Overnight dops are getting regular with Zen, with graphs confirming a Zen evening congestion, but I feel with silly high speeds being offerd these days and the low price we were bound to end squeezed. Zen now a cheap and barely cheerful supplier now.
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

I think Zen are just becoming like PlusNet, an exercise in maximising every last bit of bandwidth for profit which then requires loads of micromanaging to balance things out all the time. They've been heading this way for a long time and is why I'd never get broadband from Zen (or PlusNet).

I'm happy to pay extra for something more business like and so I joined IDNet, but as IDNet use Zen backhaul or may even just white label their product completely, I'm not sure of the arrangement, and Zen deal with us all the same way it seems, the weakest link is Zen, and the service I'm getting is no better than it would be just buying a Zen product for less money.

I have raised these issues with IDNet support who basically say that is how it is and nothing they can do.

I had a brief PPP drop last night, it'll be interesting to see if it cures the congestion on an FTTC line...

I get these drops occasionally, but never specifically associated them with Zen despite being aware of Zen customers' problems with varying latency (mine stays at around 7-8mSec). It'll be nice to know the cause even if there's damn all I can do about it

Yes! I thought it was just me so I'm glad to see others reporting the same symptoms.

My Broadband Ping

In reply to a post by professor973:

Our graphs seem to match exactly!

Matches mine too. PPP drop was at the same time as yours, but lasted less than a minute.

Didn't notice any performance loss, right through the middle of the bad bit I was streaming a 4K movie with not a trace of buffering...

Which makes IDnet nothing special either, especially for the price.

In reply to a post by E300:

[SNIP] ...... as IDNet use Zen backhaul or may even just white label their product completely, I'm not sure of the arrangement....., [ SNIP]

My understanding has always been that iDNet use, BT/OR, TalkTalk Business, and Zen. At one time you could ask to be on a particular one if the one you were on was not performing satisfactorily. No idea whether that's still true. I would be surprised if they were simply a Zen reseller.

Edited by Tacitus (Wed 15-Sep-21 12:51:32)

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

My understanding has always been that iDNet use, BT/OR, TalkTalk Business, and Zen. At one time you could ask to be on a particular one if the one you were on was not performing satisfactorily. No idea whether that's still true. I would be surprised if they were simply a Zen reseller.

When I ordered I did request I wanted to avoid Zen, but was assured by a phone call that it was only backhaul and I wouldn't have an issue and there didn't seem to be a choice. I was hoping a backhaul wholesale service via Zen wouldn't behave in the same way Zen's own full ISP offerings do, but seemingly we are all lumped into the same pipes, how far that integration goes I don't know, but as we see the exact same drops, variable routing on each PPP session (good or bad) and similar BQM charts as Zen's own customers, we seem to be the same thing whether via iDNet or Zen.

Support have not offered to swap me to any other backhaul, so I presume they either can't on FTTP or its too expensive to and they'd rather lose the customer.

Currently things seem back to more normal since I was unceremoniously dumped off my connection (again) and pushed to another route/gateway.

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

Edited by E300 (Wed 15-Sep-21 13:27:26)

In reply to a post by professor973:

Which makes IDnet nothing special either, especially for the price.

I left O2 LLU to get FTTC, and chose IDNet (when they only had BTW connections) despite the price. After my minimum 18 months I decided the higher price didn't seem to add value, having had and seen others have support problems with them. Including rude replies to them from the owner.

I ended up with Plusnet after multiple BT sales staff refused to believe I didn't need an engineer installation visit to install a modem and fit a filtered faceplate. (Their online system was saying the same which is why I rang them).

I told them time and time again I already had those as I had already had FTTC. They insisted I couldn't have, as it was "only from BT".

ROFL.

The Plusnet connection was near-perfect, just as good for reliability and throughput stability, until they started moving to "new and better" gateway kit. The new stuff was terrible, and many of us ended up gateway hunting after the system had load-balanced us to one of the new ones. Which idiotically didn't support IPv6, though the old ones did.

(I wonder if that's why they still don't offer IPv6. I was on their IPv6 trial, which now I know much more about that topic was a complete waste of time. They allocated a 128/127!)

In reply to a post by pluralist:

In reply to a post by professor973:

(I wonder if that's why they still don't offer IPv6. I was on their IPv6 trial, which now I know much more about that topic was a complete waste of time. They allocated a 128/127!)

Am I right in thinking that's a single address!? No wonder their IPv6 trial failed, that will break everything that assumes it will get a /64 (you can't do SLAAC without that).