Broadband up and down

Hi. I'm new here and have had a quick (actually a long) read of various posts. Very interesting. But, I have a problem that my ISP says they are going to sort out.

As of last Thursday my internet access has gone from a really solid 37Mbps down to unusable at times.
The problem is not that the router disconnects (it still sits there happily thinking it's connected at 40Mbps), but that there are very large delays even when simply browsing.

The main sites I'm using for testing are www.bbc.co.uk, www.fast.com, and www.google.co.uk.
All I'm doing in the test is trying to load a page. Sometimes nothing happens and times out.
Using fast.com shows a range of values from 0 to 37Mbps. It can cycle good and bad several times an hour, or just a couple of times a day.
Re-booting, or power cycling gets it working again. But maybe that's just coincidental, as if you don't reset, it does seem to recover by itself.
Actually, disconnecting and reconnecting in the router web page also makes it pop back into life.

I've done a quick tracert on the above addresses and when it works everything is sub 10ms. When it's in a bad mood, then some hops are several seconds.

I've replaced the router (twice), the microfilter, and this issue shows up on wired and wireless devices.

The last call to my ISP said that they had identified a non-specific fault and would send someone out. Is "non-specific" just their term for "we don't know what's going on"?

So, what sort of error would cause these symptoms?

ISP is Sky.
Line attenuation down is 21.9dB, up is 0dB
Noise margin down is 3.5dB, up is 6.6dB.
These stats are pretty much typical for the years its been installed.

Thanks.

Laggy DNS. You could try & get round this issue by switching the DNS to Manual in the router with 1 of these public DNS:

Open DNS : 208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220
Google DNS: 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4
Norton DNS: 198.153.192.40 & 198.153.194.40

ISP DNS aren't the most reliable.

Don't think Sky routers let you change DNS settings from a quick read of Google so this would need to be done for each device.

Not sure if Sky hijack the DNS ports and reroute requests regardless of DNS server requested. Maybe some others who know more about how Sky operate can comment?

Anthony

I�d be surprised if your downstream SNR has always been that low ... the changes haven�t been around that long.

Silly season question, not just decked your halls have you ?

Try switching off all the Christmas stuff, and then power cycle the router .... does that help ? Got a neighbour�s place nearby which is festooned with new lights ?

Thanks for the suggestion.
So, when my broadband goes bad, if I do a tracert of an IP address rather than a named one, should that be OK? Or is it more complicated than that?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I�d be surprised if your downstream SNR has always been that low ... the changes haven�t been around that long.

Silly season question, not just decked your halls have you ?

Try switching off all the Christmas stuff, and then power cycle the router .... does that help ? Got a neighbour�s place nearby which is festooned with new lights ?

No Xmas stuff up yet, and not noticed any neighbours with the same.

In reply to a post by TheRealGrumps:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I�d be surprised if your downstream SNR has always been that low ... the changes haven�t been around that long.

Silly season question, not just decked your halls have you ?

Try switching off all the Christmas stuff, and then power cycle the router .... does that help ? Got a neighbour�s place nearby which is festooned with new lights ?

No Xmas stuff up yet, and not noticed any neighbours with the same.

How would Xmas lights cause problems by the way?

Electrical equipment, can sometimes emit signals in the same frequency range as ADSL/VDSL causing a variety of problems .... this is often referred to as REIN.

Poorly produced Christmas lights have a history of causing problems. Though in your case it sounds unlikely.

Some years back my ADSL connection became very slow every year when the council turned on the ancient festive lights strung in the trees in a park very close to my home.

I have not noticed the problem since switching to FTTC on an All In One on on my previously Exchange Only line.

Often the additional bandwidth of FTTC can mask such things.... or maybe they replaced something on the lights ?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Often the additional bandwidth of FTTC can mask such things.... or maybe they replaced something on the lights ?

Probably the former rather than the latter, as the Council is cash strapped

Another possibility is that the exchange is about 100 m away on the other side of the park and lights, so it might have been the EO to AIO move that got rid of the noise.You can guess far better than I.

My FTTC connectionis pretty impressive. HG612 stats are:

Stats recorded 13 Dec 2017 08:23:28

DSLAM/MSAN type:        	BDCM:0xa48c / v0xa48c
Modem/router firmware:  	AnnexA version - A2pv6C038m.d24j
DSL mode:               	VDSL2 Profile 17a
Status:                 	Showtime
Uptime:                 	189 days 16 hours 50 min 28 sec
Resyncs:                	0 (since 13 Dec 2017 06:03:26)
			
				Downstream	Upstream
Line attenuation (dB):  	9.6		0.0
Signal attenuation (dB):	Not available on VDSL2		
Connection speed (kbps):	79999		19999    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< !!
SNR margin (dB):        	17.2		19.5
Power (dBm):            	13.9		-7.8
Interleave depth:       	16		1
INP:                    	48.00		0
G.INP:                  	Enabled		Not enabled
Vectoring status:       	5 (VECT_UNCONFIGURED)		

RSCorr/RS (%):          	0.0027		5.5167
RSUnCorr/RS (%):        	0.0000		0.0000
ES/hour:                	0		1.70

Attainable is 120220 / 33248. I wish!

There is obviously some noise, but the connection is pretty good.

I wonder what I would get with G.FAST, not that it will be coming anytime soon for AIO cabinets.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Electrical equipment, can sometimes emit signals in the same frequency range as ADSL/VDSL causing a variety of problems .... this is often referred to as REIN.

Poorly produced Christmas lights have a history of causing problems. Though in your case it sounds unlikely.

Thanks. I'll have a peek into my neighbours window

Would interference from electrical stuff like this not cause the router to disconnect? In my case the router sits there happily thinking it's still connected.

In reply to a post by awontroba:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Often the additional bandwidth of FTTC can mask such things.... or maybe they replaced something on the lights ?

Probably the former rather than the latter, as the Council is cash strapped

Another possibility is that the exchange is about 100 m away on the other side of the park and lights, so it might have been the EO to AIO move that got rid of the noise.You can guess far better than I.

My FTTC connectionis pretty impressive. HG612 stats are:

Stats recorded 13 Dec 2017 08:23:28

DSLAM/MSAN type:        	BDCM:0xa48c / v0xa48c
Modem/router firmware:  	AnnexA version - A2pv6C038m.d24j
DSL mode:               	VDSL2 Profile 17a
Status:                 	Showtime
Uptime:                 	189 days 16 hours 50 min 28 sec
Resyncs:                	0 (since 13 Dec 2017 06:03:26)
			
				Downstream	Upstream
Line attenuation (dB):  	9.6		0.0
Signal attenuation (dB):	Not available on VDSL2		
Connection speed (kbps):	79999		19999    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< !!
SNR margin (dB):        	17.2		19.5
Power (dBm):            	13.9		-7.8
Interleave depth:       	16		1
INP:                    	48.00		0
G.INP:                  	Enabled		Not enabled
Vectoring status:       	5 (VECT_UNCONFIGURED)		

RSCorr/RS (%):          	0.0027		5.5167
RSUnCorr/RS (%):        	0.0000		0.0000
ES/hour:                	0		1.70

Attainable is 120220 / 33248. I wish!

There is obviously some noise, but the connection is pretty good.

I wonder what I would get with G.FAST, not that it will be coming anytime soon for AIO cabinets.

Do you know if you can get detailed stats like that from a Sky hub router?

It depends how close you are to the �source� of the problem.

You are around the same attenuation as my line at home, but your max attainable is higher than mine, so likely more crosstalk on mine ... all good though.

I, for one, don�t know about stats from a Sky router .... http://192.168.1.1 at a guess, with a username of sky and a password of admin is how I think you used to get into their routers ... once there, I�m unsure of how much info is visible.

Ask on the Sky part of the forum maybe ?

No more detail is available than what the posters has already posted I believe (from memory of Sky Hub)

When it goes like this try pinging an IP address to see what happens, if that is ok by pinging by name has issues then suggests something on the DNS side is awry.

One possibility is the Sky Parental Controls, so many have them switched on at the basic block malware, but if that control goes flaky it may be adding delay, so suggest logging into the Sky online account and turning the parental controls to a total off temporarily.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

No more detail is available than what the posters has already posted I believe (from memory of Sky Hub)

When it goes like this try pinging an IP address to see what happens, if that is ok by pinging by name has issues then suggests something on the DNS side is awry.

One possibility is the Sky Parental Controls, so many have them switched on at the basic block malware, but if that control goes flaky it may be adding delay, so suggest logging into the Sky online account and turning the parental controls to a total off temporarily.

Of course it's all working fine now, so pinging by name or IP address both work. I'll wait until another bad session and try the ping test.

True. The shield could have gone weird, so I'll turn that off too.

Ta.

There is a video at http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Fibre/How-to-find-your-R... which may help. I know nothing about current Sky routers, other than the Hub Q is supposed to be much better than the Hub.

Long ago I had Sky ADSL, and had an experience with them which resulted in my swearing off Sky comms for life. Throughput locally became very poor. Their help desk knew that the cause was the backhaul from the exchange, but were instructed not to reveal this, instead having customers uselessly and repetitively checking and testing their connections for the months that the problem existed.

I shifted to Be, and jumped ship for BT Business on hearing that Sky were taking over Be. Sky were the worst ISP I have ever encountered, closely followed by BT Business, who make BT Retail look like paragons of excellence.

I have had it with BT Retail and Plusnet too (for different reasons), and moving my geographically separate pair of FTTC connections to the reassuringly expensive and well reputed AAISP.

Cheap ISPs are fine when all is working, but generally dreadful when something goes wrong. Pile it high, sell it cheap, hope it works - which it will for most. For those with problems, some will scream and shout, others stick it out till contract end, and there are always more mugs joining up.

Bad experiences with NTL mean that I won't touch Virgin either. Vodafone's poor mobile phone support put me off their broadband too.

Yes, if the router won't let you change DNS, then you'll need to do it on each device.

Not sure if Sky hijack the DNS ports and reroute requests regardless of DNS server requested.

If you've set your own DNS in a PC, say, then any demand for a DNS lookup on the PC will result in a IP addy. By the time the packets get the router there's only raw IP addys & there's nowt for the Sky DNS to look up.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Yes, if the router won't let you change DNS, then you'll need to do it on each device.

Not sure if Sky hijack the DNS ports and reroute requests regardless of DNS server requested.

If you've set your own DNS in a PC, say, then any demand for a DNS lookup on the PC will result in a IP addy. By the time the packets get the router there's only raw IP addys & there's nowt for the Sky DNS to look up.

Surely Sky could still intercept the requests.
Say PC is configured to access Google DNS on 8.8.8.8:53
PC sends off DNS enquiry to 8.8.8.8:53
This gets into Sky's network.
Something in the network sees traffic for port 53, intercepts it, extracts the enquiry, satisfies it from its own DNS, and sends back the reply.

Now, if you tunneled the requests out over a VPN to something outside Sky's network, it should work. But a Google search seems to indicate problems.

So, another call to Sky and they said they'd send an engineer around as they found a "non-specific fault". The engineer appointment was not kept, and no phone call to say why or if he'd mended an external problem. Poor show!

But, I'm 99.99% certain that the problem lies within onedrive that was recently installed on a laptop (not mine). I'd pretty much narrowed it down to the laptop, and then saw the network activity as onedrive was trying to sync about 14,500 files at about 16GB.
I've now set a download/upload cap in onedrive's settings.

But the culprit must be poor traffic management within the Sky Hub router thing.

Maybe you have created a network loop in your LAN and the packet storm is overwhelming your network.

What traffic management? Most CPE have NONE.

OneDrive will be uploading multiple things at once and saturating the upload if allowed, and the side effect is that ACK packets are delayed for material you are downloading.

The effect of this is visible in our speed test http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest and click the Analysis button and you can see how latency varies when idle, downloading and uploading, the latency is measured with a small TCP packet so dependent on ACK reaching

Came across one of those the other day at work..... didn�t realise it�s affects had a proper name ..

�Network storm� I shall remember that next time and sound all informed when I tell the punter

Do you have the Sky Q Hub? In my home on the Sky routers my 2.4Ghz often becomes virtually unusable. Weirdly never had the same issue with BT routers.

Using the 5Ghz solves it, but often whilst 5Ghz is working I cannot even browse a page on 2.4Ghz.

You need to go to 192.168.0.1

Click Wireless
username: admin pw: sky

On 2.4Ghz network settings, change the Network Name (SSID) to something new.
Untick Synchronise 2.4GHz and 5GHz Settings

Press Apply.

Your 5Ghz network will now be named the old SKYXXXX SSID, your 2.4GHz will be named something else of your choosing. Stick to the 5Ghz one, how do you get on?

Note some devices may not support 5Ghz and hence not even see the network. These will need connecting to the other SSID.

In reply to a post by TheRealGrumps:

So, another call to Sky and they said they'd send an engineer around as they found a "non-specific fault". The engineer appointment was not kept, and no phone call to say why or if he'd mended an external problem. Poor show!

But, I'm 99.99% certain that the problem lies within onedrive that was recently installed on a laptop (not mine). I'd pretty much narrowed it down to the laptop, and then saw the network activity as onedrive was trying to sync about 14,500 files at about 16GB.
I've now set a download/upload cap in onedrive's settings.

But the culprit must be poor traffic management within the Sky Hub router thing.

Do you have a Sky Q Hub? These devices do manage traffic, ensuring one device cannot take over. The net result is each device does not max out the connection though, which some people moan about.

I haven't got the Sky Q Hub, just the SR102 (I think it's called that. The black box).
Maybe if I plead to Sky they'll send me one.
Does the Q allow you to max out your internet connection for just one device (if nothing else is using it)?