TalkTalk Business Packet Loss

I have been a customer of TalkTalk Business for several years, having originally set up my account with Nildram before purchases and takeovers turned me into a TalkTalk Business customer. Up until the end of July I had enthused about the support and service I've had with TTB, but no longer.

I raised a support ticket with TTB on the 29th July 2015 (TCK6120070) and at the time of writing (10th October 2015) this ticket is still open and unresolved. In fact, the issues I've been experiencing have got steadily worse as time has gone on.

On top of that, calls are not returned when promised, support staff are rude or completely disinterested in the issue at hand.

My case sounds fairly similar to this review: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/talktalkbusiness.co... - my broadband connection is fine during the day, but in the evening starting at around 18:00 and continuing right up until around 23:00 the connection becomes almost unusable. Packet loss reaches 100% most evenings at around 21:00 which in effect means that there is no data connection at all.

The graph here - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/f210c05a4f6... - shows the issue clearly (measurements from Friday 9th October)

I've been with a TTB reseller since August. I continue to monitor my line closely, but I've experienced nothing like this.

Worrying that first-line support should dismiss your issue on any class of service, let alone "business". If you're not in contract, you might consider migrating to a TTB reseller that does do support well, and knows how to navigate the sometimes-antediluvian support channels of TTB and BT Openreach.

I have nothing but good things to say about Pulse8 (just a happy customer!)

If it starts and ends at the same time every day it points to traffic management where pings are given low priority do get dropped

But i didnt think TTB do traffic management

The way I read the OP, the complaint is about an unusable connection (i.e., the ICMP packet loss is given as a symptom).

Giving ICMP a lower priority is common behaviour -- it doesn't necessarily demonstrate traffic management. So if there's a pattern of severe ICMP packet loss at peak times, it implies congestion. And... my, the PO's graph looks severe.

If it were my connection, I'd be asking TTB to check that it's been provisioned with the correct "Business" priority (i.e., so that peak-time domestic traffic doesn't get in the way).

In reply to a post by richi:

The way I read the OP, the complaint is about an unusable connection (i.e., the ICMP packet loss is given as a symptom).

Yep, that's exactly it.

In reply to a post by richi:

Giving ICMP a lower priority is common behaviour -- it doesn't necessarily demonstrate traffic management. So if there's a pattern of severe ICMP packet loss at peak times, it implies congestion. And... my, the PO's graph looks severe.

If it were my connection, I'd be asking TTB to check that it's been provisioned with the correct "Business" priority (i.e., so that peak-time domestic traffic doesn't get in the way).

My major issue with this saga (currently day 74 and counting) is the complete lack of interest from TTB in resolving the problem. I've had their Network Operations team swear blind that my router was at fault (which it wasn't) and on more than one occasion I've had support staff express their total incredulity that I would expect a working connection in the evening. Only now are they (apparently) getting the contention issue addressed.

Then again, the issue was supposed to be resolved last week.

I won't hold my breath.

The fact that your TBB pings show yellow spikes continuously 24/7 suggests line or equipment fault. I take it you've tried another router? and also tried plugging your router into the test socket to rule out any issues with extension wiring? I'm surprised TTB phone support haven't helped you get to the bottom of this, believe it or not many of their support staff are ex-Zen. I suggest you email their 2nd tier network team at:

[email protected]

In reply to a post by IceFreak2000:

I've had support staff express their total incredulity that I would expect a working connection in the evening.

Lousy customer service aside, it's well known that the domestic class of service from TalkTalk can suffer serious peak-time congestion. It's how they run their network -- probably a conscious commercial decision.

But the Business product is supposed to run at a higher priority, which shouldn't see such awful congestion problems. I suggest you ask them to check that your traffic is being given the priority you're paying for.

In reply to a post by richi:

Lousy customer service aside, it's well known that the domestic class of service from TalkTalk can suffer serious peak-time congestion. It's how they run their network -- probably a conscious commercial decision.

That's not well known to the many customers, myself included, who get/got line rate speeds on TalkTalk residential at all times.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

The fact that your TBB pings show yellow spikes continuously 24/7 suggests line or equipment fault. I take it you've tried another router?

Yep, three different routers - two supplied by TalkTalk Business and my own Asus RT-N66U

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

and also tried plugging your router into the test socket to rule out any issues with extension wiring?

I had an OpenReach engineer on-site two months ago who categorically ruled out internal wiring or from the cabinet.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

I'm surprised TTB phone support haven't helped you get to the bottom of this, believe it or not many of their support staff are ex-Zen. I suggest you email their 2nd tier network team at:

[email protected]

I've written 50+ emails to that address so far, including detailed network diagnostics every single day for the month of September.

The underlying issue is congestion at the exchange, so is largely OpenReach's problem, but TTB have their fair share of blame in this - given the length of time it has taken them to acknowledge the issue as serious and their almost total inability to communicate with their customer. Given that they are a communications company that irony hasn't escaped me.

There is one person at TTB that I would call out by name as being helpful - Dale (don't know his last name unfortunately) from the Back Office Support Team seems to be getting things progressed, and actually does make an effort to get in contact.

Perhaps "has the reputation" would be a better way of putting it? Much as does Sky and many other to-a-price services.

I dare say it varies by location. Like you, my first-hand experience of domestic TT is n=1 ( a family member). My observation shows slowdowns at peak times.

That's why I'm using TTB (resold, to get better support).

In reply to a post by richi:

I dare say it varies by location.

It's localised congestion, as just confirmed, and it seems to affect both TT business and TT residential when it happens. I never had congestion issues in my area.

In reply to a post by IceFreak2000:

The underlying issue is congestion at the exchange, so is largely OpenReach's problem, but TTB have their fair share of blame in this

Localised exchange congestion on TalkTalk LLU is TalkTalk's problem, not Openreach's.

Are you on adsl and is fibre coming to your area? Fibre take up may reduce adsl congestion.

This is a fibre connection; during the day I will get speeds around the 70Mbps mark which then drop through the floor around 18:00; once speeds get below 0.5Mbps the packet loss is nearing 80% and the connection is all but unusable for even basic HTTP traffic

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by IceFreak2000:

The underlying issue is congestion at the exchange, so is largely OpenReach's problem, but TTB have their fair share of blame in this

Localised exchange congestion on TalkTalk LLU is TalkTalk's problem, not Openreach's.

As the end user is on fibre, it is possible contention on the Openreach GEA-FTTx network between the DSLAM and the handover point is causing the problem, but such contention is a relatively rare phenomenon. It is more likely any contention effects are from insufficient capacity on TalkTalk's backhaul from the handover point to their core network.

Right, but if you're truly buying a "business" service, your line should have been provisioned as "Elevated Best Effort" (EBE) or whatever TalkTalk's equivalent is called.

It's inconceivable that local congestion should slow you down this much if it was provisioned correctly, no?

I know how irritating it is when people reply in a forum like this to tell you to do things you've already done, and at the risk of sounding like a stuck record, suggest you insist that TTB check that you're correctly provisioned for your traffic to be "high priority", "elevated", "pro" or whatever jargon TT uses.

In reply to a post by richi:

Right, but if you're truly buying a "business" service, your line should have been provisioned as "Elevated Best Effort" (EBE) or whatever TalkTalk's equivalent is called.

Given that TT residential connections without congestion run at line speed 24/7 on uncongested exchanges, it is conceivable residential and business connections are provisioned the same way.

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 13-Oct-15 17:34:18)

I don't follow your logic. If there's no congestion, why would priority influence throughput?

In reply to a post by richi:

I don't follow your logic. If there's no congestion, why would priority influence throughput?

There is congestion, and by my logic residential and business connections are affected equally by it.

Judging by what TTB resellers say, traffic for the TTB service is prioritized over the domestic traffic. There may be more than one level of business priority, but I'm not clear on that (Pulse8 talk about "high", "higher" and "highest" levels, so perhaps there are four levels in total, including domestic).

I can't really say how much higher priority business users had over my residential connection since my connection was always line speed with low latency. But in any case it appears from this thread that the priority system, if any, does not mitigate exchange congestion for business users.

Again, I don't follow your logic. Are you sure you grok what priority actually means in this context? You shouldn't conflate it with shaping or a bandwidth budget.

In reply to a post by richi:

Again, I don't follow your logic. Are you sure you grok what priority actually means in this context? You shouldn't conflate it with shaping or a bandwidth budget.

Yes, I know what priority means, and I saw no evidence of my packets receiving a low priority on TT res, certainly not to the extent that my throughout or latency was impacted. If my connection's packets were constantly delayed to allow TT bus packets through I would expect to see some kind of impact.

But that's my point. If there's no significant congestion in your area, you won't see any effect.

In reply to a post by richi:

But that's my point. If there's no significant congestion in your area, you won't see any effect.

If that's the case, given how rare congestion is on TT, the whole priority thing seems pretty pointless.

Not so much. Where there's plenty of spare headroom, priority still has benefits in terms of latency --particularly in consistency of that latency.

Quite apart from technical benefits, there are also intangible "marketing" benefits, particularly when selling to businesses. And, as a small business connecting to a TT 2+ MSAN in a rural exchange, I'm willing to pay a bit more for that peace of mind. YMMV.

In reply to a post by richi:

It's inconceivable that local congestion should slow you down this much if it was provisioned correctly, no?

Just because TTB runs at at higher priority than the residential service doesn't mean its immune from slowdowns in the event of exchange congestion...i know this from experience as I'm on TTB & my neighbour is on TTR and we both got slowdowns at peak times for a few months until TT added extra backhaul capacity. But my ping times are slightly (~5ms) better than my neighbours d/t my service taking a different routing to TT's servers, this would explain the 'priority' part. I can assure you that your TT resold service would also suffer at peak times should your exchange get congested so no need to be smug about it.

Anyway i have my doubts if the OP is suffering exchange congestion because he's getting yellow spikes on his line 24/7 which indicates a possible line fault...if it was exchange congestion only, there would no such spikes at 4am. Its also possible that the OP's fibre links from the FTTC cabinet to the exchange are congested in which case it makes diddly squat difference if you are paying £70 p/m with AAISP or £2.50 p/m with TTR. Though i suspect AAISP would be better at spanking Openreach's bottom than TTR.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Just because TTB runs at at higher priority than the residential service doesn't mean its immune from slowdowns in the event of exchange congestion

That's a wise reminder that no service is uncontended unless it is sold and provisioned as such, with a Service Level Agreement giving the customer remedies if a guaranteed level of service is not met. Consumer and business broadband services has no such SLA and can only be sold at a low price point because they are contended.

The providers have the difficult job of trying to provision sufficient capacity to prevent significant visible contention without expensive upgrades proving unnecessary. Some upgrades can be done quickly, whereas others have a long lead time.

It is unlikely that any provider would operate their network on the basis of "let all business traffic through before any residential traffic". In any event, the peak bandwidth requirements of residential and business services typically do not coincide, though there is never any certainty over this.

In reply to a post by David_W:

It is unlikely that any provider would operate their network on the basis of "let all business traffic through before any residential traffic".

In fact, that's basically what BT Wholesale does. Each defined priority level is assigned its own queue. Traffic in lower-level queues doesn't get delayed unless there's congestion.

I assume TT is similar, but I have no way of knowing.

Edited by richi (Wed 14-Oct-15 18:55:32)

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

no need to be smug about it.

Not very collegial. Les trolls ne seront pas aliment�s!

Interestingly although Pulse8 used to list the contention ratio on their website for each package, they dont now.

Interesting. I know BTW stopped quoting ratios many years back. I didn't know TT used them.

Frankly, I think it did more harm than good. And I don't think it really reflected how prioritization actually works.

Edited by richi (Wed 14-Oct-15 18:54:31)

Well im on Pulse8's XL Plus which is £1 more than XL Home. Only difference was the contention ratio which was 2:1 compared to 3:1 on the Home package.

Dunno how that actually works in reality but for a quid thought i will pay it. Now thats removed the packages are identical. Maybe the contention thing was confusing customers

Edit: I missed this bit

Unlimited higher priority 2:1 (LLU) ADSL broadband with speeds up to 17Mbps down / 1Mbps up with no throttling.

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 14-Oct-15 19:12:15)

Yes, but now they say "high", "higher" and "highest" priority.

(Although the pop-up for the Home version of Plus still says 2:1, which I assume is an editing error, just like the Business bundle prices that don't add up )

Ah so they do, good spot didnt notice that.

How this actually works in real world terms is anybodies guess

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

How this actually works in real world terms is anybodies guess

And it's something I'd want them to explain to me, if I were to spend £1 a month more than the "basic" service. If there's no appreciable difference between the two products, I'd rather keep my £1 a month!

They did explain it on email once to a user on here and he posted the lengthy email. Cant find it though and forgot what it said now

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 14-Oct-15 19:27:21)

Well, quoting different contention ratios for different service levels that actually share the same backhaul can only give an indication of the provision, given certain assumptions. In other words, it's pretty useless.

I kinda suspect the 3/2/1 numbers were actually a priority number, but someone mangled them into ratios when they wrote the website.

Edited by richi (Wed 14-Oct-15 19:28:57)

Found the post that Adam from Pulse8 sent another user

We�ve been very careful not to mention �contention ratios� on our site as these don�t really exist on our network anymore (Apart from very old IPStream exchanges)



As far as I am aware or rather have been told previously, customers connected to the standard Talk Talk network (not Talk Talk Business) get a standard priority of 7:1 with 7 being the lowest priority and 1 being the highest.



Our Basic XLHome package which is the base offering on the Talk Talk Business network has 3:1 priority on our Talk Talk network which as such gives it a greater priority against the Millions of Talk Talk home users on the Standard Talk Talk network. This is a good thing.



Our XLPlus packages have a priority of 2:1 and the XLPro Package have our highest network priority i.e. 1:1



Of course we can�t really mention anything about Talk Talk on our website (which is a tad difficult when the connections show up as Talk Talk) so I haven�t bothered.



Of course all of the above depends all the other factors like the quality of your line, your distance from the local exchange (or cab if on fibre) and how much bandwidth is available on your local exchange. We do no throttle and always give as much as is available BUT if an exchange does get maxed out and you find that things do slow down then you�ll be better off with a XLPro or XLPlus connection.



On the bundle side, a XLPlus with business line would get fixed quicker than a XLPlus on a home line (care level 2 on the line instead of care level 1)



In fact we�ve only ever had 2 customers who�ve had slowdowns, these were on the Chagford exchange (OpenReach IPstream only). Upgrading them from our 8Mb to 8Mb+ fixed the issue of in the day slowdowns up until last month when a faulty card affect 96 people in the village. Took use several weeks of shouting to fix that one but all 96 customers are now happy, even though only 2 of them were our customers wink





Having said all that� It has been a while since I queried our prioritisation against standard traffic on the TTB network so I�ll get some more technical BEEF for you as I might be out of date.



Feel free to edit / post my vague wanderings as you will.





Kind Regards

Also suggests Business does get priority?

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 14-Oct-15 19:35:34)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Also suggests Business does get priority?

But according to richi, only in the rare circumstance of exchange congestion.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Also suggests Business does get priority?

But according to richi, only in the rare circumstance of exchange congestion.

Not what I said. And I'm getting bored of going around and around this circle. TTB will always get priority, but you'll only see the effects of that prioritization if there's enough congestion.

My guess is that what look like ratios aren't. They're just numbers -- each of which are bigger or smaller than the other numbers. Such is the nature of priorities.

In reply to a post by richi:

In reply to a post by David_W:

It is unlikely that any provider would operate their network on the basis of "let all business traffic through before any residential traffic".

In fact, that's basically what BT Wholesale does. Each defined priority level is assigned its own queue. Traffic in lower-level queues doesn't get delayed unless there's congestion.

I am fully conversant with the idea of priority based scheduling. My point was that it is likely something more refined is in use than let all business traffic through before any residential traffic (emphases added), not least as such a crude algorithm would play havoc with jitter and TCP window scaling. I had algorithms like HFSC in mind.

In reply to a post by David_W:

My point was that it is likely something more refined is in use than let all business traffic through before any residential traffic.

My understanding is that this is what 20CN/IPStream does (I have it on good authority from a knowledgeable BT employee). Quite possibly 21CN as well -- dunno.

As I said, I don't know if TT's algorithm is more nuanced. However, judging by the OP's data, I'd say TT is using the same, simple algorithm, exactly as you emphasize. And, let's face it, at scale, simple is usually best (speaking as someone who has engineered systems that scale vertically and horizontally to millions of users).

Bl**dy hell, it looks like TTB/Openreach might have finally sorted my connection out (it only took them 85 days....). Not holding my breath, but it currently looking like this:

Ping Monitor

The last red line at around 3:00 PM was expected as I was moving back to my trusty Asus RT-N66U from the supplied HG635 Super Router

Fingers crossed....