Gigaclear Latency and Buffering at peak times (8pm to 10pm)

We have a 600Mbps Full Fibre service from Gigaclear since they are the only fibre provider in our village. Generally there hasn't been much to complain about, not even pricing given the monopoly they have here, and apart from the few service outages the only real complaint has been their communication during those outages.

I have their termination point set to gateway mode and use a Netgear RBR850 with one RBS850 satellite and it all works well. Due to the location of the RBR850 our TV, Sky+, AppleTV and Xbox use wired connections in the living room. Wireless devices are limited to phones, tablets, etc. apart from devices in the bedrooms.

This year when using streaming services in the living room (so wired) I've noticed pixelation as streams drop down from 4K to lower quality and worse still even some buffering like we've gone back to pre-fibre days.

I setup a ThinkBroadband Quality Monitor ages ago from when we had ADSL (< 5Mbps) and moved it over to Gigaclear just to keep a watch.

What I've noticed since late last year, looking back at the monitors, is an increased latency during peak times between 8pm and 10pm. A sample from yesterday is here:

My Broadband Ping

There is no noticeable drop in download or upload speeds (I've checked from the router and wired devices) but the latency is impacting streaming services that are more susceptible to that sort of issue.

I contacted Gigaclear and provided the sample monitoring but they have simply said it is an internal issue and their systems do not show any issues. As I said, we use an ethernet connected AppleTV device directly connected to the router.

Anyone else noticing something similar? Anyone else from East Northamptonshire perhaps?

Any other evidence I can provide to them to prove my case?

The graph does indicate congestion somewhere. I dont think its localised to you due to the curve of the changes.

If netflix is one of the services with issues during those hours, you can run a speedtest from fast.com when you have problems to see how that performs.

If it’s a specific problem with Netflix, ask Gigaclear if they support any local CDN caching from Netflix. Most content from Netflix will be distributed by their CDN cached appliances - Open Connect Appliances (OCA) and these could be embedded on-net or off-net (ie at another internet interconnection exchange).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Connect

Thank you for the replies. I'm not sure I can persuade Gigaclear to put some content distribution system in place especially as they are saying the issue is mine.

During the increased latency (the graph I included in my post) we were watching Dope Thief on AppleTV and the pixelation and even occasional buffering was really bad. This is something we have experienced during other AppleTV shows and other streaming services.

We tend to watch Netflix at weekends so I haven't noticed it on that service, it is more services that release episodes weekly (so AppleTV, Paramount+ and Disney+) where we generally sit down of an evening around 8pm onwards to watch them.

We haven't noticed it with Paramount+ since that subscription is linked to our Sky subscription so Paramount+ only streams in HD quality and not 4K.

I have used fast.com and also the speed test on the Gigaclear website (Speedtest) and as I said using the Netgear speed test on the routers admin pages (also Speedtest).

Screen Captures

Hopefully you can view the images in that folder, one is another monitor graph and the other is a speed test taken on the router while we were experiencing pixelation and buffering from AppleTV.

If the latency bump in your OP is evident at the same times on most evenings, then that’s network congestion on Gigaclear’s network and they shouldn’t be fobbing you off with “it’s you not us”.

The good news is that after providing lots of evidence, thanks mainly to the BQM, and also just some simple ping results at various times and nPerf speed tests, Gigaclear have confirmed that they have congestion at those peak times after an increase in customers in the area over the last few months.

This was the BQM for yesterday: My Broadband Ping

Apparently they are in the process of increasing the capacity and so this should be resolved. I accept that these capacity increases are revenue dependant for a commercial organisation, it would have just been better had they been open from the start.

I will keep watching the BQM and hopefully this will improve over the next few months.

Thanks again for all the replies.

It’s good to hear that they’ve admitted there is a capacity issue AND they plan to deal with it. Hopefully it won’t take them a long time to action. 👍

In reply to a post by DatabaseJase:

The good news is that after providing lots of evidence, thanks mainly to the BQM, and also just some simple ping results at various times and nPerf speed tests, Gigaclear have confirmed that they have congestion at those peak times after an increase in customers in the area over the last few months.

This was the BQM for yesterday: My Broadband Ping

Apparently they are in the process of increasing the capacity and so this should be resolved. I accept that these capacity increases are revenue dependant for a commercial organisation, it would have just been better had they been open from the start.

I will keep watching the BQM and hopefully this will improve over the next few months.

Thanks again for all the replies.

Would you be in the north Essex area by any chance? I've noticed issues since they turned on IPv6 in the area I live in. Early April and between 1900-2300 we are getting massive ping increases and drops in throughput. They are denying there is an issue, but almost like clockwork the problem goes away outside of these times, with no changes internally.

My Broadband Ping

No, we are in Northamptonshire. The graph you posted is worse than ours, it looks to be unstable all day but certainly evenings it looks very much like ours.

My Broadband Ping

All I can say is to attach these graphs (I was told they are not allowed to open links) to a support case and also use a tool like nPerf which is £2 for 12 months to keep unlimited history. I am not affiliated with it but it tests streaming as well as the usual speeds and latency. I sent copies of these too.

IPv6 is disabled on our own Mesh Router so I do not believe that is factor here.

In reply to a post by DatabaseJase:

Thank you for the replies. I'm not sure I can persuade Gigaclear to put some content distribution system in place especially as they are saying the issue is mine.

During the increased latency (the graph I included in my post) we were watching Dope Thief on AppleTV and the pixelation and even occasional buffering was really bad. This is something we have experienced during other AppleTV shows and other streaming services.

We tend to watch Netflix at weekends so I haven't noticed it on that service, it is more services that release episodes weekly (so AppleTV, Paramount+ and Disney+) where we generally sit down of an evening around 8pm onwards to watch them.

We haven't noticed it with Paramount+ since that subscription is linked to our Sky subscription so Paramount+ only streams in HD quality and not 4K.

I have used fast.com and also the speed test on the Gigaclear website (Speedtest) and as I said using the Netgear speed test on the routers admin pages (also Speedtest).

Screen Captures

Hopefully you can view the images in that folder, one is another monitor graph and the other is a speed test taken on the router while we were experiencing pixelation and buffering from AppleTV.

A little late to this but, this may provide some context.AppleTV+ has one of the highest data rates of all the streaming services and if you're streaming DoVi (Dolby Vision) content, you will be hitting its peak. By contrast, Netflix is pegged to max out at around 20Mb/s for the 'highest quality' streams. Read: DoVi.
I believe Disney+ isn't far behind AppleTV+ but, it's been a while since I've had any interest in that area. And I have no idea re Paramount+ either but, a cursory look on tinterweb suggests it's quite in comparison.
Sony's Bravia Core service, or whatever they call it now has the highest data rates of all as they're aiming to provide UHD Blu-ray disk quality levels of image and sound. I've seen regular spikes of more than 100Mb/s when watching content from that service.

Re your issue, a group of us had a post up on here a little while ago for something very similar. Packet loss was more of an issue in that instance though. It was fixed by the introduction of a new link within a very short space of time. I hope the same is true for you.

Paul