are you using?

So many questions

Please don't give up with getting the line fault repaired by Openreach - I'm sure AAISP will do their best to ensure that even on a 58dB attenuation your DSL connection will become more stable.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Are you sure the issues are not at your end?

Are you wired to the master socket?
Do you have any extensions?
Do you have other devices such as a Skybox connected to the phoneline?

Have you tried different filters?

What router make/model are you using?

So many questions

Hi Batboy,

Every engineer has ruled out the fault being at my house (for the phone ringing issue) as they found the issue still happened outside of the house.
With both issues I've used the test socket behind the master socket, changed filters, changed routers (one I'm using at the mo is a Billion 7800n which gives me the best connection speed on this line by quite a way) rj11 cable, with the phone going down issue it still used to happen (when we had the faster upload) if nothing else was even plugged in (inc phones) not got sky anymore.

Basically they changed the D side, E side, RF filter, face plate, splitter, changed the overhead line from pole to house (was coming through a tree at one point and thought it may of been damaged by branches on tree) done numerous lifts and shifts and nothing seemed to fix the issue, probably been more things done as well but off the top of my head that's the only things I can think of at the moment, only thing that seemed to make a difference was moving down to the standard upload speed and ever since it's been better.
Like I said I could deal with that as not many people call the house phone anymore and when there is a call it tends to be after I've finished trading so it doesn't really matter.

The issue with the constant packet loss though is another matter as it makes it impossible to trade/work on betfair and play any games and that is how I make my money and the fact that I didn't have this issue at all before the change over and as soon as the change over happened I've had it all the time since seems to point towards a problem at the switch over.

Regards
Mike

could you do a pathping, (like tracert, but better ) to bbc.co.uk

I expect it all to be on the first hop, but a good check

Hi ggremlin,

I think this is it

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.253.67]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 Home.home.gateway [192.168.1.105]
1 192.168.1.254
2 a.gormless.thn.aa.net.uk
3 a.aimless.thn.aa.net.uk
4 bbc-linx.pr01.thdow.bbc.co.uk [195.66.224.103]
5 * * *
Computing statistics for 100 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 Home.home.gateway [192.168.1.105]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.168.1.254
14/ 100 = 14% |
2 41ms 14/ 100 = 14% 0/ 100 = 0% a.gormless.thn.aa.net.uk
5/ 100 = 5% |
3 42ms 20/ 100 = 20% 1/ 100 = 1% a.aimless.thn.aa.net.uk
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 44ms 19/ 100 = 19% 0/ 100 = 0% bbc-linx.pr01.thdow.bbc.co.uk [195.66.224.103]

Trace complete.

Regards
Mike

Hi guys,

Just an update to say they were going to change the line card today but first they swapped a management card and the packet loss went so looks like that was the issue.

thanks to everyone who helped

Mike