Origin Broadband Latency & Packet Loss

Hi, forum newbie here.

I joined Origin BB Fibre 40 \10 from Plusnet in May 2017 simply becaause they were the best value for money. Im aware of their bad rep but figured it was worth a gamble. Since they do not have a forum for help i figured ill post here instead.

I have been running a BB Quality Monitor since i joined, however this past couple of weeks my monitor is picking up high latency & spikes in packet loss, resulting in the internet being a bit sluggish at times with some intermittent disconections.

I emailed Origin with a link to my graph, speedtests & router stats but no response. So i phoned tech support & got fobbed off, he insisted on me downloading some software to analyze my connection however i only have an android tablet device & the software requires windows so he appeared unwilling to help.

When i first joined in May 2017 i did have some spikes of maximum latency & a snall amount of packet loss for a few months, usually during peak times which i figured must be down to congestion to which i submitted a ticket but got nowhere with tech support so gave up as speeds appeared to be unaffected.
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Strangely this seemed to suddenly resolve itself from around 20th August & the graph looked good for two months
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Then from 30th Oct it suddenly came back worst than before https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

The latest 12th Nov is the worst i have seen it https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Speedtests can vary from around 15 to 20mbps to full speed which is the result i got early this morning using the Speedtest.Net app 7:30am http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/3376686794

Modem stats are limit with the TP Link vr2600 router (0db line attenuation upstream is a bug), error packets can rocket esp on the downstream into thousands but this could be a firmware bug. It had recently disconnected \ reset three days ago which is why the error packets are so low at the moment.

Line Status: Connected
DSL Modulation Type: vdsl2
Annex Type: Annex A
Upstream \ Downstream
Current Rate(kbps) 9999 \ 40000
Max Rate(kbps) 17161 \ 68761
SNR Margin(dB) 11.4 \ 14.4
Line Attenuation(dB) 0 \ 18.1
Errors(pkts) 30 \ 0

Live graph https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Edited by Natty (Mon 13-Nov-17 18:54:48)

If this was classical congestion as an issue then would expect things to be better in the 1am to 5am window, the timing of the start is in line with the busy time of the day.

It is possible they have some users who start a succession of large downloads that carry on it the small hours.

You have confirmed that you don't have any devices doing silent stuff like upload/download to cloud photo backup?

What have you got on your wired LAN, I remember seeing something like this with some sort of loop on the LAN.

Try unplugging everything for an hour or so and see what your BQM looks like

Ian.

The only devices i have connected via wifi is a Samsung Tab S tablet & three android phones with no uploading \ downloading of any significance other than the odd apps updating, nothing that should cause that kind of latency or packet loss.

As you can see from my graph it suddenly resolved itself between 20th August to 20th Oct with no changes to how my devices are connected or the configuration of the router. All i have plugged into my router is whats needed for it to work, telephone cable from socket to router & power cord. I dont believe its anything to do with my set up but an issue at the exchange, cab or the telephone cable running to my socket. This is why i asked tech support to send out a BT engineer to test it but he fobbed me off, saying if the engineer found no fault then i would be charged a fee.

Edited by Natty (Mon 13-Nov-17 18:45:52)

Seeing exactly the same as the OP.

On 25th. September we had to re-connect using a new ID and password since when things have not been good. As a starter, the line was capped at 39999 although we are on the 80/20 package and achieve about 70Mbps in normal circumstances. Managed to get through by phone to Tech Support (it was about 01:30) and the cap came off within 36 hours.

However, since 26/10/17 speeds have been all over the place. Typically the weekday download speeds fall off the edge of the cliff from about 17:00 to midnight with the drop being from about 10:00 to midnight at the weekends. At the same time pings to various sites I use for reference rise to about double the normal values.

I have an open ticket with Origin re the speed drop and have submitted various speed test results using http://www.supportal-test.co.uk/ which apparently feeds results directly back to their supplier. These tests have been taken with WiFi turned off and only my laptop connected by ethernet cable. The results include some tests with single figure download speeds.

Mr. Saffron will also be able to see the large number of TBB speedtests I have taken recently (by ethernet cable but with the WiFi enabled on the router) which show the huge disparities over time (and also the big gap between single and multi-threaded downloads at certain times).

I now await feedback from Origin about what they intend to do to alleviate the problem. I am not a technical expert but would guess that the symptoms all point to some sort of congestion.

In those circumstances (and bearing in mind that others on the same AIO cabinet with different ISPs have also noticed significant loss of performance over the same sort of hours as we are seeing) would there be any advantage in trying to find another ISP?

Edited by GonePostal (Mon 13-Nov-17 20:11:06)

@ GonePostal: I had near on identical experiences, though my �upgrade� date was a few days different. My speed too dropped by half (at the best of times) but a couple of days later syc increased but speeds were everywhere - OK in the day perhaps but evening just about unusable, Netflix wasn�t good at all.

As I had already decided to move on as I was at the end of contract I just didn�t have sufficient patience to spend hours listening to �Daft Punk - Get Lucky� & �Rihanna� again as support was always over an hour (for me) both songs I dislike strongly but were singing them on holiday two weeks later I had heard them so much (from previous issues) - (I thought the words were lets go to a Mexican cafe) So I stuck with the rubbish speeds down to the bitter end. Phoning support late at night (after midnight) will get you quicker response, I found a guy called Kieran to be good on support.

I�m not an ISP jumper having been with VM for ten years or more before Origin. Best of luck sorting your problems, keep phoning them seem to work eventually. Origin aren�t the worst ISP I have used, RedHotAnt was but they aren�t far behind. The thing is up until the last few months Origin were really good: Well for me anyway.

Edited by deleted (Mon 13-Nov-17 21:06:54)

As someone who moved to Origin's ADSL service earlier in the year I too am very unhappy.

I moved from Plusnet and immediately experienced a 50% drop in sync speed and similar drop in download speed. Things did not improve during the router 'training' period either.

After about a month I started getting very slow download speeds, especially in the evening, often below 1Mbit on a line which reliably gave 12Mbits with Plusnet. The ping times are very long too. Pings to Google's DNS used to be around 15ms with Plusnet but are sometimes 250ms or more with Origin and never less than 30ms.

Upload speeds are very low too. Upload appears to be capped at 700kbits but rarely achieves that. Nonetheless Origin are getting away with a claim that upload is 'up to' 2Mbits - something that is utterly impossible given the cap!!
On one occasion my router was unable to log-in at all for two days.

My suspicion is that Origin's system is severely congested, especially at busy times.

I've contacted them by phone and in numerous e-mails. The phone call was cut off and not one of my e-mails has been replied to.

This company is the worst ISP I've ever had the misfortune to come across.

Have you put in a formal complaint. If the service is that bad then complain and if they don't fix it then go to there Alternative Dispute Resolution provider. If it still isn't resolved then they should let you out of contract with no penalty.

ADSL2+ can only manage up to 2 Mbps (technically 2.5 Mbps) if Annex M extension is used, but that is at the expense of some download speed.

Sounds like they are pushing boundaries on claims

Well for some reason my ip address was changed by Origin suddenly, twice in the past two days after being on 145.255.246.xxx since i first signed up in May 2017

This new ip addess 145.255.245.xx was only active for two days but my graph showed none of the latency & packet loss present previously in the short time i was on it before it reset to another ip address below
TBB Graph 28th Nov

My current ip address is now 185.222.219.xxx & this also shows very low latency & no packet loss so far
TBB Graph 29th Nov

Looking at my router logs there was a disconnection lastnight 28th Nov (not uncommon with Origin BB) Router Log

What could be the reason for this? why would a change in ip address fix all my issues with latency & packet loss? i have not changed any settings in my router set up, so its clearly not a problem at my end.

Edited by Natty (Wed 29-Nov-17 10:45:04)