Help interpreting my BQM

Hi, we have been putting up with random dropouts throughout the day since joining NowTV broadband - no problems before with Plusnet. I called customer services but was told the line is good & they cannot do anything.

I set up a BQM & was hoping someone could help decipher if it's showing anything untoward ?

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

Thanks for any help

In reply to a post by mckenzie126:

Hi, we have been putting up with random dropouts throughout the day since joining NowTV broadband - no problems before with Plusnet. I called customer services but was told the line is good & they cannot do anything.

I set up a BQM & was hoping someone could help decipher if it's showing anything untoward ?

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

Thanks for any help

Unless you're hammering the line, that is very much *not* normal.
(1) You have 100% paxcketloss for hours - oddly it seems to have a pattern where it very slightly improves every couple of hours.
(2) You are seeing very high maximum latency - this can happen if you're hammering the line heavily.

Are you sure that's your IP and not dynamic and pinging something else?

Have you tried an 'mtr'? this may show you how the latency varies to different destinations.

Going to a website like https://ip4.me/ will tell you what public IP address you're being mapped to - check this matches what you've configured for BQM.

If you were behind a CGN then that would be the address of the CGN box, not the address of your own router. However, I didn't think NowTV were using CGN.

I am assuming that you're BQM'ing the IPv4 address? Since they are part of Sky, NowTV might be doling out IPv6 addresses too. There should be no issue with BQM'ing that, I'm just interested.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Going to a website like https://ip4.me/ will tell you what public IP address you're being mapped to - check this matches what you've configured for BQM.

If you were behind a CGN then that would be the address of the CGN box, not the address of your own router. However, I didn't think NowTV were using CGN.

I am assuming that you're BQM'ing the IPv4 address? Since they are part of Sky, NowTV might be doling out IPv6 addresses too. There should be no issue with BQM'ing that, I'm just interested.

we have a similar page (thinkbroadband.com/ip) and we take the IP by default I think when you add a sensor - We will ping an IPv4 address if you supply an IPv4 address.
Best way to test would be for you to unplug your router when you're seeing non-red for 2 mins.. and then back in.. if you see a 1-2 pixel wide red streak then it's likely to be correct IP. It may take another couple of minutes to update the graph so wait before you check.

seb

Sorry Im just learning how to do all this, I'm prob doing it wrong.

When I set up the BQM I just used the IP that was auto detected already & left it as that. It was/is an IPv6 address. The 100% red on the graph corresponds to when my computer is off.

I've just checked my IP address with https://www.thinkbroadband.com/tools/what-is-my-ip
& it is an IPv6 address but it is not the same as what is in the BQM. So yes looks like I am doing something wrong. Ive just set up an additional BQM to monitor the new IP.

Thanks

Because you have a Sky/Now TV router you can make that respond rather than your PC, you can tweak the IP address like below, just replace 'xxx' with what you have. The 'xxx' may represent 3 or 4 characters between the colons as leading zeros are not required.

2a02:xxx:xxx:xxx::1

In reply to a post by mckenzie126:

Sorry Im just learning how to do all this, I'm prob doing it wrong.

When I set up the BQM I just used the IP that was auto detected already & left it as that. It was/is an IPv6 address. The 100% red on the graph corresponds to when my computer is off.

I've just checked my IP address with https://www.thinkbroadband.com/tools/what-is-my-ip
& it is an IPv6 address but it is not the same as what is in the BQM. So yes looks like I am doing something wrong. Ive just set up an additional BQM to monitor the new IP.

Thanks

I would want to check your router as well as computer to rule that out. As per dect's reply try to set up the router and see what that shows.
v6 routing will be independent of v4 so any troubleshooting needs to be v6. If you know your v4 address (and it's on your router) this may be useful to compare to track down the problem.

Edit: I've checked based on your forum IP address (where you're posting from) based on Dect's suggestion and the result looks much more normal. I do see some very high latency packets so the max might still be high but it's a lot less variable than your computer's IP. This may not be as visible on the BQM graph as you'd need to look at the average variations. Set that ip and see what it shows on BQM over a few hours.

Is your computer on wi-fi by any chance? This might explain the results too.

seb

Edited by seb (Wed 17-May-23 12:44:06)

In reply to a post by dect:

Because you have a Sky/Now TV router you can make that respond rather than your PC, you can tweak the IP address like below, just replace 'xxx' with what you have. The 'xxx' may represent 3 or 4 characters between the colons as leading zeros are not required.

2a02:xxx:xxx:xxx::1

I have two set up, one uses:

2a00:xxx:xxx:xxx::

and the other:

2a00:xxx:xxx:xxx::1

the second having the final 1 added although both are almost identical.


edit to add:

I wrote this over an hour ago, just after your original, then got distracted

If you can get into the router's web admin page and see what IP address it has for its WAN interface, that's the safest one to go for.

If both of them show the same latency, they're probably both on the router (e.g. WAN and LAN addresses).

However, xxxx:: and xxxx::1 *might* be the Sky side of the link and your router respectively. There are lots of different ways this might be configured and I've not see a NowTV connection in action.

In this case :: ending IP is stable too. both ::0 and ::1 are getting consistent ping times.

seb

In reply to a post by candlerb:

If you can get into the router's web admin page and see what IP address it has for its WAN interface, that's the safest one to go for.

If both of them show the same latency, they're probably both on the router (e.g. WAN and LAN addresses).

However, xxxx:: and xxxx::1 *might* be the Sky side of the link and your router respectively. There are lots of different ways this might be configured and I've not see a NowTV connection in action.

Yeah this needs checking. I don't know the Sky setup/

seb

In reply to a post by candlerb:

If you can get into the router's web admin page and see what IP address it has for its WAN interface, that's the safest one to go for.

If both of them show the same latency, they're probably both on the router (e.g. WAN and LAN addresses).

However, xxxx:: and xxxx::1 *might* be the Sky side of the link and your router respectively. There are lots of different ways this might be configured and I've not see a NowTV connection in action.

I was only talking about the Sky/NowTV router as they don't provide a full IPv6 address for the router other than the ::1 as a loopback address which I made reference too.

In reply to a post by dect:

Because you have a Sky/Now TV router you can make that respond rather than your PC, you can tweak the IP address like below, just replace 'xxx' with what you have. The 'xxx' may represent 3 or 4 characters between the colons as leading zeros are not required.

2a02:xxx:xxx:xxx::1

Thanks, but sorry not sure what you mean by what I have. I have my IP from here https://www.thinkbroadband.com/tools/what-is-my-ip
which is
2a02:x:x:x:x:x:x:85a5
Do I just add ::1 on the end ?

Edited by seb (Thu 18-May-23 14:26:52)

Yes laptop is on wireless. I have logged in to the router & have been through all the menus. The only sections that appear to have relevant info I have taken screen shots of & are here:
[links removed]

Can I use any of these addresses so as to monitor the router & not my laptop ?

Thanks for all the help

Edited by seb (Thu 18-May-23 14:28:12)

Everything up to 2800 then add ::1 immediately after it

Please delete your post ASAP as its really not good posting your IP address.

In reply to a post by dect:

]I was only talking about the Sky/NowTV router as they don't provide a full IPv6 address for the router other than the ::1 as a loopback address which I made reference too.

They may well not provide a numbered WAN address, but at very least the router must have a LAN-side IPv6 address.

If you go to any of the client devices, and ask it what its default gateway on IPv6 is, that may give you an address on the router you can use. I think it's something like "route print -6" under Windows.

They could be announcing a link-local gateway address though (fe80::xxxxx) in which case that's no good.

If xxxx::1 works though, then that's great. It will be easy for OP to test: they can switch off their client devices and still see results on the BQM.

I removed the full IP from your post as it's generally advisable not to disclose those publicly.

Hi,

I've removed those links as they have your IPv6 address on them.
The IPv6 Loopback on one and the IPv6 Global on the other is the same - that should be the IP address of your router.
That is the number that ends in "::1"

I can ping that and it's quite stable..
That's the IP you should put into BQM.

The other thing I would say is your posting IP (i.e. on the forums) has changed at least once so it's likely your router is assigning a different v6 address from time to time for where you're posting from (or you're using different devices). This is why monitoring the computer isn't helpful.

There's what your router ping looks like:

64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x::1: icmp_seq=114 ttl=58 time=11.2 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x::1: icmp_seq=115 ttl=58 time=10.4 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x::1: icmp_seq=116 ttl=58 time=10.7 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x::1: icmp_seq=117 ttl=58 time=10.8 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x::1: icmp_seq=118 ttl=58 time=10.9 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x::1: icmp_seq=119 ttl=58 time=10.8 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x::1: icmp_seq=120 ttl=58 time=10.5 ms

compare that to your computer on latest IP:

64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x:x:x:x:x: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=39.8 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x:x:x:x:x: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=49.7 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x:x:x:x:x: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=71.7 ms
64 bytes from 2a02:x:x:x:x:x:x:x: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=92.7 ms

That is almost certainly wi-fi causing that.

seb

Edited by seb (Thu 18-May-23 20:27:15)

Whoops sorry about that, live & learn I suppose.

Thanks for all the help here & for correcting my mistakes. I've set up a new monitor with ::1 at the end & it seems to be working. If it's ok ill post the graph here in a few days as I'm still a bit unsure as to how to fully interpret it.
Thanks

In reply to a post by mckenzie126:

Whoops sorry about that, live & learn I suppose.

Thanks for all the help here & for correcting my mistakes. I've set up a new monitor with ::1 at the end & it seems to be working. If it's ok ill post the graph here in a few days as I'm still a bit unsure as to how to fully interpret it.
Thanks

Do let us know. You should get an idea after a few hours. The graph shows only 24 hours anyway.. so post it in the morning

In reply to a post by seb:

In reply to a post by mckenzie126:

Whoops sorry about that, live & learn I suppose.

Thanks for all the help here & for correcting my mistakes. I've set up a new monitor with ::1 at the end & it seems to be working. If it's ok ill post the graph here in a few days as I'm still a bit unsure as to how to fully interpret it.
Thanks

Do let us know. You should get an idea after a few hours. The graph shows only 24 hours anyway.. so post it in the morning

Thanks. Have been away but here is the graph from today, as I said I'm still not sure how to interpret it, any help would be great ?
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

In reply to a post by mckenzie126:

In reply to a post by seb:

In reply to a post by mckenzie126:

Whoops sorry about that, live & learn I suppose.

Thanks for all the help here & for correcting my mistakes. I've set up a new monitor with ::1 at the end & it seems to be working. If it's ok ill post the graph here in a few days as I'm still a bit unsure as to how to fully interpret it.
Thanks

Do let us know. You should get an idea after a few hours. The graph shows only 24 hours anyway.. so post it in the morning

Thanks. Have been away but here is the graph from today, as I said I'm still not sure how to interpret it, any help would be great ?
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

On the basis of the graph you shared:
Your line is absolutely fine in the middle of the night, but during the day it seems to have very high jitter - i.e. in every 100 second window, a few packets seem to take a very long time to come back.. (the yellow spikiness in max latency). The average is blue and isn't too bad which shows it's a few packets (5-10% maybe?) that are having issues.

This could be a congested line, backhaul.. or so,ething else. Unless you're flatlining (using all the capacity) your broadband connection then I would say it's not normal. If you are hammering the connection from 10:45 to 00:45 or so, then it would explain this.

However when I look at the history (for everyone else's benefit this is an IPv6 address ending ::1; others won't see this), the graph is not consistently showing the above. Your weekend was completely clear/normal.. Last week you had the same pattern most of the time.

If you're downloading heavily then it may be normal. If not, you need to speak to your provider.

seb

It could be a download that the OP isn't aware of. Maybe a device on the network is doing a file synchronisation of some kind and so all the time the device is on it is hammering the connection in the background without the OP realising it is doing it? Worth checking if the times coincide with a specific device being on.

In reply to a post by ian72:

It could be a download that the OP isn't aware of. Maybe a device on the network is doing a file synchronisation of some kind and so all the time the device is on it is hammering the connection in the background without the OP realising it is doing it? Worth checking if the times coincide with a specific device being on.

Yeah I did ponder that.. albeit why doesn't it do anything on weekends?

Could be a work machine? We have some devices that seem to spend most of the day syncing OneDrive due to an issue with the sync setup getting in a twist.

Thanks for such an in depth explanation. So all the yellow spikes are not normal ?

There are two laptops here that get used, most of the time at the same time. When the graphs are blank this coincides with nobody using a laptop - ie when we are not here or in bed. Last weekend we were not here.

There is pretty much no downloading happening. One laptop is used for streaming, amazon etc. & the other is just used for occasional web browsing.

Assuming the laptops are both Windows then fire up task manager and monitor the network usage to be certain that nothing is happening in the background. Do the bad periods on the monitoring coincide with when one or both of the laptops are turned on? If you turned them both off for an hour (if you can) then does that stop the spikes? If it does then try just turning one back on and see if the spikes come back, then try the other.

EDIT: The alternative is that maybe the provider has major congestion in your local area. Be interesting if any of your neighbours are with the same provider and could use a BQM to see if they get the same issue.

Edited by ian72 (Wed 28-Jun-23 12:58:32)

In reply to a post by ian72:

Assuming the laptops are both Windows then fire up task manager and monitor the network usage to be certain that nothing is happening in the background. Do the bad periods on the monitoring coincide with when one or both of the laptops are turned on? If you turned them both off for an hour (if you can) then does that stop the spikes? If it does then try just turning one back on and see if the spikes come back, then try the other.

EDIT: The alternative is that maybe the provider has major congestion in your local area. Be interesting if any of your neighbours are with the same provider and could use a BQM to see if they get the same issue.

Both laptops are Macbooks but I've checked in activity monitor > network & I cant see anything running that shouldn't be in either.
Yes the bad periods on the monitoring coincide with when one or both laptops are on. Turning them both off does stop the spikes.

Here is the graph from today, from 1pm until 6pm only one laptop was on & after 6 both were on:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

I don't really know our neighbours quite well enough to ask them about this am afraid.

Can I gather from what's been discussed & results so far that it does look like there is an issue with our provider?

Thanks

As it only occurs when your laptops are turned on then it suggests it isn't the providers network causing the issue. Can you test to find out if it is a specific laptop causing the issue - have just one connected and see if the spikes occur then try the other laptop. This will show whether a specific device coincides with the issue or if it is either device. If it is a specific device then it would suggest something that laptop is doing. If it is either then I would say something weird happening in the router when it has a device connected. Have you got the laptops connected via wired or wireless?

Ah! Ok, makes sense.

They are both wireless.

The last graph I posted did just have one on for about 5 hours, from 1-6pm. You can see on that graph that the spikes were less frequent & not as high when just one was on, then when both were on again after 6pm the spikes were higher & more frequent. Are you able to see it ? Im still not entirely sure how to interpret the frequency & height of the spikes though.

I should probably try again but with the other laptop turned off this time & see what happens.

Thanks for taking the time

What speed is your connection and what are you streaming (resolution, quality etc)?

In reply to a post by smouty:

What speed is your connection and what are you streaming (resolution, quality etc)?

Speed test when all is well shows 18Mbps, we just have a bog standard basic connection. Streaming is usually just basic 720p but were not constantly streaming.

The problem is random/intermittent throughout the day/evening. Roughly 80% of the time it's fine, but 20% of the time there is no internet at all. Some days are much better than others, some much worse. When it goes bad the wireless connection is always good but no internet. If I manage to run a speed test during a bad time I get about 0.5Mbps.

2 laptops here, both Macbook pro's. 1 is old - 2012, other is a bit newer - 2015. Have checked network activity monitor on both & nothing is running that shouldn’t be as far as I’m aware.
Worth mentioning that sometimes the problem does seem to be worse on the older mac. ie sometimes it has no internet but the other is ok. Not always the case though.

Internet was always fine here before we moved provider over to nowTV/sky. As soon as we moved the problems started, nothing else changed apart from provider & new router.

I spoke to nowTV who said they checked the connection & everything looks fine so they cant do anything to help.

Thanks for all the help here so far

Edited by mckenzie126 (Mon 03-Jul-23 11:59:12)

18 mbit is easily used or is it actual 18Mb/s?
Are you Macs using iCloud at all and backing up/syncing all your photos etc in the background?
They will use whatever is available bandwidth wise..

It would be worth seeing if one Mac could be connected with an Ethernet cable to emliminate Wi-Fi as an issue.
ISP provided routers are generally rubbish.

Edited by smouty (Mon 03-Jul-23 13:44:31)

1. Run the laptops via a cabled/wired Ethernet connection back to the router. Switch off WiFI completely and retest/monitor over a decent period of time.

2. Should your still experience the dropouts, then it’s the actual line and/or router. If not then likely it’s a WiFi issue (which could still be the router).

Edited by Pheasant (Mon 03-Jul-23 15:41:30)

It's megabits. No none of them are syncing to icloud.

Yes will try the older laptop with an ethernet cable, the newer one doesn't have an ethernet port.

This week has been really bad, there is a lot of red on the graph, even at night when laptops are off
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

If I find that the ethernet connected laptop is still bad is there any advice anywhere on how to deal with the provider ? It seems all they do is carry out a line check & if all looks ok then that is the end of conversation.

If the line check their end looks ok does this 100% mean there is nothing they can do ?

It's all quite a coincidence that this started happening as soon as we moved over to them.

Thanks & apologies that this thread is going on so long !

In reply to a post by mckenzie126:

This week has been really bad, there is a lot of red on the graph, even at night when laptops are off
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

If I find that the ethernet connected laptop is still bad is there any advice anywhere on how to deal with the provider ? It seems all they do is carry out a line check & if all looks ok then that is the end of conversation.
If the line check their end looks ok does this 100% mean there is nothing they can do ?
It's all quite a coincidence that this started happening as soon as we moved over to them.

the red shows paxcket loss.. when it reaches the bottom it means you have 100% loss, i.e. no connectivity.. this is really indicative of a problem rather than using the broadband a lot.. yellow spiking can be from use.. red would have to be very extreme, when we're talking the scale you see - a little bit of red can be a small problem like router bug or something.. a lot of red which comes and gows without a pattern suggests something going on on the network.

Your provider may try to fob you off but I don't think this is normal if the BQM graph matches your experience with other sites .. never rely on just one bit (e.g. BQM) to show a problem.. this is very useful lto illustrate the problem in a way you can share though.

The only thing I'd suggest you check is - can you get your IPv4 address (thinkbroadband.com/ip) and set up a BQM to that - see if the pattern matches. I don't know if NowTV have CGNAT which would stop this from working but it would be good to verify if the issue is IPv6 only or affecting everything. You had one set up in May as "NowTV Broadband 5" on your account with IPv4.. then it wen to v6.

The other thing you could try is disabling IPv6 on the router and see if you have the same problems on your system.

IPv6 isn't the cause but its routing is different from IPv4 so one problem may not appear on the other side.

One final thing - it appears you had a resync of some kind at 02:00 exactly .. your minimum latency doubled from 10ms to 20ms or so.. at the same time there was heavy packet loss.. this indicates to me the router did something at that time..

I just checked your IPv6 address from another system to rule out the BQM tools:

299 packets transmitted, 299 received, 0% packet loss, time 59825ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 18.103/20.745/137.896/10.090 ms

This shows no loss (red) but it shows the yellow spike (137ms)..


seb