Intermittent problems browsing - again

I seem to be having another of those evenings when I experience intermittent problems reaching websites. Tonight I've experienced problems with Gmail, Marks and Spencer, and the BBC!

I've never raised a ticket, as it doesn't happen all the time, and I can't reproduce it on demand.

But I'm starting to get pretty sick of it.

It's almost exclusively evenings - but not every evening - and has been happening now and again for months, probably.

There are several bulletins on the service status page that at least might be connected (e.g. 56372, 56197, 56008). But we don't seem to get a final resolution, or even an approach that recognises these may all be part of one ONGOING problem, rather than individual incidents.

It's almost reached the point that as soon as I get a single "page not found", particularly if it happens in the evening, my heart sinks, in anticipation that the problem is in for the night.

T.

I feel it's down to network demand at Plusnet. I view their 'Packet Drop by Gateway' page eagerly and notice packet loss at peak times is getting attrocious, around 10% on some gateways which is going to be felt whichever way they try to traffic manage it.

Of course, it could be other factors but I noted your comment about it only appearing to happen at peak times. You can view the graphs yourself or find out more here http://www.plus.net/support/network_performance/broa...

I'm getting fed up with it to be honest. Couldn't even upload some small databases onto my FTP server last night as it kept timing out. Usenet was running at 2k too!

I am seriously thinking of moving and I dare say that most, if not all of my referrals (some 20 of them) will move with me.

Bad times Plusnet

Have you checked the recent VP history of your exchange here?

Txxx,

Drop me a PM with your username please?

I doubt it is the exchange.

I'm on the RIN trial and can connect either via the normal Plusnet network or the BT RIN network. Recently I've been finding pings and throughput are much better on RIN.

See http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,7605...

The exchange just needs to be ruled out though, so far as possible. That's all I meant .

Recently there was a long thread elsewhere because of the paticular question that was asked, and then it emerged it was VP congestion. Just none of us thought to ask because we were addressing the question posed, not the problem causing the question.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Have you checked the recent VP history of your exchange here?

It is not exchange capacity that is the problem - well not in my case, it is purely lack of capacity on PN's side and they know it. They are simply not keeping up with customer demand and peeps said this was a risk for those heading into a lengthy 18 month contract a while ago and I guess they were right.

See my reply to jelv . Your exchange and the OP's are not likely to be the same.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

See my reply to jelv . Your exchange and the OP's are not likely to be the same.

You're quite right, they probably aren't the same. At any rate, atleast a discussion is forming about PN's capacity issues, maybe we'll get a response from them about how they plan to improve it.

I personally am on Unlimited, where they advertise speeds across the board on all protocols as being (on upstream) Line Speed 24/7. At peak times this is not happening, as an earlier poster said, uploading on ftp or torrents at peak times is impossible.

It surely is a bad state of affairs if they can't even deliver quoted UPLOAD speeds, never mind applying dialup speeds to protocols they don't deem important.

Re uploads - indeed not good.

I like this - "Plusnet Unlimited is designed for serious Internet users and is ideal for all Internet activities." No need for Pro then?

It's not an exchange capacity problem. Exchange capacity is rated at "green", both currently and for the last couple of months.

It's also NOT a speed problem, as some posts in this thread seem to imply. More of a connectivity problem. If I conduct a speedtest once the problem has been noted, I will typically get OK or even better than average speeds (for my line). The only issue is that I may have trouble connecting to the speedtest! But if and when I do, the result is absolutely normal.

Thanks James,

PM sent.

James,

I don't know whether this is relevant but I have frequent hangs using IE8 but DNS seems to resolve instantaneously using Firefox 3.0.10

Problem's so bad for me that i'm fighting to get off plusnet. Keep getting told there's nothing wrong......nothing wrong. Only advice I was given really was to go on the 21CN trial. Must admit when I was with BT they we're nasty about BT vision to me but never had the more or less non existent web browsing which i'm getting all the time with plusnet and they're refusing to help basically. Keep getting told as I said that there's no problem and live with it basically. How can I live with barely being able to browse for 18 months?

Problem's so bad for me that i'm fighting to get off plusnet. Keep getting told there's nothing wrong......nothing wrong. Only advice I was given really was to go on the 21CN trial. Must admit when I was with BT they we're nasty about BT vision to me but never had the more or less non existent web browsing which i'm getting all the time with plusnet and they're refusing to help basically. Keep getting told as I said that there's no problem and live with it basically. How can I live with barely being able to browse for 18 months?

I don't think this is refusing to help:

Thank you for getting in touch with me. I've tried calling you on your mobile (I think you cancelled the call) and also on your landline (I guess you're at work!).

I'd like to address your points separately if I may.

ADSL2+: Currently we have frozen our new orders (this was decided this morning) due to a latency problem which we are currently experiencing in the evening, which is resulting in gaming and other prioritised traffic suffering from acket loss. As such, we don't want any additional people to experience similar issue and have temporarily frozen the trial.

Also, I'd point out that for the length of your telephone line, you would be unlikely to see any improvement on your current speeds by moving to ADSL2+ and there is also a chance that speeds would further deteriorate.

General speeds: You have what is called a downstream attenuation of 61dB. This indidcates that you are a considerable distance from the exchange. The extent of this is that is we were to place an order for a fixed rate product (rather than the upto 8Mbps max product), we would only be able to place an order for a 512Kbps service. Although clearly I'm talking about a somewhat dated product from the early days of broadband.

If you are referring to your general speeds, BT have imposed an "IP Profile" of 1750Kbps due to the speeds at which your router is gaining synchronisation with the BT exchange. This is again because of the distance that you are from the exchange. If your complaint lies solely with your general speeds, this will not improve by moving to a different ISP & when you signed up for our services (albeit on an 18 month contract) you were informed that the expected speeds would be approximately 1Mbps. From what I can tell, you're actually getting a little bit better than that.

I sincerely do not believe that you have a fault and any BT investigation would be a waste of your time and ultimately your money as not fault would be found, leaving you with a charge of £144+VAT. I strongly advise that you do not go down this avenue!

From my perspective, the only problem that you have is the limitations of the broadband infrastructure in the country and the fact that the implementation is that it's a case of sending a digital signal down an aging copper network. We can hope for fibre, but until then, I would not expect any considerable improvements in your speeds.

If I have failed to understand the difficulties that you have been experiencing then please feel free to corrrect me.

Kind regards,

James Bailey

I also offered to call you, but you hang up when I tried to do so and also when one of the CSC guys called you last evening.

We can't help you if you wont let us.

Just a suggestion but maybe some RWIN/MTU tweaking might squeze a little more out of the connection?

http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

It would at least show if anything was dramatically wrongly set.

Just a thought.....

Meldrew

It would be helpful if the problems didn't exist in the first place.

I like many have had the "there's nothing wrong" script - even when dialtesting in the CSC has replicated the problems.

Edited by rsturbolad (Thu 07-May-09 17:25:02)

Yeah well Plus did go "unlimited" which they ALWAYS said was totally unsustainable...

My thoughts on "unlimited": Plusnet Unlimited is not without limits