What does this graph mean?

Hi

Our broadband internet connection is very intermittent. Can anyone help me understand what the graph means? I know that the solid red parts are where it drops out altogether.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/ac26884846b...

Thanks

Simon

What sort of connection is it and how heavily used is it? On the face of it that is high latency but for a satellite connection it would be pretty good.

If it is a very heavily used line then that could explain higher latency. If the router at your end is set to treat pings as low priority then that could also explain it.

Or, it could be your ISP is oversubscribed or the line is low quality.

The graph itself isn't enough to make any definitive statement.

You have a problem!

The minimum latency (green) at around 20ms is reasonable. The blue high latency spikes suggest that the connection is being heavily used - which could be down to people catching up from when the connection was down.

Does the modem get switched off at any time? What other electrical.electronic equipment is location close to the modem?

Can you go back over say 10 days and provide a link to each of those - it could show a pattern.

Then, can you get the basic connection stats - Attenuation, SNR and sync speed along with error counts.

Can rule out satellite as the minimum latency is well below what satellite can offer.

If a Virgin Media business connection give the superhub a power off and power on cycle at a convenient time of day, the software in the hubs sometimes deprioritises ping responses and can show this problem.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Can rule out satellite as the minimum latency is well below what satellite can offer.

Indeed, I was using it as a somewhat off the wall illustration of why the graph itself doesn't mean that much unless we have more info about the connection and how it is being used. Also, the fact it is (seemingly) in Norwich doesn't mean it isn't using a VPN tunnel to somewhere else in the world as it's connectivity (doubt it but many things could explain a higher than "usual" latency).

Hi Simon,

As others have said, your base latency looks ok. What stands out to me is the red colour which indicates packet loss. Either the connection is heavily overused, or you have a fault. Post some more details and I'm sure you will get a pointer to the nature of your issue.