accountability again

ok have yet another issue, i am on fibre pro and live 200 yards from the cabinet so get 74/18 speeds and usually a really fast and usable service, i am a gamer and a competitive one so to me ping is way more important than anything else, now heres the issue.

i took out the fibre service last october and use my own router, i rang zen got all the settings etc and everything was spot on ping to our NL server were typically in the 20-24 range i had 24 on zens adsl 2 so was happy.

Feb this year i changed router because i wanted a 5ghz wireless as my new devices had the capability and i wanted the extra bandwidth, again rang zen got the settings etc again and all was well, last week had an issue my pings suddenly start to hit 36-44-116 hmm ok contacted the game server host (its our server) and they tell me there is a little congestion but not to the extent i am experiencing and that the issue was being looked at as they believed they had a switch starting to fail under load, i also at this point rang zen to see if there were any other issues at our end thats when the fun started.

am told that my line now has interleaving activated as a gamer this is a big no no so i asked for it to be removed only to be told cant be done needs a engineer visit and is chargable ! seems interleaving was added because i had set my router to disconnect when not being used being nice and all trying to save the planet etc but it seems the bods at BT recognise this as a failure and added interleaving, btw thanks for letting me know!

my point? i pay Zen not BT why the hell is BT even involved with my line and why do i now need to either wait an indeterminate time for BTs systems to remove interleaving or pay a BT engineer to come and remove it? Why?

heres the real issue as well i have a clan mate in leeds he is on bts adsl2 8 mb service as he lives in the sticks a bit, he pings to our server at 24 currently i am at 36-44 he pays less than £20.00 a month for that someone please remind me why i pay Zen?

one final note i really am sick of hearing "engineer visit but its chargeable" or being told it isnt our fault by zen am sorry but i pay ZEN NOT BT please remove the interleaving from my line!

finally i know the net isnt set in stone things move its dynamic etc last week i had a 20-24 ping and no interleavcing this week i have 36-44 with interleaving seriously guys it isnt rocket science get BTs meddling fingers off my connection because am seriously about to move service if you cant/wont, my last thread on a similar note was a few months ago and i had a refund due to errors in process and lack of accountability yet it seems we are back to square one again i pay Zen not BT i dont care what BT does is or sells i expect Zen to resolve any complaints not refer me to BT

Edited by cssuk (Tue 07-May-13 14:04:40)

Seems to me all this chasing silly fibre speeds is still ending with problems. Yes, copper is often a faster ping. My 2km http://speedtest.net/result/2690543838.png

Hello,

The FTTC services are (outside of some rural schemes in limited areas) only available from BT Openreach, so that is a limitation for the vast majority of providers. They control the configuration of the fibre cabinets and that's where changes to interleaving occur, based on line performance.

On FTTC there's unfortunately no option to "opt out" of interleaving, as there was with ADSL services. We order our services on the "standard" profile which is the fastest (and least likely to apply interleaving) - so there's nothing we can tweak to improve things unfortunately.

I wouldn't expect a daily disconnect to result in interleaving on it's own, so I suspect something more may have occurred; if you PM me your Zen username I can take a look in more detail and respond appropriately.

Without visibility of what's happened to your line I can only answer in general terms, though the options really are as limited as to what you've been told - and if the interleaving has been applied just in response to general line conditions (very probable if you've not long had FTTC installed) then an engineer visit isn't the route to go - as your line would likely revert back to interleaving later.

If the disconnect no longer occurs (if that was the cause), or something else is now cleared, FTTC's line management is reasonably quick to change - so if that's the case things may improve anyhow. As I say though - this is a fairly general explanation as I don't have specifics for your line.

Kind regards,
Phil.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

Feb this year i changed router because i wanted a 5ghz wireless as my new devices had the capability and i wanted the extra bandwidth, again rang zen got the settings etc again and all was well, last week had an issue my pings suddenly start to hit 36-44-116 hmm ok contacted the game server host (its our server) and they tell me there is a little congestion but not to the extent i am experiencing and that the issue was being looked at as they believed they had a switch starting to fail under load, i also at this point rang zen to see if there were any other issues at our end thats when the fun started.

am told that my line now has interleaving activated as a gamer this is a big no no so i asked for it to be removed only to be told cant be done needs a engineer visit and is chargeable ! !

Firstly with FTTC the ISP has very little control over the line config, Think there are 3 settings available to them one being the default ,the others being extra reliability and one for more speed, these how ever would not turn off interleaving as that is controlled by BT openreach's DLM and only they are able to switch it off (by resetting the DSLAM in the FTTC street cab) and to do so will involve a engineers visit ,which could be chargeable to the isp hence why you have been told this by Zen

In reply to a post by cssuk:

seems interleaving was added because i had set my router to disconnect when not being used being nice and all trying to save the planet etc but it seems the bods at BT recognise this as a failure and added interleaving, btw thanks for letting me know!

As for you powering off the router this should not normally cause the BT openreach modem to loose sync with the dslam in the cab,(Providing you leave the modem switched on) it would loose the ppp session but not sync , even powering off the modem occasionally shouldn't have a detrimental impact

In reply to a post by cssuk:

my point? i pay Zen not BT why the hell is BT even involved with my line and why do i now need to either wait an indeterminate time for BTs systems to remove interleaving or pay a BT engineer to come and remove it? Why?!

Because BT openreach own the copper wires to your home, as well as the FTTC/H infrastructure So they get to call the shots

In reply to a post by cssuk:

heres the real issue as well i have a clan mate in leeds he is on bts adsl2 8 mb service as he lives in the sticks a bit, he pings to our server at 24 currently i am at 36-44 he pays less than £20.00 a month for that someone please remind me why i pay Zen?!

one final note i really am sick of hearing "engineer visit but its chargeable" or being told it isnt our fault by zen am sorry but i pay ZEN NOT BT please remove the interleaving from my line

finally i know the net isnt set in stone things move its dynamic etc last week i had a 20-24 ping and no interleavcing this week i have 36-44 with interleaving seriously guys it isnt rocket science get BTs meddling fingers off my connection because am seriously about to move service if you cant/wont, my last thread on a similar note was a few months ago and i had a refund due to errors in process and lack of accountability yet it seems we are back to square one again i pay Zen not BT i dont care what BT does is or sells i expect Zen to resolve any complaints not refer me to BT!

You can't really compare ADSL2+ and FTTC the DLM system is totally different with ADSL2+ it's BT wholesale who have control of DLM ect , and ISP's can remotely switch off interleaving etc or request this from BTWholesale,
Also you Friend may well be routed differently to the gaming server and other locations , and peering can and does also play a big part in latency levels too

My advice would be to where possible leave the bt modem switched on, as said powering off your router should not cause the modem to loose sync with the dslam @ the cab,If you are leaving the modem switched on all the time, then it's possible there is some kind of misconfiguration on zens equipment that causes the modem to loose sync as well as ppp session when you power off the router
But if it is loosing sync at other times of which you may not be aware of then there maybe a line fault, or an issue with the bt modem even

Edited by tommy45 (Tue 07-May-13 16:38:12)

Phil, i think you know exactly who i am we spoke at length a few days ago about this very issue in fact you emailed me earlier pointing out there was no error or issue, btw there is an option to opt out of interleaving when the line is initially set up but bt will override this if they consider it beneficial to the service, so it seems zen is just a reseller after all?

my bt provided modem has been unplugged probably about 10 times since last october several of which were due to power failures, zen however seem convinced the iissue was in fact the router as shown below
************************************************************

I have had monitoring on your circuit for the last few days and I am unable to locate any fault condition.

Your router is responding on a solid 14 ~ 15 ms unless the connection is under load, which is usual.
It is ONLY this section of your connection that interleaving can affect, in terms of latency. Any latency further down the line is due to the amount traffic at that time on that link.

The interleaving on your circuit is not the cause of the increased latency to your server, it can not be turned off as it is part of how the fibre DLM is programmed. It is designed to help with any line errors that can occur inherent with VDSL, and is in the VDSL specifications used throughout the UK.

The circuit is holding stable now that the router is not dropping the authenticated session currently up for

03d 19h 30m 01s

The PING to the BBC that you are stating, is not a valid concern as this will vary due to the amount of traffic over that link, and can not relate to your concerns over the latency to your gaming server which I have shown you is due to increased latency on their last hop when under load.
*************************************************************
so impasse again i appreciate the responses but speaking frankly if zen get charged by BT so be it, that isnt my concern and is something that frankly is a business expense, again i pay Zen, i would therefore expect Zen to fix the issue
*************************
Target Name: hosted-by.leaseweb.com
IP: 85.17.208.105
Date/Time: 07/05/2013 18:11:41 to 07/05/2013 18:11:56

1 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms [192.168.0.1]
2 * * * * * * * [-]
3 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms losubs.subs.llu1.mbr-roch.zen.net.uk [62.3.82.20]
4 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 62 ms 12 ms 12 ms ae0-152.dr1.mbr-roch.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.153]
5 13 ms 37 ms 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms ae2-0.cr1.kp-leeds.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.70]
6 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 23 ms 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms ge-3-1-0-0.cr2.kp-leeds.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.74]
7 17 ms 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 20 ms ge-3-0-0-0.cr1.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.78]
8 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 19 ms 18 ms 18 ms ge-2-0-0-0.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.42]
9 27 ms 29 ms 28 ms 30 ms 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms ten4-0.lon.leaseweb.net [195.66.225.56]
10 25 ms 25 ms 24 ms 46 ms 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms po100.sr1.evo.leaseweb.net [85.17.100.226]
11 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms hosted-by.leaseweb.com [85.17.208.105]

Ping statistics for hosted-by.leaseweb.com
Packets: Sent = 7, Received = 7, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 25ms, Maximum = 25ms, Average = 25ms
**************************
this is a very short duration trace to my NL server as can be seen hop 4 is the worse followed by hop 10 in isolation i wouldnt really be concerned but if i leave it ging the statistics i get show much worse response times in the uk
************************************
Target Name: hosted-by.leaseweb.com
IP: 85.17.208.105
Date/Time: 07/05/2013 18:11:41 to 07/05/2013 18:16:08

Hop Sent Err PL% Min Max Avg Host Name / [IP]
1 47 0 0.0 0 0 0 [192.168.0.1]
2 47 47 100.0 0 0 0 [-]
3 47 0 0.0 12 12 12 losubs.subs.llu1.mbr-roch.zen.net.uk [62.3.82.20]
4 47 0 0.0 12 62 13 ae0-152.dr1.mbr-roch.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.153]
5 47 0 0.0 13 69 14 ae2-0.cr1.kp-leeds.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.70]
6 47 0 0.0 13 31 14 ge-3-1-0-0.cr2.kp-leeds.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.74]
7 47 0 0.0 17 46 19 ge-3-0-0-0.cr1.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.78]
8 47 0 0.0 18 25 18 ge-2-0-0-0.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.42]
9 47 0 0.0 26 31 28 ten4-0.lon.leaseweb.net [195.66.225.56]
10 47 0 0.0 24 68 26 po100.sr1.evo.leaseweb.net [85.17.100.226]
11 47 0 0.0 24 26 25 hosted-by.leaseweb.com [85.17.208.105]

***********************************************

longer run shown above again the worst response times are within the uk
march this year we were testing as some folks had connection issues i just happen to have a copy of my trace from then anyone who cant see the deterioration is frankly kidding themselves
****************************************
march 2013


C:\Users\css>tracert 85.17.208.105

Tracing route to hosted-by.leaseweb.com [85.17.208.105]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms losubs.subs.llu1.mbr-roch.zen.net.uk [62.3.82.20
]
4 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms ae0-152.dr1.mbr-roch.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.153]
5 5 ms 5 ms 5 ms ae2-0.cr1.kp-leeds.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.70]
6 6 ms 5 ms 6 ms ge-3-1-0-0.cr2.kp-leeds.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.74]

7 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms ge-3-0-0-0.cr1.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.78]
8 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms ge-2-0-0-0.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.42]
9 21 ms 19 ms 20 ms ten4-0.lon.leaseweb.net [195.66.225.56]
10 * 17 ms * po100.sr1.evo.leaseweb.net [85.17.100.226]
11 * * 17 ms hosted-by.leaseweb.com [85.17.208.105]
************************************

as i said please fix the damn thing also please note i am also routed via leeds

Edited by cssuk (Tue 07-May-13 18:23:31)

Hello,

It wasn't me - no; I don't work in a Technical Support role. We do have a few other Phils who do though.

On Interleaving; this isn't something we can turn off at order or afterward. The only options we have are "Standard", "Stable" and "Super-stable" - where "Standard" is what we order - and is the leastlikely to apply Interleaving.

Interleaving isn't a "fault" condition, but is applied to the line to ensure consistency and reliability. This is why we can't treat the engineer visit as a "business expense"; essentially you're asking us to pay for an engineer to reset the condition to avoid something that's automatically been applied as that is how BTO have designed the service to operate; and we've made clear that your line will adapt automatically. Because it's automatic, and not the result of a fault condition, it is very likely to come back on again. What you're asking is outside of how the product is designed and described to work - so this is why the risk of an engineer charge would be passed to you.

There are a lot of things that can affect what DLM does including (but not limited to):

- changes in weather
- line issues/faults
- cross-talk from other FTTC users (which will gradually increase from when FTTC is first available, onward, as more users take up the FTTC service).

We can work on a fault if it's present (which it isn't, in this case) - but the rest are outside of an ISPs control.

On latency; our network doesn't prioritise ICMP, so the 'max' hop responses prior to the destination are a red herring. The important thing is the latency to your server is stable - as the results you provided show - the min/max/avg are around 25ms - i.e.

11 47 0 0.0 24 26 25 hosted-by.leaseweb.com [85.17.208.105]

I did my own ping from the office, using 100 packets, and this gave a similarly-consistent response:

Ping statistics for 85.17.208.105:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

As you know, the hop between our network and your router is 12ms, so we're looking at almost identical response times, so the increase in these examples is purely the effect of interleaving.

my bt provided modem has been unplugged probably about 10 times since last october several of which were due to power failures, zen however seem convinced the iissue was in fact the router as shown below

That isn't my reading of the what's been said - in fact the response seems to say the router is responding consistently well - and no fault exists:

************************************************************

I have had monitoring on your circuit for the last few days and I am unable to locate any fault condition.

Your router is responding on a solid 14 ~ 15 ms unless the connection is under load, which is usual.

While I appreciate it's not what you were hoping to hear, I'm sorry to say we are in a situation where there's nothing that can be done to ensure interleaving isn't applied to your line. The service is operating as it is designed to do.

regards,
Phil.

OP hadn't really thought about it from an eco freindly view before but every router in the country being forced to be left on sure must add up to a lot of co2 emmisions over the course of a year. Would i turn my router off if there was no downsides - yes i probably would and so would a hell of a lot more people. Design flaw imo or just plain lazyness, there must be a better way to test for faults.

right thats it another week later and the connection has gone even worse i now ping 36 to uk servers and 60+ to our nl server the uk speedtest servers where i had latency of 10ms to the 4 london test servers over the last few months now pings at 20-30 ms i think its time i took my custom elsewhere i would recommend anyone who has zen fibre only doesnt also swap to the zen talk package as well, thinking back its only since i swapped i started getting these issues that have ramped up over the last couple of weeks, sad day seems my local town isp who i have been with for years or at least as soon as LLU was available is going to lose out, i will request my mac on tuesday when i am off work as CS isnt in when i get home.

You seem to be angry at the ISP because something has changed on your line that is outwith the ISP's control. I had issues with my line about 3 months ago and I also got somewhat frustrated with Support's 'have you done this and that approach to problem solving'. That said, in this respect, they are no different from any other ISP that I have used. I would love to see ISPs develop some from of test kit/monitoring device that could be plugged into the BTOR test socket to check line conditions in a way acceptable to BTOR. In my case, I had a loss of service at 2am which resulted in a speed drop from 75/16 to 37/1.1. BB disconnections when the phone rang suggested to me a line HR fault. Over a period of weeks, my line has slowly recovered back to a 80/20 profile with interleaving to an 80/20 profile without interleaving. Of interest to me, is that interleaving resulted in a speed drop of about 9Mbps; i.e., when interleaving was turned off, my max attainable speed increased from 84Mbps to about 93Mbps. I confess that I have no idea what interleaving does to Ping.

your spot on i am angry at Zens inability to control a service i pay them for, they claim to be a small isp with exceptional levels of service and support hmm in the past yes i have been happy the last couple of years my experiences have been nothing short of sheer frustration and disbelief at the hoops i am forced to jump through to resolve issues and the apparent total reliability Zen seems to have developed on OR resolving any issues they have so i see no reason to pay extra for what frankly i can get everywhere else for less.

for the record i used to work in O2s broadband support team so have more knowledge than an average user and thats what makes the fob offs even more annoying that and the total denial that the service is ok when the evidence clearly shows there is an issue, perhaps the evidence of losing £60.00 a month will be noticed but somehow i doubt it