Connection problem, looking for possible causes..

Currently I am subscribed to Tiscali (I know half of you have now said "thats your problem there!"), well yes, but I am hoping to get a decent explanation of what is currently happening to all Tiscali IPStream users.

Every day between 4pm & 5pm until 10.30pm & 11pm all IPStream connections cease being able to connect to anything except websites and the odd game (Half Life engine games).

So for example, at 4.30pm today I will be happily using IRC, MSN, Ventrilo, FlashFXP.. and all will time out/disconnect at that time when the problem begins. MSN usually reconnects but half the messages sent don't get through, Vent will hit 25000ms and die etc.

Once this problem starts you can't connect to anything new, so if I wanted to play an MMO game, the connection wouldn't work past the login screen, yet if I was already logged into it before the problem started, it will often stay working (depending on the game).

Same occurs with Hamachi, if I am already on the network and connected to all people on the network before the problem starts, no change to Hamachi. But if someone drops or joins the network I will lose connection to Hamachi and can't get it back until 11pm when things stop.

Tiscali blame this on congestion and are 'migrating' people from IPStream to Datastream/LLU to 'improve' things for us. Yet so far after they have migrated many thousands, there is no change.

I should also add that the traditional telling points of congestion, high latency and low bandwith are not occuring at the same times as this problem.

There are many evenings where pingtimes are fine (20ms all night) and download speeds are maxing out my connection all night, yet at 4pm-11pm, all those things stop working and I can't connect to any of them. There have been evenings where my pingtimes are 200-300ms or download speeds are 25% of what they should be, showing congestion clearly, and the problem is still there.

To me this proves that basic congestion has no direct relationship to this problem, something else is losing those packets on the Tiscali network, but what?

My only theory is that the Traffic Shaping is affected by congestion somehow and is cutting out a lot of the wrong packets. Since these programs can all work fine on the laggiest of connections, and it would take major congestion to stop these things from working like this, and most of the time there is no congestion when they stop working.

I would love to know if anyone could speculate or suggest a possible cause for this problem, it's been happening for more than three months now, I know I will leave, but I really would like to know what could actually be causing this.

My brain tells me that there's no way any competent engineer could fail to notice this and diagnose it correctly.. is that the case?

Sorry for a long post, but thanks for reading

In reply to:

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Every day between 4pm & 5pm until 10.30pm & 11pm all IPStream connections cease being able to connect to anything except websites and the odd game (Half Life engine games).

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Between 4pm and 5pm - Children coming home from school and playing on the Internet before their tea is ready.

Between 10.30pm onwards adults go online to play games, etc.

I still think this is a Contention issue or overload of your ISPs system.
It happens almost every day on most ISPs on ADSL.
The fact that during the day you have no problems and this only occurs at peak times definitely points to this.
The other answer is that your ISP is throttling some sites, not unheard of.
Although peak times of congestion usually happen in the evenings, some evenings we seem to escape it and other evenings it starts early.

You could try switching ISPs as you suggest you may well do, but be careful where you go as many ISPs have this problem.

What is your speed during the day, and at the busy times you quote?

You can use the BT checker...
http://www.speedtester.bt.com/
or this online one to check your speed...
http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/

Let us know what speeds you are getting.

Edited by deleted (Mon 26-Feb-07 14:40:13)

I get 1750kbps on the first test and right afterwards got 1862kbps on the second test.

When I said 4pm & 5pm I mean the thing starts at any time between then, and 10.30pm & 11pm means the thing finishes at any time between those two. The entire evening between I can connect to nothing as I explained in my first post.

So it's like 4pm(ish)-11pm(ish) every night absolutely nothing works except browsing and HL based games. Everything else fails to connect and most things that are already connected will drop.

The reason I don't feel it's conventional congestion is because this problem occurs regardless of congestion as far as I see it. I have maximum bandwith throughput almost every evening, and 20-40ms pingtimes almost every evening, both of which suggest no congestion. Yet this problem will occur every single day, no matter how well my connection performs or how uncongested the Central I am on appears to be.

That's why I ask here because I don't see a pattern between congestion occuring and this problem.

Switching ISP's is in the pipeline for me yes, but I would like to know what could be causing this problem as well

In my experience of congestion (had plenty of it being on Tiscali), I will receive higher pings and poorer speeds, but still be able to connect to everything. It strikes me as odd that congestion would be so extreme that nothing will connect, yet download speeds remain maxed out and browsing works fine.

In reply to:

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I still think this is a Contention issue or overload of your ISPs system.
It happens almost every day on most ISPs on ADSL.
The fact that during the day you have no problems and this only occurs at peak times definitely points to this.
The other answer is that your ISP is throttling some sites, not unheard of.

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And when it starts to get congested, the bit you are missing is that it is not sites which get blocked, it is probably traffic for any protocols and services other than http and email, based on the destination port number.

Ephexis,
Have you tried asking this on the Tiscali forum, there may be someone experiencing the same problem you have.
Mike.

Oh don't worry I am on the Tiscali forum every day for many months trying to get this solved.

The problem is effecting every single person using their IPStream network.

Their only solution is to migrate random numbers of users regularly away from IPStream to Datastream or LLU. Yet so far the migration of at least 30,000 users has not made a difference to this problem.