Poor pings

Are these supposed to have been fixed? I still get 'em every night but tonight it's so bad I can't even use Ebay. Surely whatever was causing them before must have been fixed by now

Mine are OK, which is no consolation

Last time this happened, one suggestion was to drop your PPP connection (usually "Disconnect" in the router interface somewhere), wait a few minutes and reconnect. It should put you on a different pipe...

I think that may have worked then as well. However, I consider it a one-off short-term workaround for an ongoing problem, not something I'm expected to do every evening.

In reply to a post by ThePurpleOne:

Are these supposed to have been fixed? I still get 'em every night but tonight it's so bad I can't even use Ebay. Surely whatever was causing them before must have been fixed by now

I doubt poor pings would stop you using Ebay.

I was seriously thinking coming back to Idnet, after only being away for about 6 weeks now. But seeing I left because my online gaming was being affected by the poor pings since Idnet's hardware upgrade, any hint that there may still be a problem puts me off.

They probably don't in themselves, but they're a symptom of the problem the does. Congestion, for instance, will manifest as web browsing requiring links clicked more than once as packets are dropped or time out, and congestion will also show as high pings.

One complaint is not indicative of a widespread problem it could be any number of things regarding this OP's problem. There have been few problems reported as regards por pings aver the past few weeks.

There have been few problems reported

How many of use actively monitor the line all the time, even when it works? I get raised pings every night, but I don't report them because they don't affect what I'm doing. That is, I don't try to play online games, which will be affected by pings, in the evenings. So therefore I have no reason to complain. I would suspect that most people won't complain unless something specific happens. Having to click a browser link twice now and then doesn't pop up in most peoples mind as a problem, and they think they'd be laughed at if they reported it anyway (they would). Without logging information they have nothing to say it was anything but user error in not pressing the mouse hard enough, or clicking just off-link, etc.

So, all you can say from no problems reported is that people haven't been annoyed enough to bother complaining, not that there have been no problems. Which is why I ask if these things are meant to be fixed now, 'cos they certainly aren't here.

In reply to a post by cavillas:

One complaint is not indicative of a widespread problem it could be any number of things regarding this OP's problem. There have been few problems reported as regards por pings aver the past few weeks.

True, but 3/4/5 weeks ago the situation was dire for me and probably other online gamers who were/are with Idnet. Re-checking, i've only been away from Idnet for just over 3 weeks and right up to when i left pings were still poor, from an ISP who I had held in high regard for the online gamer.
In fact I had not had any noticeable problems with Idnet until around their major hardware upgrade time.

So, whilst i would like to return to the "old" Idnet which was ideal for me, Any hint of poor pings from anyone suggests that the problem that plagued online gamers a few + weeks ago still hasn't been 100% solved.

Edited by Vorlon (Thu 05-Mar-09 10:25:38)

I've been monitoring pings 24/7 for the past couple of weeks. I've averaging 21.5ms to IDNet, on a line with interleaving enabled.

Has anyone else just lost connectivity?

Al

**Edit** Twice!

Edited by deleted (Thu 05-Mar-09 11:56:53)

What do you ping, and do you have a chart? I ping 212.69.36.3 and my last week (average 50ms, interleave) looks like this:

Week of ping

So, all you can say from no problems reported is that people haven't been annoyed enough to bother complaining, not that there have been no problems. Which is why I ask if these things are meant to be fixed now, 'cos they certainly aren't here.

I think you are wrong, a lot of IDNet customers will be gamers and they like nothing better than to get on the forums and complain if things are not going well, if the high ping issue was as widespread as some would have us believe the forums would be full of threads/posts about it.

As you know I have been a IDNet customer for nearly 4 years, I play FPS's regular and can honestly say I rarely suffer with high pings, if I did I would have left years ago.


.

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Thu 05-Mar-09 12:15:57)

I ping the name server, 212.69.40.3. I no longer have the charts, once I've sent them off I delete them from my machine.

Not here.

I am not a gamer, but the poor pings which we have been experiencing for several weeks now, especially in the evenings, are an indication that there are still some issues with IDNet's backbones and/or BT IPStream. I think as long as IDNet solely relies on BT IPStream products and backbones the problems will persist. IDNet needs to include other network providers too, to spread the risks and to lower the traffic congestions and costs.

In reply to a post by JNeuhoff:

I think as long as IDNet solely relies on BT IPStream products and backbones the problems will persist. .

If there were a lot of customers experiencing problems the forums would be full of threads/posts about it, look at the TB forums of the well known ISP's that most of us wouldn't tough with a barge pole and compare them to this one, there are a couple of unhappy customers here experiencing problems the rest of us are not having any problems, if you owned IDNet would you spend a fortune when the majority of your customers are obviously happy?


.

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Thu 05-Mar-09 15:18:38)

Hi all
as You all know I'am a gamer , at the moment I'am not suffering the dreaded ping problem right now and not for a long time as you know from the previous posts you know the games I play esp frontlines, cod5 , gta4 , etc

Ken

In reply to a post by JNeuhoff:

I am not a gamer, but the poor pings which we have been experiencing for several weeks now, especially in the evenings, are an indication that there are still some issues with IDNet's backbones and/or BT IPStream. I think as long as IDNet solely relies on BT IPStream products and backbones the problems will persist. IDNet needs to include other network providers too, to spread the risks and to lower the traffic congestions and costs.

Well I moved back to Zen and my pings returned "Normal", so at least I know it wasn't my exchange.
To be fair to Idnet, Simon had kept in contact and was interested in how my connection now was - so fair play to him.

I will say although my pings are now stable and not doing the "cyclic" high then low thing as they were up until the point I left. Although I now have solid ping stability they are not as good as Idnet's were to my fav Dutch TF2 server when Idnet was on top form.
Often I would have a better Ping than some of the dutch guys.

On average I would see Idnet at 30-45ms, now Zen is at 40-60ms to my favourite TF2 server. I'm just happy i have a steady ping which is under 100ms.

As i said to Simon, I have no doubt I'll return to Idnet as they really suited me, ie good service, reasonable allowance and excellent pings. However I don't know when that will be. If idnet can say that all has been sorted 100% and I don't have to reboot my router "mid game", then in the words of Arnie - I'll be back.

Edited by Vorlon (Thu 05-Mar-09 15:46:23)

In reply to a post by AlanIngus:

Has anyone else just lost connectivity?

I did about an hour ago. Everything is very slow this afternoon/evening. Something is wrong somewhere. Router stats are normal and I don't do ping.

Well, whatever the reason I'm seriously considering getting the MAC now. For the past several weeks, since the ping problem in fact, I've been having browser problems. Specifically, On TheTimesOnline I can be browsing and then a link won't work. Neither will any other. I found that closing Firefox and re-opening would fix the problem for a couple of links, so I suspected a problem with that. I run NoScript and thought perhpas something was iffy there (even though I disabled it for that site as a test). I later found that I could get a dead link working by repeatedly clicking it until it worked, so I put it down to something like an advert in the target page being blocked, and each click would cycle the ads until a safe one turned up.

Then I noticed that on news.bbc.co.uk I'd sometimes get the text of pages by no pictures. Or no video. Maybe they've changed something there too and my setting have fallen foul of 'em. Doesn't happen that often, but now and then.

So tonight I'm having problems with the BBC and, by changing only the default gateway on my NIC, I switch to my Enta connection. Et voila - no problems whatever. I go off to TheTimesOnline and spend some time following links waiting for one to fail. None do.

Enta in a week

To recap:
IDNet in a week

Edited by deleted (Thu 05-Mar-09 20:36:24)

In reply to a post by ThePurpleOne:

Well, whatever the reason I'm seriously considering getting the MAC now.

Oh well more bandwidth for the rest of us, bye.

Have you contacted support recently to express you further concerns?

Hi ThePurpleOne

If you could please contact us then we can check your line for you. Out of interest, when you change your default gateway, do you also change nameservers?

Regards
Simon

The TheTimesOnline is indeed quite slow, and, I might add, not standard compliant (45 Errors, 5 warning(s) in the W3 validator), just one of many poorly crafted websites.

TimesOnline pages are incredibly fast here using very tight browser settings, but that means losing some content and javascript links don't work..

TimesOnline UK Home page has 32 references to doubleclick, so there's plenty to block LOL

pings fine here, btw

Not yet, because I wasn't sure if the previous problems were suppose to be fixed. Hence why I posted here to find out.

DNS servers are in-house, so there is no change to those when the gateway changes - the only effect is to use one router or the other.

I've just put a sniffer on my connection and notice that I'm getting TCP retransmissions, and out-of-order warnings. The Times page seems to be particularly prone to giving these, possibly because there's so much stuff on there, but as I type now I can see they turning up. Switching to the Enta link clears these completely.

What information do you require when I contact you? I've previously spent some time compiling information (your ref CID6271) but the situation remained unresolved - it kind of cleared itself up mid-testing around the point where a BT visit was necessary. My router is still getting stupidly high numbers of uncorrected blocks, and similarly high numbers of corrected blocks. However, at this moment the pings are flat, there are no accumulating errors in the router, but I still get periodic retransmissions.

Hi,
Not sure if this will be helpful, but I switched from a Netgear wired router to an SMC wireless one and found that I was getting timeouts on things like Google maps etc. Where Google causes IE to send multiple requests but only a small number were coming back. Turns out it was the firewall settings on my SMC router, they were too tight and causing the transmissions to fail. I've now relaxed the settings and I get all the replies back.

the only effect is to use one router or the other.

Is it the same make/model/revision router in each case?

Not sure how relevant this is, but when I ran a Windows machine I couldn't access the TimesOnLine site at all until I changed my firewall... but the browser gave the error message, not the firewall.

I was running Win98 with Comodo. Changed it for BlackIce and it was fine.

That's a good point - it's a Vigor 2600 and isn't actually meant to be there. The previous router, a brand new Edimax type, was switched out with this to eliminate the router during previous fault finding, and as that problem mysteriously went away I left the Vigor in situ. Hmmm.. that sounds dodgy but actually the routers were switched several times without effect, so the original wasn't broken - just luck that the Vigor was in place when it cleared up I'll try swapping back today.

Well, good news and bad news...

Replaced the Vigor with the Dynamode and the problem with TheTimes cleared up. Ah-ha! Obviously the Vigor is at fault...

Actually, no. This is the same problem I had last year with bad connections in the evenings. The Dynamode will drop the link several times an hour at really bad times (like 3am this morning) and every couple of hours at other times. The Vigor is really very keen not to drop the link, so instead holds onto it and just racks up the ATM error count instead. At times when the Dynamode would drop the connection the Vigor shows an uncorrected error rate of more than 90K/min but holds the line up.

So, instead of having links not work on TheTimesOnline I get no Internet access at all.

Time for another router probably.

If someone would suggest a router guaranteed to work I would put it on. Don't need any fancy routing stuff, or any routing at all - a plain ADSL modem would be sufficient. However, I've tried Billion, Edimax, Dynamode, Vigor, Zoom, Zyxel...

Netgear DG834GT or Speedtouch 585.

I've been using USRobotics routers now on 9016, very stable and consistant connection.

Or 2-Wire 2700.

Thanks for the suggestion!

But... I wonder how confident you are that it would actually fix my problem. Let's say I go out and buy one of those tomorrow, and then consider the following potential scenarios:

1/ It works great and fixes my problem: I send you a cheque for £50 to show my appreciation.

or

2/ It doesn't fix my problem: You buy the router off me at cost (and presumably flog it on Ebay or something).

If you were really confident you might offer to sell me such a router, buying from your cheapest box shifter and selling to me at RRP, maybe even with a little markup on top. Instead of making a very generous £50 you could walk away with, say, £60 or £70...

So, how about it?

Thanks.

I'm willing to offer you the same terms as I offered batboy, if you feel that product is good enough.

Edited by deleted (Tue 10-Mar-09 02:40:47)

I have a spare one of each, which I would lend you if you were a neighbour.

Ok So it sounds like the Dynamode isn't holding your line.
With the Vigor (which does) are you able to tweak any of the routers' firewall settings ?