You are talking techie stuff there !! Not a clue how to look at / for that

Just do a tracert thinkbroadband.com from a command line prompt (in windows run cmd to get the dos box)

C:\Windows\System32>tracert thinkbroadband.com

Tracing route to thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 9 ms 7 ms 21 ms cpc8-nrte25-2-0-gw.8-4.cable.virginmedia.com [86.1.123.1]
3 7 ms 6 ms 7 ms nrth-core-2b-ae2-2562.network.virginmedia.net [213.106.254.97]
4 7 ms 10 ms 7 ms nrth-bb-1b-ae8-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.209]
5 10 ms 7 ms 11 ms brnt-bb-1a-as2-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.217]
6 12 ms 10 ms 11 ms brnt-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.174.226]
7 11 ms 7 ms 7 ms brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.50]
8 10 ms 11 ms 11 ms telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.74]
9 9 ms 10 ms 7 ms linx-gw2.thdo.ncuk.net [195.66.236.240]
10 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms gi0-24-10-star1.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net [80.249.97.9]
11 9 ms 10 ms 7 ms www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]

Trace complete.

The first couple of hops are your router to your CMTS. Then there is some bouncing around within the VM network. Hop 9 shows the first router outside of VM and LINX is part of the name so that is who their peering partner is on the route to TBB

Speedtest.net goes via packetexchange and it looks like they peer directly with the BBC

You mean something like this ?

Traceroute has started�

traceroute to www.thinkbroadband.com (80.249.99.130), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 cpc15-ruth7-2-0-gw.14-1.cable.virginmedia.com (82.25.249.1) 18.682 ms 23.509 ms 27.137 ms
2 renf-core-2a-ae4-2090.network.virginmedia.net (82.23.161.141) 11.134 ms 9.214 ms 8.448 ms
3 manc-bb-1c-ae13-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.174.37) 32.547 ms 40.187 ms 15.463 ms
4 manc-bb-1b-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.159.89) 35.864 ms 15.184 ms 36.072 ms
5 brnt-bb-1a-as1-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.252.192.89) 65.664 ms 21.362 ms 27.255 ms
6 brnt-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.174.226) 21.300 ms 21.298 ms 19.319 ms
7 brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.159.50) 30.264 ms 44.766 ms 26.088 ms
8 telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.185.74) 28.808 ms 25.992 ms 34.682 ms
9 linx-gw2.thdo.ncuk.net (195.66.236.240) 48.697 ms 23.023 ms 19.887 ms
10 gi0-24-10-star1.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net (80.249.97.9) 32.725 ms 25.679 ms 49.860 ms
11 www.thinkbroadband.com (80.249.99.130) 32.053 ms 35.105 ms 33.007 ms

So what does that tell us ?

The actual ping times and amount of variation in them suggest to me that your local network segment may well be suffering quite high congestion.

Hop 9 shows that it is still LINX peering.

My area had some maintenance recently and has looked a lot better since then.
Here is another tracert taken just now from here..

C:\Windows\System32>tracert thinkbroadband.com

Tracing route to thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 43 ms 7 ms 9 ms cpc8-nrte25-2-0-gw.8-4.cable.virginmedia.com [86.1.123.1]
3 8 ms 12 ms 12 ms nrth-core-2b-ae2-2562.network.virginmedia.net [213.106.254.97]
4 10 ms 8 ms 9 ms nrth-bb-1b-ae8-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.209]
5 7 ms 14 ms 11 ms brnt-bb-1a-as2-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.217]
6 18 ms 10 ms 8 ms brnt-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.174.226]
7 10 ms 13 ms 8 ms brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.50]
8 11 ms 15 ms 10 ms telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.74]
9 13 ms 14 ms 9 ms linx-gw2.thdo.ncuk.net [195.66.236.240]
10 18 ms 13 ms 14 ms gi0-24-10-star1.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net [80.249.97.9]
11 8 ms 22 ms 7 ms www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]

Trace complete.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Wed 27-Jun-12 21:37:28)

Thanks for the explanation - I actually understood that

It does seem to run in cycles of , according to TBB decent [ i.e. pretty near Max ] download speed to very low speeds . I used to put that down to kids on holidays - but there's no real correlation with that.

Set up a TBB monitor...

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/monitors.html

This is mine which is actually pretty good for cable...

My Broadband Ping

In a congested area you'll see more blue (average ping) a lot of yellow (jitter) and when bad some red (packet loss) at the top. Solid red lines just mean the connection was down for some reason - in my case today because I'd powered it down to tidy the cabling - I'd ordered Infinity but Openreach did a no-show yesterday (apparently quite common - the BT community board is full of complaints about them) so I've cancelled it and given VM another chance as it actually does look reasonable now to me and I'm not going to deal with a company that can't even be bothered to install their product on the agreed date - http://www.idontbelieveit.me.uk/openreach-the-unacco...

You think that's good? Have a look at this: My Pings
I think I may be the only house using 100Mb in my area, which is surprising since I live in the capital of Essex.
I also have a teen caning the connection for gaming/downloading/sharing 24/7 now that his GCSEs are all done.

So my results don't look good?

My Broadband Ping

Post up your modem stats - that amount of packet loss looks like a fault to me - have you complained?

I deleted my old graph posted above as I got a Superhub for my upgrade to 60Mbps and obviously the IP changed.

This is today's on the Superhub - My Broadband Ping I gave it a bit of a hammering late on Thursday which will still show just past midnight when this one finalises to just show 29th.

I've not bothered complaining to VM yet as I recognise that my time on docsis1 is coming to an end -- shame really as until recently I've always had great speeds from my Ambit 256 on 20Mb.

I'm one of those weird customers who'd rather pay a few quid more a month for a reliable 20Mb connection than an over-contended 60Mb one with a dodgy modem.


It's years since I checked the power levels but nothing screams 'fault' to me -- can you spot anything?

Cable Modem Downstream
Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 51
Downstream Frequency : 283000000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 4.7 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 40.6 dB

Cable Modem Upstream
Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 33
Upstream Frequency : 35800000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 5120 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 40.9 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 4