Very strange BQM today

Massive spikes in latency since about 08:30 this morning. Anyone else seeing similar?

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

Not quite as bad, but similar:

My Broadband Ping

Not seeing this (CityFibre):

https://i.imgur.com/wvGeBFI.png

The IDNet response to my e-mail asking what was going on:

"I have looked at the service for that period and can see the line was being heavily saturated which would cause the latency you experienced.
"This may be caused by you being connected to a gateway in Manchester. I would advise rebooting your router so you connect to a more local one."

Two short disconnects at about 02:00 and 04:30 this morning and the graph is looking a lot more sensible but I have no idea whether that was Zen or IDNet.

All in all, less than helpful with no indication the IDNet are willing to take ownership of the problem or review their backhaul agreement with Zen.

Edited by GonePostal (Wed 26-Feb-25 09:37:09)

I was with IDNet a few years ago and experienced the same issues due to Zens backhaul. Often rooted up to Manchester. At that time and I'm guessing its the same now, IDNet only have connectivity in London, so going up to Manchester just means all traffic then diverts back down to connect to IDNets gateway in London. Latency was over double, and there was more congestion. So I had to drop the connection several times to finally get on a direct route and it was a much better service. The snag was every couple of weeks the connection would drop overnight and come back up via Manchester, presumably a deliberate rebalancing by Zen of their network as I suspect a lot of people kept playing the same trick.

I hadn't had to play these sorts of hunt the best gateway games since PlusNet and ADSL years before. I complained, pointing out they boast the lowest latency service, but that wasn't the case if they kept routing me via Manchester, where in my case it was actually the worst latency I'd ever had. They said they knew it happened but nothing they can do, and weren't concerned in the slightest, so I left them.

Edited by E300 (Wed 26-Feb-25 11:09:29)

Mostly the same here- the difference being that I don't do anything that's latency-sensitive so no real reason for me to complain or incentive to change ISP. But it's hardly a point in their favour.

Had an odd one last night: My Broadband Ping

Connection dropped briefly at 3am, came back up with a latency of ~20mSec rather than the usual ~8mSec. Nothing unusual there; usually it will stay that way for a few days to weeks when a repetition will put it back where it belongs. But only a ~15 minute delay this time, with a longer drop (a few minutes maybe). Manual intervention? Doesn't sound likely, but not impossible


eta- FTTC btw, Didcot exchange in south Oxfordshire

Edited by billford (Thu 27-Feb-25 10:14:20)

Have seen the same thing since Tuesday:
IDNet 25/02/2025

The interesting thing is that this line is a backup failover for my FTTH connection, so there is basically zero traffic travelling over it (300MB so far this month, so certainly not caused by intensive usage.

All fine here up north!

In reply to a post by beefcakechipz:

All fine here up north!

How does North Northumberland relate to "up north"?

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

"I have looked at the service for that period and can see the line was being heavily saturated which would cause the latency you experienced.
"This may be caused by you being connected to a gateway in Manchester. I would advise rebooting your router so you connect to a more local one."
Two short disconnects at about 02:00 and 04:30 this morning and the graph is looking a lot more sensible but I have no idea whether that was Zen or IDNet.
All in all, less than helpful with no indication the IDNet are willing to take ownership of the problem or review their backhaul agreement with Zen.

To be fair they gave a reasonable explanation above. I've struggled to get anything useful from network operators who we pay a lot more money to (not broadband). NTT in particular is being really painful with their inability to agree connectivity with other networks causing weird things like routing from one rack in same building going via another country (US being worst example) to another.

Can't comment on the specifics but we do hope to aggregate BQM data soon for more visibility

In reply to a post by seb:

. . . .To be fair they gave a reasonable explanation above. . . .

Maybe it's a reasonable explanation but it is neither taking ownership of the problem nor indicating that they are willing to chase up their supplier to try and resolve it. I have made the same comments to IDNet in response to their e-mail.

There have been a number of issues reported here and on other online outlets over the last few months which seem to point to the IDNet mindset as not being aligned with their domestic customers. I am only still with them because we are waiting for a viable fibre offering in our village. I would prefer a single pain barrier of going to VoIP and FTTP at the same time if possible rather than two separate disruptions.

Edited by GonePostal (Tue 11-Mar-25 14:54:42)