Community Fibre - selective slow-down

I'm on Community Fibre and have noticed some specific slowdowns lately. The overall speed test is expected (40 mbps) and things like videos work fine, but sometimes website images or app content (like video thumbnails, list of posts, or comments) will take a long time to load, and will just show a page full of grey boxes or similar for up to several minutes.
My BBQM graph has a lot of blue and yellow on it, but I couldn't interpret it based on the examples in the help:

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

My latest interaction with the tech support had me use the channel switcher for the wifi. I don't think this should affect the BBQM though.
So just putting this out there for any broadband nerds out there who have ideas about what's going on with my connection.
Thanks!

Are you connected using IPv4 or IPv6?

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Are you connected using IPv4 or IPv6?

IPv6

Thanks .

The reason I asked is that if you simply set up your BQM by accepting the IP Address that thinkbroadband detected, then on IPv6 the BQM is pinging the device you were using at the time. Unlike IPv4 where it is the router address that is detected and pinged.

The result on IPv6 is that the ping is competing with anything your device is doing and is always treated as a low priority thing to handle. If you are streaming or uploading/downloading you get the sort of pattern you posted, because your device is concentrating on keeping that going. You switch the device off and BQM goes completely red. Switch it back on and you quite likely need to reset the BQM.

On IPv4 it is your router that is given the public IP address that thinkbroadband and any site you visit sees. Using NAT (Network Address Translation) your router issues your device a local address, usually starting with 192.nnn.nnn.nnn where each nnn is one to three digits. Switching a device on or off has no effect on the BQM, only turning the router off or the broadband going down should send it red.

On IPv4 the router works out which device to send real incoming internet traffic to. But in the case of someone pinging the public address of the router, like BQM does, the router does the reply. (Even then heavy uploading by your device(s) can affect the BQM, because of the way data transmission works).

On IPv6 your device gets its own individual publicly visible IP address.

On IPv6 your provider will have given your router a fixed (static) IPv6 address. With some providers such as AAISP their help pages tell you how to find what that is. In your case the provider's help pages might tell you or you may need to ask support.

Once you have that, when you set up the BQM you have to over-write the address it detects with that router static IP address.

I'm not sure how clear that is, writing at this time of night, but hope it is good enough to at least put you on the right path to the solution.

^{Edited in the morning for slightly better clarity.}

Edited by pluralist (Wed 09-Oct-24 10:05:52)

Thanks @pluralist.

It was clear enough, I hope! I just upgraded my package with Community Fibre. I was out of contract on their 40 mbps package, which they no longer offer, and it was cheaper to switch to their 500 mbps package. When that switch went ahead, my detected IP changed to IPv4 and my new BQM is very much better.

I ran the traceroute to my detected IP as per the link you sent and it was a single hop. I've been on with CF tech support asking if my infrastructure was changed along with the bandwdith. They could only confirm I wasn't currently on CGNAT but couldn't say anything about my old package. I think it probably was CGNAT, as I did a traceroute and the second hop was an IPv4 starting with 100. That was just to google.com or something, before I knew to traceroute to your own address.

Time will tell, but I expect the issues with app / website content populating will disappear.

Your sig BQM link needs replacing .

It's good that you are not on CGNAT, but it's possible your IPv4 address is dynamic, (may change after turning the router off or may be "sticky" so only does it occasionally), or static as described previously and permanently set.

Good luck .

At the weekend I signed up to brsk 500Mbps. The only snag being this estate won't be live until the end of November. They are still installing all the stuff. Connection points on OR poles and presumably underground on the parts where there aren't any.

Currently have been on Three Home Broadband (basically a SIM in a modem) since the end of 2018. 95% satisfied with it but hope this will be better.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

It's good that you are not on CGNAT, but it's possible your IPv4 address is dynamic, (may change after turning the router off or may be "sticky" so only does it occasionally), or static as described previously and permanently set.

Community Fibre uses Sticky IP's, I had my router off for a whole day while I was changing wires here and when I powered it back up later that night my IPv4 and IPv6 were the same as it was that morning and that as it has been for the last 2 years.

You can request for a new IPv4 and IPv6 addresses via the Routers DHCP Client, like Release and Renew.

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Paul