Mid-evening blip

For many days many of us have been seeing a mid-evening latency bump. Latency is leaping up to 80ms from the normal 10 or 15ms. The bump shows up best in Thinkbroadband's ping monitor. TBB Ping Meter Many people I know, including me, are having effects upon their service. e.g buffering and erratic game play. Speedtests, in my case, show <30Mb instead of my usual 104Mb.



The odd thing about the bump is that it happens very abruptly around 7.00pm and ends abruptly around 11.00pm. This is not just normal congestion, tailing in and tailing off gradually as folk arrive home from work and later go to bed. Someone is 'throwing a switch'. It doesn't usually occur at weekends, but last night was the first Friday it has happened on.



I want to know what is going on. VM appears to be stepping down the network, reducing our level of service, nation-wide. They may have a good reason for doing this. eg managing congestion or upgrading work. Despite many requests I have not had a satisfactory explanation from VM.


If the problem were to continue I feel that VM would be in breach of contract, especially because the mid evening is when people like me use the internet for video, downloading and gaming. That is what we chose VM for.

Is the latency bump visible on pings to other hosts beyond ours, i.e. not just one of the Virgin Media peering links?

What bit rate are videos that are buffering?

Andrew

This isn't going to be congestion anywhere as the onset and cutoff are far too sharp for that. Here's mine from yesterday - My Broadband Ping

It's something that VM are trying out - unsuccessfully and hopefully temporarily.

It could also be a break somewhere.

We've seen similar patterns on some Be and Talk Talk lines when there is a break and they've had to re-route traffic.

The slow ramping up and then drop back to normal is the pattern we see.

Matt

I've been seeing similar results recently. Yesterdays graph is here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/fa73541d123...

Any one with Virgin Media is seeing the same issues, nothing similar with other providers at this time

Same here in Doncaster on VM 30Mb. A little blip on Monday evening then I've had the bump every night since.
Typical graph

In reply to a post by uno:

It could also be a break somewhere.

Considering it is happening at about the same time most nights it isn't any accidental breakage. As I said already it is VM doing something deliberately - probably testing some new traffic management with kit that cannot cope with the load.

Offering unlimited on the local pipes VM have is a recipe for technical disaster. Notoffering it with the groth in availability of FTTC is a recipe for business disaster. VM are caught between a rock and a hard place. Once every VM area has FTTC they really will be up that muddy creek and will be needing some technological magic to even remain afloat (imo).

Anyone got any latency data on different routes, as if this is not just one peering link, but all output from Virgin Media that is affected then it is very very bad

I get the same, seems to of started about a week ago.
And always between about 8 and 10 at night.
Am in Newton Abbot, Devon. An on VM 10M. Don't do gaming or massive downloads just normal e-mailing and web browsing.

Here's my graph from Friday

My Broadband Ping