Gigaclear - packet loss in the evenings

Have been experiencing packet loss for months now on my Gigaclear line - ranging from 5% to 30% loss, usually from about 8pm til midnight. I've run a BQM and traceroutes from my neighbour's connection as well and they have exactly the same issues so it's not just an issue with my line.

Has anybody been able to get in contact with anyone competent at Gigaclear? I've rung their support ine multiple times and sent over traceroutes and other information that could be helpful, only to have to wait 2 or 3 weeks for a standard reply of "there is no fault, please run speedtest when wired", not even looking at my replies.

Phoning them takes about half an hour for someone to pick up before they baulk at my messages and tell me that the "network team" is looking into it. I'm not sure if there's anywhere I can speak to before I end up cancelling the service and going back to my slow (but reliable) BT line!

Can you share links to BQM's and any other test results so others with Gigaclear can compare with theirs, also what part of the UK are you in? Also can you confirm all tests are via a wired connection?

Hi there,

I work within the Systems team within Gigaclear. Can you PM me your customer details & i'll send it up the chain to someone in customer ops or NOC.

Thanks,

Alex

Mine's the same, as seen below:

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

I'm in Silverstone in Northamptonshire and it appears to have gotten this way since 17th September.

I've not bothered contacting support as like you experience, they don't give any. Plus I don't have any of the Linksys nodes anymore and I know they'll ask for me to connect one, for them to do any diagnostics if it ever got that far.

Paul

I'm in Silverstone too, I'm running BQMs against 5 different people's connections and getting the exact same pattern you're getting on your graph:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

I've got a case going now with the "executive support team" but the networking people are still denying the problem after almost a month - It's been too long and I've given up, getting a BT line installed next week so I can play games in the evening again!

If they can't get it fixed in the next 2 weeks I'm going to ask them to cancel the connection and hopefully they'll let me out without paying a charge.

Same here. I'm in Deanshanger, Northamptonshire. Been like it since least the 22nd of September, possibly earlier. I've been tracking packet loss on my connection for over a week. The first sign of trouble is late afternoon, around 4pm, but it increases significantly around 7pm, usually peaking a bit after 9pm at around 30% loss. The packet loss is only on the downstream side. I, too, have had little success getting Net Ops to accept that there's a problem (despite sharing a lot of data with them), and also now have an exec complaint in flight. They mentioned something about a problematic link between two cabinets that was causing loss, but it's not clear yet whether that has anything to do with my issue.

I've also been running tests against a handful of other Gigaclear customers whose IPs are in the same subnet as mine. A number of them show the same packet loss pattern, although a number of them don't show any loss at all. I've no idea where they are. I do know that my nextdoor neighbour (also a Gigaclear customer) is having the same problem as me though.

Just sharing a message I've recieved from the Executive Support Team:
"As of yesterday (02/10/23), our Network Operations Team have created a parent case for all affected customers such as yourself as they are currently investigating the ongoing issue further as there may be a fault between two cabinets which is causing the issues you are unfortunately experiencing.

Our Direct Labour Team have been made aware of this new parent case by our Network Team as they may need to schedule a service appointment in order for some engineers to physically attend your cabinet to investigate further and address any faults identified.

I am hoping that we will have further updates from our Network Team and Direct Labour Team by Friday (06/10/23) at the latest."

I'll share any updates I get regarding this here.

I am in Hanslope, Bucks and have been getting exactly the same for the past few weeks. This is also happening in neighbouring villages of Hartwell and Castlethorpe. I have been given the same response, to do lots of testing hard wired, when the Linksys node app proves it is not an intenal problem.

I am paying for 500mbps and getting slowdowns to around 15mpbs in the evening.

Is there a way this can be rectified because I am sure they have enough people in my area complaining about this to them already.

Hi Alex

Any way you can progress my problem too please? Thanks

I recommend making a complaint and seeing if you can try and get it raised to the executive team: https://gigaclear.com/customer-complaints-code

Im in Hanslope so not far from you. I wonder if it's all linked to the same peoblem?

Hartwell - Northamptonshire is getting the same. I am currently down to 10Mbps from 500! On my old broadband I could easily watch 4K content in rush hours, Gigaclear defeats the purpose. I just started to log the speeds, but his is how last 24 hours look like link
[image]https://nextcloud.centrumdowodzenia.co.uk/apps/shari...[/image]

What software did you use to log that please?

Interestingly my speed seems fine (or at least not as bad as that), it's just the loss that kills it: https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/d/587159157

As far as I can see, my speeds are unaffected too. At least using a speed test. I do get weird issues from time to time, that I'd put down to a drop in bandwidth. Like pixelating on demand content and slow web page loading and/ or searches.

Whether it's related or not, recently Teams calls have been dire and on a solid 400Mb/s down/ 460Mb/s up line, with 6ms pings to the well known sites, that's just not what you'd expect.

I PM'd the chap above, who works for Gigaclear but, no response yet. I'll raise a complaint with then now too.

Paul

Edited by KryptonKid (Tue 03-Oct-23 23:08:28)

He got in touch with me and I presume pushed it up the chain - if you can't get anywhere with the CS team ask for a complaint to be raised, the guy above works in their development team if I recall so all he can do is pass messages along, although I appreciate his willingness to help (seems lacking at GC!)

I'm about 2 miles from you and suffering the same issue with GigaClear. No packet loss till around 16:00 , then 10 to 20% packet loss all night. Sometimes worse, last night was really bad.
Seems funny that the connection is fine till the system is loaded with more users ( kids get home from school at 16:00 and prob stay online all night till midnight )

Yep that's undoubtedly no coincidence. They've presumably got a capacity shortage somewhere, which is causing congestion or resource contention. It was OK up until a couple of weeks ago, which makes me wonder whether they've got a faulty link that's causing a pinch on the remainder, or if they've perhaps made a change that's messed something up.

This morning I was told (again) that they don't see any loss on the connection between the POT and my NTE. Which isn't a surprise, as I suspect the problem is further back in the network, as it's not just my connection that's affected. Getting them to look at the right thing is surprisingly hard, but I'm still pushing back.

FYI here's a record of my packet loss over the past week: https://pasteboard.co/yvIWuOcaWoTF.png

To kick this off with them, did you just raise a support ticket? I've not raised one yet but, intend too and I wonder if we all mirror each others complaints, we may get more traction?! Wishful thinking I know, given what seems to be the same experience from their CS, had by all of us.

There was me thinking moving to a full fibre solution, would see all my broadband woes evaporate.

For what it's worth, I think my opening post stated this all started in September. Looking back and I've been with GC for coming up to 3 years and monitoring the line for much of that, as far as I can see, there's always been a packet loss issue at these times on my connection. However, it's gone the odd day of bursts of this level, to this level every day at the same time from September 18th.
It's clearly not a local issue either, given our proximity to each other.

Paul

In reply to a post by kakariko:

Just sharing a message I've recieved from the Executive Support Team:
"As of yesterday (02/10/23), our Network Operations Team have created a parent case for all affected customers such as yourself as they are currently investigating the ongoing issue further as there may be a fault between two cabinets which is causing the issues you are unfortunately experiencing.

Our Direct Labour Team have been made aware of this new parent case by our Network Team as they may need to schedule a service appointment in order for some engineers to physically attend your cabinet to investigate further and address any faults identified.

I am hoping that we will have further updates from our Network Team and Direct Labour Team by Friday (06/10/23) at the latest."

I'll share any updates I get regarding this here.

Missed this yesterday but, that's great news. I'll open a ticket today.

Paul

Yes, I opened a regular support case, and subsequently e-mailed [email protected].

I first noticed this on 22nd of Sept, but it's entirely possible it had been there for a few days prior to that. We had full outages on the evenings of 19th Sept and 25th Sept, and I'm wondering whether this is in some way related (eg they fixed one link but another is still broken or something).

Great, thanks. I've just raised a ticket and requested to be added to the parent case. Lets see how that goes!

For what it's worth, we've not had any outages for some time. I have my networking kit on a UPS so even if the power goes, which it does more often than the broadband, my connection will stay up. In fact, the only two outages I can remember were both where some dimwit chopped through the fibre somewhere. It's been exceptionally resilient other than that.

Paul

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

Plus I don't have any of the Linksys nodes anymore and I know they'll ask for me to connect one, for them to do any diagnostics if it ever got that far.

I see plenty of the Gigaclear Linksys devices on eBay, I was under the impression they want the hardware back at the end of a contract. https://gigaclear.com/repairs-and-replacements

In reply to a post by clmfsh:

I see plenty of the Gigaclear Linksys devices on eBay, I was under the impression they want the hardware back at the end of a contract. https://gigaclear.com/repairs-and-replacements

That looks to be the case, doesn't it.

After the last renewal and all their partners coming in at a higher cost than using GC directly, I'm in no doubt I'll keep renewing with them. I'll certainly not be going back to the FTTC service. I did call I could to get off that!

Also, my initial install was a little, off script. I'm not convinced GC HQ would even know I was given any nodes, let alone how many.

Paul

I'm told my case has been escalated to tier 2 and also tier 3 support, so hopefully the right eyes are on it now.

In reply to a post by ah123:

I'm told my case has been escalated to tier 2 and also tier 3 support, so hopefully the right eyes are on it now.

Good news and thanks for keeping us updated. Fingers crossed.

Paul

Completely unrelated but my neighbour had a service installed and the service was advertised as having two mesh nodes but only one was installed, I've raised this a few times with CS to no useful response.

I don't have any of mine either, they stopped working at some point during 2020 and I couldn't get hold of them to replace or fix so I binned them.

It is happening again, it is so slow that some websites just don't open at all. Do you have any reference number we can use when calling up GC?

Really bad tonight, over 20% packet loss. Hopefully the more people that moan the quicker GC fix the issue.

If GC just came back and said "Yes we have an issue, is not going to be fixed for a couple weeks but we are on the case" I'd respect them for the honesty. Better than telling me to restart my router.

I've just gone back to my contact to ask if there's a ref I can give everyone here so we can all get this resolved quicker.

Unless they declare an incident everything will just be individual customer support cases. It's definitely worth raising though, as the more people who do, the more likely it is they'll finally realise they've got a multi user problem. It's certainly worth mentioning that you're aware of other people in the surrounding area experiencing the same problem though.

Have you collectively considered taking this issue to Mark Jackson over at ISPreview so he can do an article about it? no company likes bad press.

I’m not sure if he’d be interested but I’d certainly be willing to have a chat with him or indeed anyone about this, I've explained it countless times to their support as well as my neighbours!

Just had a call this morning to say their SL3 team have been able to confirm there's a problem, and that it's due to a shortage of capacity. They're arranging for a field team to go and check what extra fibres they've got available in order to add more capacity. If they have spares (which hopefully they do!) it sounded like they may be able to fix this today or possibly tomorrow, so fingers crossed we're nearing the end.

Would be interesting to see whether you get the same update on other cases, since we're assuming they're linked.

In reply to a post by ah123:

Just had a call this morning to say their SL3 team have been able to confirm there's a problem, and that it's due to a shortage of capacity. They're arranging for a field team to go and check what extra fibres they've got available in order to add more capacity. If they have spares (which hopefully they do!) it sounded like they may be able to fix this today or possibly tomorrow, so fingers crossed we're nearing the end.

Would be interesting to see whether you get the same update on other cases, since we're assuming they're linked.

At least that sounds plausible and thanks for posting the update. This is good news.

Thinking about it from an infrastructure and logistics perspective, it would be good to understand where the capacity issue is and if they're only focussed on you circuit (likely given it's your complaint). If they're just using addition cables between two points, it may not fix the issue for all of us.
However, if that is the case, at least we have all your comms with them to use for our issues.

Oh and no response from GC yet re my ticket raised yesterday.

Paul

Edited by KryptonKid (Thu 05-Oct-23 10:05:29)

It's certainly possible that they've got a capacity pinch in more than one place, and that fixing it for me might not fix it for neighbouring cabinets. I very much doubt we'll get the level of detail required from them to know the answer.

I'd recommend calling them about your support case. I haven't had any replies to any of my e-mails to the normal support address, I've had to phone for updates every time. That did change when I got the exec team involved, though.

I'm told the problem should be resolved now and we should see a significant improvement this evening. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the update - my graph shows a complete drop for a moment before coming back: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Hopefully that means something has happened

Yeah I saw that too, as did others. I'm assuming that was related to remedial work.

I got a circa 20% packet drop at just before 11am. Could have been a full line drop though and it was so brief, the graph doesn't show it.

Thanks @ah123 for the update.

Paul

I don't want to say anything but on mine so far so good, normally would be starting to drop around this time...

Is anyone here from Calvert? Does anyone know if the fix they did elsewhere would've also fix it in my area. Due to the fact that we all seemed to get the packet loss problem at the same time

Edited by Charlieh94 (Thu 05-Oct-23 17:58:17)

Knocking on wood as I type this but it's looking pretty promising, zero percent loss on any of the lines I'm monitoring. I'll post on Facebook to see if anybody else has a positive experience tonight.

Still getting major packet loss in Calvert Green

Fixed here in Silverstone - 6 lines I'm running BQM all showing zero loss.

Sounds like multiple issues then, have you raised a ticket etc?

How do you do that?

Fixed here in Deanshanger too.

Anyone still having a problem may be on a different part of the network where they may have the same issue that hasn't been detected yet (they only realised about this problem due to our reports). Anyone in that position should call up customer operations. Hopefully they've learnt some lessons about triaging this type of issue and will find other problems more quickly!

Hopefully they can get some bloody monitoring going!
Charlieh94, if you call them on 01865 591100 and speak to customer operations they can get a case going for you.

In reply to a post by kakariko:

Fixed here in Silverstone - 6 lines I'm running BQM all showing zero loss.

Sounds like multiple issues then, have you raised a ticket etc?

Mine too. And I may be imaging it but, my web browsing seems generally snappier this morning.
Also, on my benchmark line speed tests, I've gained 6Mb/s on the downstream. So it's all win for me.

Thanks to @kakariko for making some noise about the issue in the first place and @ah123 for getting the fix over the line.

Paul

Edited by KryptonKid (Fri 06-Oct-23 09:23:38)

Gigaclear are currently installing their network at the end of my road. I've been considering them once it's available but this thread doesn't inspire much confidence

In reply to a post by No_One:

Gigaclear are currently installing their network at the end of my road. I've been considering them once it's available but this thread doesn't inspire much confidence

My Gigaclear connection in Kent has been fine for the past 8 years. I was not impacted by the above problem.

In reply to a post by No_One:

Gigaclear are currently installing their network at the end of my road. I've been considering them once it's available but this thread doesn't inspire much confidence

The resolution to this issue turned out to be a lot less painful than I expected and a lot less painful compared to other stories i've heard about.

Give them a try what you got to lose.

In reply to a post by No_One:

Gigaclear are currently installing their network at the end of my road. I've been considering them once it's available but this thread doesn't inspire much confidence

Gigaclear are currently installing their network at the end of my road. I've been considering them once it's available but this thread doesn't inspire much confidence
Really?

In the grand scheme of things, it was quite a minor issue and I suspect most wouldn't have even noticed (evidenced in this thread). Because of the bandwidth available, it was more of a slight annoyance knowing there was an issue than anything. Sure there was the odd extreme case in the thread but, generally the material impact was minimal.

If I compare the issues I had with FTTC, they were much more frequent and severe. With GC I've had this minor issue and two outages because someone chopped through the fibre. I've been with GC for coming up to 3 years.

In my experience, unless you're using a boutique ISP, you'd get the same standard of CS as you get with GC however, with a full fibre solution that GC provide, the need to deal with that CS is much less great.

I'm not a GC fanboy, far from it. I just recognise that generally, what they provide is far superior to any FTTC or OR based FTTP service.

Paul

Well, it was slightly more than an inconvenience in my case as speed was dropping to 7Mpps, and some websites wouldn't load at all. I had to use my phone's tethering to get through the evenings. But since everything is back to normal

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

what they provide is far superior to any FTTC or OR based FTTP service.

I would 100% agree its superior than OR FTTC but I would dispute its superior than OR FTTP. As has been seen here the infrastructure design of OR FTTP (exclude OR subtended head ends implementations) is far-far superior than that of GC. I would pick OR FTTP every time over GC but its personal choice for all of us

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

what they provide is far superior to any FTTC or OR based FTTP service.

I would 100% agree its superior than OR FTTC but I would dispute its superior than OR FTTP. As has been seen here the infrastructure design of OR FTTP (exclude OR subtended head ends implementations) is far-far superior than that of GC. I would pick OR FTTP every time over GC but its personal choice for all of us

How so?

There was a relatively minor issue that was fixed quite quickly and now, we're all back to enjoying full symmetrical FTTP speeds. Are you saying there's never been an issue with OR derived FTTP?

My comments come from the lack off issues I've experienced and the the fact that the speeds GC customers get are superior to what OR FTTP customers can get.

Paul

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

How so?

There was a relatively minor issue that was fixed quite quickly and now, we're all back to enjoying full symmetrical FTTP speeds. Are you saying there's never been an issue with OR derived FTTP?

My comments come from the lack off issues I've experienced and the the fact that the speeds GC customers get are superior to what OR FTTP customers can get.

Paul

Hi Paul

You claimed GC was far superior to OR and I said I would 100% disagree with that comment as the infrastructure design of OR is far-far superior to GC, yes they do symmetrical speeds but that isn't the be-all and end-all of a full fibre rollout.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Hi Paul

You claimed GC was far superior to OR and I said I would 100% disagree with that comment as the infrastructure design of OR is far-far superior to GC, yes they do symmetrical speeds but that isn't the be-all and end-all of a full fibre rollout.

Well that's not what you wrote but being picky aside, you've still not given any contextual information behind your statement. It would be good to understand why the infrastructure design is so much better.
And whilst I very much agree speeds aren't the be all and end all of a successful end to end fibre rollout, that and the other factor I mentioned are two of the very few factors end users judge a service against. Personally, I'd add latency and the consistency of the speeds experienced, when measure against what I signed up for to that list too.

Paul

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

the infrastructure design of OR FTTP (exclude OR subtended head ends implementations) is far-far superior than that of GC.

Thought I made it very clear that I believe OR are better than GC because of the infrastructure design, sorry you missed that

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

It would be good to understand why the infrastructure design is so much better.

Two examples off the top of my head

1) GC rely a fair bit on chaining fibre cabinets together as they go deeper into the community and that is why pushing through an extra fibre in the field improved the throughput for many cabinets for example.

2) OR have a truly passive optical network in the field (apart from a few hundred SHE's) which means their is less in the field to go wrong.

Does anyone know how to get your case escalated. Trying to get the packet loss fixed in my area. Rang customer operations and they didn't care about anything that was said in this forum. All they said was to turn off the router for 15 mins and turn it back on again. It's obvious it is the exact same problem that was in the Silverstone/ Deanshanger areas. But want to get it sorted quickly as the fix was so simple

In reply to a post by Charlieh94:

Does anyone know how to get your case escalated. Trying to get the packet loss fixed in my area. Rang customer operations and they didn't care about anything that was said in this forum. All they said was to turn off the router for 15 mins and turn it back on again. It's obvious it is the exact same problem that was in the Silverstone/ Deanshanger areas. But want to get it sorted quickly as the fix was so simple

Raise a ticket and also email: [email protected]. That's what ah123 did and those actions got our connections fixed.

And speaking of the fix, has any of you noticed their latency measurements increasing since the fix was applied? Mine started to increase on Friday 6th, as shown here. It's stayed there since.

Paul

Yes, I have noticed latency step up a couple of times, once in the 6th and again on the 9th. Not by a big amount (a few milliseconds) but quite consistent. I hadn't noticed until seeing your message and then going and checking.

That's reasonably similar to what I saw. Mine initially climbed on 6th at just before 2pm, then climbed again on the same day at 3.30pm. I think it's gone from around 4ms to 8ms. Difficult to say precisely due to the scaling and size of the graphs. And yes, it's perfectly stable. I wonder if the routing has changed?!

Still no reoccurrences of the packet loss though.

Paul

Edited by KryptonKid (Sat 04-Nov-23 11:23:22)

Looks like latency has dropped again and seems to be inline with what it was pre packet drop fix. From what I can see, my line readjusted on 24th November at around 11pm.

Paul

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

the infrastructure design of OR FTTP (exclude OR subtended head ends implementations) is far-far superior than that of GC.

Thought I made it very clear that I believe OR are better than GC because of the infrastructure design, sorry you missed that

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

It would be good to understand why the infrastructure design is so much better.

Two examples off the top of my head

1) GC rely a fair bit on chaining fibre cabinets together as they go deeper into the community and that is why pushing through an extra fibre in the field improved the throughput for many cabinets for example.

2) OR have a truly passive optical network in the field (apart from a few hundred SHE's) which means their is less in the field to go wrong.

1) GC appear to have nothing in place to detect when their links are congested, this is very bad. They should have been aware they were close to capacity and know exactly which link(s) were impacted, well before it impacted a single customer, even if they couldn't fix it in time to prevent some degradation in service. It should never have gotten as bad as it did before they finally admitted there was a problem.

If they can't do some sort of rate limiting to ensure a base level of service for every customer when there is contention, they need to be far more pro-active to identify and fix the problem quickly.

It gives the impression they have a network where they roll it out and hope for the best, rather than actively manage it.

2) OR AFAIK are pro-active about monitoring their network and making sure this sort of thing never happens, by aiming for a minimum level of service per customer so even if it slows down, its at least usable until they can fix the problem.

No doubt it helps that OR have contractual obligations to the ISPs leasing capacity on their network, whereas GC do not.

Edited by alexatkin (Sat 09-Dec-23 16:24:38)

Welp, guess the fix was too good to be true? Both connections I'm monitoring in Northamptonshire are dropping packets again:
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Going to e-mail GC now, lets see how long it takes for them to fix this time...

Any joy,
I'm in Brackley and having this exact problem for roughly 2 weeks now.
So frustrating.

In reply to a post by hedeon79:

Hartwell - Northamptonshire is getting the same. I am currently down to 10Mbps from 500! On my old broadband I could easily watch 4K content in rush hours, Gigaclear defeats the purpose. I just started to log the speeds, but his is how last 24 hours look like link
[image]https://nextcloud.centrumdowodzenia.co.uk/apps/shari...[/image]

I live in the Essex area and have also been experiencing slow downs. Im on a 600mbps package speed boosted to 900mbps. I am pretty new to the service had it less than a year was on a 6 months trial and no issues. But since signing up now also getting slowdowns. Last night we got the dreaded wheel of doom when trying to stream something simple on Amazon Prime. I checked the speed on the router and this returned a whooping 38mbps and 941 upload. I restarted the router and still no joy. Still was getting the slow download speed. This was between the hours of 9:30 to 12:30 in the evening. I then run another speed test at around 1:00am Monday morning and everything had retruned to normal. I contacted GC technical support today and was given the usual spill. Turn off your Linksys Velop Router and all your wifi devices. Then once this is done go into the Linksys Velop App on your phone and run wifi channel finder. As i explained to the Technical support agent this was not the issue. The issue was with the connection on the router end to the connection into the house. Got absoloutely no where. Asked if they were not able to check the logs on the router on the previous sync speeds but was politely told that the issue was not appearing on there end. It would appear from what these posts have been saying GC are not investing in enough fibre cables to manage the broadband requirement in areas. So we are getting a bottle neck. I at the very least got a call reference number raised so i am now monitoring this connection regularly. Hope you all have been more success with this. If this issue doesn't resolve itself, i think i might have to go else where and read up on Offcoms policy of failure to offer the speeds contracted.

Can you create a BQM? https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

The Essex back haul isn't connected to Northamptonshire from what I can tell, it appears to go to Slough before heading to Oxford.

With the upload staying at full speed and the download bombing out, I would suggest that's a localised issue with your area's fibre feed.

I'm also in Essex, in the Colchester area, not had any slowdown issues as of note, but did get notification of an overnight outage scheduled for the 13th to 14th February 2024 via email on Thursday.

Did you get anywhere?

My link has been fine, bar some patchy packet dropping the other day.

I've just moved to the 600/600 package too, which was seamless compared to last time I bumped up.

Paul

Looks like some issues are again apparent.

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

Checking back, this has be getting more pronounced since it started on 17th September.

Is anyone else seeing similar?

Paul

Edited by KryptonKid (Fri 27-Sep-24 16:05:04)

Hi Paul

I've been having this issue for month now.
currently emailing gigaclear images connected directly to the ont as that's what they've asked for!

It happens every day from 4pm-11pm but only seems to effect the upload mostly.

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

Hi,

Thanks for the reponse.

I've been monitoring mine and it's been getting worse. Last night it was almost solid yellow between 6pm and just before 11pm.

I think I'll open a ticket.

Please do let us know how you get on.

Paul

Hi Paul

here is a snapshot of the graph today

ping plotter is showing packetloss now as well


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

Mine is very similar for last night too. The last few evenings are the worst it's been.

I'm a member of a community group and have prompted the members there who are seeing the same (all that use BQM) to raise a ticket with GC too.

I meant to ask, how are you getting the data being connected directly to the ONT? My understanding of how BQM works is limited but, it uses a public IP address and we only have one of those as far as I'm aware.
Incidentally, I no longer use the GC supplied NTE (mines a media convertor, not ONT) as I have the fibre going directly into my router.

Paul

Hi Paul

My mistake mate

When is said ONT i was referring to the gigaclear DKT!

They just asked if i could connect my pc direct to it for speed tests.

The BQM monitor was running on a variety of routers for comparison(Netduma R3,Velop,Openwrt)

Hi,

Thanks for the clarification, appreciate it. I have the same NTE as you. Or at least I did...

Frustrating that they're asking for speed tests for this type of issue. It's either a fob off or they don't really understand the basics.

I'll have a look for a tool that can run constant speed tests and let it run between 6pm and 11pm. Might be useful ammunition.

I updated my ticket this morning with last nights BQM. No response back from them yet.

Paul

Morning all

here is a link from lastnights BQM

Very strange Bump around 8pm-11pm that ive never seen before.
I have an engineer coming out again today


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

Same in Berkshire last night:

My Broadband Ping

From 29th Sept-2nd Oct it was this pattern:

My Broadband Ping

Maybe the build-up to the MUFC v FC Porto result?

Just going to throw it out, but I don't think it's your connections, I think it's something at TBB's end. I use another BQM tool, that's not showing the same results as the TBB BQM, there's no packet loss or spikes on my other tool that I use, but there is on the TBB one, which would lend it's something possibly going on where the TBB BQM is hosted.

Feel free to try and see what you get. F8 BQM

Well I am not seeing anything wrong for my connection My Broadband Ping so I am not sure the issue is with TBB BQM.

---
Paul

Looks like GC have investigated and fixed the issue.

GC issue fixed

My service is looking normal again this evening. I think I can see the time they fixed it in last night's chart too, as the latency increase dropped back to normal at around 8.40pm.

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

Paul

Edited by KryptonKid (Sat 05-Oct-24 23:08:28)

I wasn't getting PL, just high latency but that seems to have cleared up. Just a few spikes today but nothing consistent. I can't believe I'm saying it but I hope BT can make their way around here at some point, then at least I can pick an ISP who actually have a competent customer service team

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

Looks like GC have investigated and fixed the issue.

GC issue fixed

My service is looking normal again this evening. I think I can see the time they fixed it in last night's chart too, as the latency increase dropped back to normal at around 8.40pm.

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

Paul

All good here too from Friday night onwards....

It could be some backhaul routes - the route to the tester you are using is ok but the backhaul route that the TBB traffic goes on has issues. Just because one route is ok does not mean that this issues was not with Gigaclear or their peering.

In reply to a post by ian72:

It could be some backhaul routes - the route to the tester you are using is ok but the backhaul route that the TBB traffic goes on has issues. Just because one route is ok does not mean that this issues was not with Gigaclear or their peering.

I'm on Gigaclear myself, and all their routing appears to go through 1 single route through Abingdon.

Well well well, back again (neighbours and my own):
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...


I've just set up a monitor to go over IPv6 since we have that now, looks even worse!
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Mine too. I'm just messaging my contact at GC. I'll let you know how it goes.

I don't appear to have IPv6 enabled so, just the IPv4 charts here.

It seems to have started again on Thursday evening.

Paul

ETA: It looks like it may well be on their radar:

https://gigaclear.com/network-status

Edited by KryptonKid (Mon 02-Jun-25 14:47:38)

No change last night although, the contention does seem to have started later. The issue wasn't present last Monday night to compare it against however. So it could just be the usage pattern for Monday evening is different.

Seems like GC 'engineers' are taking their time to fix the issue too. Maybe they're being paid by the hour...

Paul

In reply to a post by KryptonKid:

No change last night although, the contention does seem to have started later. The issue wasn't present last Monday night to compare it against however. So it could just be the usage pattern for Monday evening is different.

Seems like GC 'engineers' are taking their time to fix the issue too. Maybe they're being paid by the hour...

Paul

It looks like they are actively load balancing the network nodes at the moment. We raised the issue here in Essex, and then all of a sudden a serious problem was reported in Northampton. We lost connection for 2 hours the other evening, and my service has been pretty flat since then.

Guessing they are managing their hot backhauls a bit better at the moment.

Their status page for Northamptonshire states the issue is now resolved, as of this morning. I don't believe them as it was still the same last night.

I reached out to my contact at GC but, recanted once I saw the status page. So if the issue is still apparent this evening, I'll reach out to them again.

Paul

Shame this thread wasnt brought up to the CEO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yq4P4Bgjp4

I'll go stand at the foot of some stairs. They did indeed fix the issue and last night my response seems to be essentially back to normal now.

Last night

Paul

Edited by KryptonKid (Thu 05-Jun-25 14:05:02)

I’m glad to hear you’ve had it fixed. Yet again.

Just reading back this thread - seems GC have some very apparent capacity monitoring (and planning!) issues they need to resolve; this evening congestion issue seems to regularly reoccur on your connections every 6 to 12 months.

It’s obviously very annoying and tedious, as their attitude seems completely reactive rather than proactive. Shame you have no alternatives, as they need a good prod via loss of custom.

Agreed, it's completely reactive and I suspect they only respond to a situation after a number of complaints for that area.

I'm fortunate in a number of ways, which isn't lost on me. 1, they seem to fix the issues relatively quickly. 2, my experience isn't materially affected during the periods the issue presents itself. Looking back at the most recent issue, at worse I may have 20ms of latency and <5% packet loss between 5pm and 10pm on the rough days. I'm not doing anything during that period that relies on split second latency.

Paul