Zen FTTP - Inconsistant latency

Hi all,

I have a very inconsistant connection with Zen, especially around latency. Going to Google DNS I get results as low as 8ms & as high as 28ms. Whats odd about it to me is that it only changes when the PPPOE session re-negotiates. Every time I restart the session I get a different latency and this will hold stable until the next time. I wrote a script on my router to restart the session if the ping was over 15ms but this doesnt seem the right way to go about it. IPV4 & V6 behave the same.

Zen don't give a dam and just say 28ms is acceptable.

I'm using a Mikrotik RB4011iGS+ most of the time but also tried the provided router and a Cisco ASR1001 and get the exact same behaviour on them all.

Any one have any thoughts on how common this is, if I'm likely to have any sucess in pushing Zen to fix or if another provider would likely be better?

IPV4 BQM snapshot
IPV6
Older BQM where it went up

A bunch of us had a very similar issue with our Ceberus FTTP connections about a year ago as I recall - there's thread on here somewhere if I can be bothered to search for it.

There was an intermittent fault within the Cerberus network, that pushed up all our latencies. Cerberus spun up a new PPPoE gateway to try and resolve. That alleviated some of the worst latency, but not all. The fault was deeper in their core network.

As I recall it took them about a week to fully diagnose and resolve, but they weren't sweeping it under the carpet. although I gave them grief at the time for not giving more timely and useful updates!

For what its worth this was the thread with the Cerberus issue:

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/f/4663137-ce...

Suggest you insist on an incident escalation with Zen to their 2nd or 3rd line support.

It seems to depend upon which port that you reconnect to. I have been noticing this for more than a year on my connection and looking at the router logs if I get a connection via IP address port ending .23 or .24 the latency is at least 20ms. On IP address port ending .21 it’s 7ms.

I was a little disappointed too when Zen told me it was acceptable. I would be looking at those line cards to see why the difference and quite possibly changing hardware, but Zen aren’t bothered.

Thank you, a fair bit to read through there. Good to see they took it seriously at least.

Sorry your having the same issue MercuryRH2 but at the same time glad I'm not totally alone on this one. I've been very disapointed by Zen's response. Only offering to send a Openreach engineer to me (when this clearly isn't the issue) and then in the same breath telling me they will charge me a penatly when they wont find a problem.

Can't decide if I should really make a fuss about it or just see out my contract and go to a better provider.

Funny, I've just raised this exact issue having had the same drop at the same time as yourself and finding my latency doubled and speeds dropping like a stone. It is a regular issue however, drops seem to happen around 2am every 30 days or so, and dropping PPP a few times I eventually connect back to a faster route and speeds, until dropped off again. It seems complete pot-luck what routing and speeds I get each time I connect.

I think these regular drops are Zen load balancing their network because they don't run with much spare, and need to keep managing it and shifting people around.

My ISP though is IDNet which backhaul with Zen, so when you move ISP avoid IDNet as you will likely see exactly the same thing. Whoever you switch too, just check they don't use Zen's backhaul or are not simply reselling a Zen product.

This is completely normal with Zen. My post history is probably clogged with this by now, but as you have noticed there are two gateways. One is quick, one is slow.

lond1 = fast
lond2 = slow

I still personally think lond1 is indeed in the London area, and lond2 is actually in Manchester. This is based on the old gateway names with similar latencies.

Similar BQM to your snapshot when gateway changed

Zen will not even acknowledge it or at least explain this difference, let alone "fix" it.

Thank you. Very confident it isnt just me now then!

In the past I hadnt found it as clear cut as that but it certiantly seems it now. Interestingly though even with 20 new sessions I got allocated to lond1 everytime. Previous tests a few months back it changed nearly everytime.

Hopefully they havent just figured out people like me were restarting their PPPOE session until they got a good gateway and now made it more sticky or something.

I've questioned the same and am awaiting a response. They route me from bristol all the way up to manchester, then back down to london, when i'm closer to london.