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

You're aware that if you use FTTC again exactly the same thing will happen with the new ISP and they'll be completely unable to do anything to improve your latency, right?

If you need an ISP that has end to end control to ensure your latency isn't increased by line management your only option is to take an LLU service. Sky interleave and run line management, Be and O2 are going to be assimilated into Sky's packages in the not too distant future, your options are a service that resells TalkTalk Business or one that resells Cable and Wireless.

hmm maybe but at least i wont be paying over the odds for a third party service. as for cable and wireless or talk talk ...please i would rather use plusnet!

Edited by cssuk (Sat 11-May-13 14:11:36)

In reply to a post by cssuk:

hmm maybe but at least i wont be paying over the odds for a third party service. as for cable and wireless or talk talk ...please i would rather use plusnet!

What's wrong with the wholesale products of Cable and Wireless and TalkTalk Business?

tbh its not an option i would consider due to there own customer complaints nor is it something i want to discuss on this thread, this thread is about my unhappiness with Zen, perhaps you should try ti IGNITE the topic on your own thread

Hi,

There isn't an LLU option for FTTC; the closest option is GEA - but that still uses the Openreach FTTC cabinets and DSLAMs and therefore DLM, so no ISP has a means to control the specific configuration of a customer's line.

Even without LLU, via BT on ADSL/ADSL2+, we could opt out of interleaving - but sadly that isn't something available on FTTC.

regards,
Phil.

Edited by deleted (Mon 13-May-13 10:14:12)

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

You're aware that if you use FTTC again exactly the same thing will happen with the new ISP and they'll be completely unable to do anything to improve your latency, right?

If you need an ISP that has end to end control to ensure your latency isn't increased by line management your only option is to take an LLU service. Sky interleave and run line management, Be and O2 are going to be assimilated into Sky's packages in the not too distant future, your options are a service that resells TalkTalk Business or one that resells Cable and Wireless.

To confirm the above - at TalkTalk Business DLM is switched off by default on our LLU copper pair DSL lines. On our LLU lines (90%+ of the lines we provide) we have full manual control of all LLU options - interleaving off/on/amount of interleaving applied, hard-set SNR margins, etc. DLM can be activated if required, though from experience most lines perform better with it off.

As Phil says, on FTTC lines we don't have the same control options available as we go through Openreach DSLAMs in FTTC cabinets.

Sorry I wasn't clear, first paragraph did mention the gentleman taking FTTC again and that it didn't matter who it was from. Aware that VULA will be the closest to LLU available over FTTx.

you confident aaisp would fob him off also?

surely the right thing to do is zen open a support ticket to BTw.

stating line is unstable require investigation. Proof is that line is interleaved and interleaving is applied when line instability detected.

The debate here seems to be tho that zen are stating interleaving can be applied in a stable condition or they are stating line instability is not a fault.

I did read zens policy on faults in their t&c's and it scared me right off, its like a polar opposite to aaisp's policy.

Still waiting on zen's pricing for their own backhaul pricing (only reason I held of aaisp for now) but their fault policy will make it tough for me to sign up I think.

also as I understand flipping between different products reset's DLM without an engineer visit, so switch to 40/10 from 80/20 and DLM is reset.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 18-May-13 17:49:59)

yeah seems always the story DLM off = better.

What I think would be a reasonable policy is openreach allow DLM to be disabled, they provide an API for isp's to make changes and in return the isp's agree if they report a fault DLM has to be turned on first whilst fault investigated. That would be a compromise. As I think BT/openreach just utilise DLM to mitigate faults. Some people have FTTC service with very high interleaving levels applied so probably have running service on quite dodgy lines but DLM has in those instances possibly reduced the number of fault calls.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

yeah seems always the story DLM off = better.

What I think would be a reasonable policy is openreach allow DLM to be disabled, they provide an API for isp's to make changes and in return the isp's agree if they report a fault DLM has to be turned on first whilst fault investigated. That would be a compromise. As I think BT/openreach just utilise DLM to mitigate faults. Some people have FTTC service with very high interleaving levels applied so probably have running service on quite dodgy lines but DLM has in those instances possibly reduced the number of fault calls.

Funny you should mention this; when I worked at Zen we did some work with BT Wholesale that showed that around a third of the faults we submitted to BT Wholesale (BTW only, not BT Openreach via BTW) were legitimate requests to hard-set SNR margin (effectively turning DLM off) for unstable lines where DLM was setting the SNR margin too low for the line to remain stable.

We submitted to BTW that based on what we'd seen, if ISPs had the ability to manually hard-set SNR margin themselves for these particular lines we wouldn't need to raise faults to BTW on them to get SNR values changed, resulting in a far quicker fix for the customer and less work (and associated costs) for both ISPs and BTW. A tool was then released to ISPs enabling them to 'soft-set' SNR margin, but not hard-set it - if DLM decides the values set in the tool aren't suitable, DLM overides the SNR margin value set by the ISP, which again leads to the line being unstable necessitating a fault to be raised to BTW.

whilst i agree zen should be able to do what you ask.

your splitting hairs over a few ping and from my own experience of online comp play you need to suck it up and practice more or change how you play. my opinion unless you are at the very very top of the game you play.

out of interest what game/s do you play? do you play for money online?

dipending on the game, being at a disadvantage can make you a beter player.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

you confident aaisp would fob him off also?

AAISP is no different. They advised exactly the same thing to me, when my FTTC line went south a few days ago. BT Openreach got the line fixed again within hours, but in the early hours of the following morning, I clocked on the AAISP metering graphs that interleaving had been switched on (the fault had probably made the DLM twitchy). I called them up about it and got exactly the same explanation as Zen have already provided the OP.

Thankfully, after leaving it alone, my line switched back to fastpath after 2 to 3 days, so it's now normal again. But I admit it is annoying not having this level of control, and it being left in the hands of the DLM at the cabinet, which only a BT engineer can change.

I think people need to be more aware of these caveats between different types of services before signing up. If latency is such a big deal to the OP, maybe a bonded ADSL2+ solution with an LLU provider or what not would have been a better choice than FTTC.

well here we are several weeks later MAC code in hand BTW speed test shows 75mb down 12 up which has dropped from previous 17 well 16.9 interestingly ping shows as 44ms so it seems interleaving is still well and truly on how it can be with that quality of line bear in mind its all brand new i will never know, as several have posted i think zen could flag this as a DLM error and have it reset but it seems it may not be policy, i did take the trouble to contact Richard Tang about this and he has responded that he will look into it and see what can be done so watch this space, pings to our NL server are still 36-44-52 which when your playing against players with 12-16ms makes a big difference i dont care how good you are or put it another way by the time i see another player he has shot me bit frustrating to say the least.

interesting but I know a few guys on aaisp FTTC. One had the same issue and got a different reply, engineer was sent out, and aaisp spoke to engineer on phone (after engineer played dumb on arrival), then the profile got reset. Openreach tried to charge, aaisp disputed it and charge removed.

I knew this prior to making my previous comment.

Yes its hassle for isp's but hassle does not equal not possible.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 27-May-13 10:34:55)

I suppose this is like most things in life - make enough noise about it and people will care enough to sort the problem out. Shame it has to be this way nowadays.

Of course, I never said it couldn't be done. But as you've just advised, a full-on BT engineer needs to physically visit the cabinet to do it, unlike ADSL* services where it can be done remotely by the ISP at the exchange. I'm not surprised BT try and charge for that, so I'm impressed with AAISP in the case you speak of. I suspect there was a genuine fault on the line (again, blame pointing at BT) which is why AAISP managed to have the charged dropped. Nicely done!

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

I note you changed the router and that is when this problem started happening. Have you tried reverting back to your old router for a few days to see if the DLM in the cabinet switches the line back to fastpath? I suggest you try this. I presume you've performed all the other standard tests like the quiet-line test for possible noise on the line?

From all that you say, this is the only thing that has changed. And this is when the DLM started to apply interleaving. At the moment, my finger points to your new modem, not any fault on your line.

no interleaving was added 3 days before i opened this thread the only difference in the two routers is one has 5ghz one hasnt, same brand etc that and the fact i set it to connect on demand ie if the conn isnt used for 15mins it logs off and goes to sleep interleaving wasnt added for at least 2 months after the new router the only possibility zen can see is the fact i set it for connect on demand, irrespective of this the modem is always on anyway and is between the router and the wall socket, we had 3 power failures a couple of weeks before all this started due to local road works damaging a cable but apart from that no issues at all there really is no reason for DLM to step in so to me this constitutes a fault as i say MAC in hand so i will migrate unless its resolved, it seems BT is still screwing us all irrespective of whom you pay if this isnt a monopoly i would love to know what is!

Edited by cssuk (Mon 27-May-13 11:43:30)

Firstly lets get this straight. This is not a fault. It is interleaving and it is designed to work this way. It's on and it's keeping you connected without instability. It's doing the job right. It's working as it should. It's not faulty. End of that.

The way fibre works means that overtime as more and more people get fibre crosstalk becomes higher and higher between lines. This means that over time the chance of interleaving coming on is higher and higher.

It cannot be disabled without BT openreach coming out as stated. This is potentially chargable. BT have to come out as all of the lines and fibre cabs etc are BT openreach owned.

Interleaving will have come on due to some noise on the line. This could be as simple as an extra 20 customers getting fibre in your area, on your local cab, thus pushing your crosstalk up meaning that you can no longer support a stable line without interleaving.
This is not a fault. Interleaving is designed to kick in here and do the job it's doing.

As you can see short of the ISP removing all 20 customers in this case there is nothing they can do.

Yes BT openreach can come out and reset things. In the above case within a few hours interleaving will be back on as the 20 extra customers will not just vanish. The additional noise that caused interleaving (the extra 20 customers) initially would cause it again.

ADSL2 is slightly different. ISPs have more control and can put you on fast path & reduce the sync to compensate where necessary. FTTC is totally different.

BT is not screwing you. Interleaving is a fact of life on the current setup for FTTC.

You will often notice your sync gets less and less overtime on FTTC too. This is due to increased crosstalk overtime as takeup increases too.

ISPs do not guarantee an interleaving free line on FTTC. You could go with any ISP and it would still no doubt be interleaved.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

The way fibre works means that overtime as more and more people get fibre crosstalk becomes higher and higher between lines. This means that over time the chance of interleaving coming on is higher and higher.

Never considered crosstalk over time. You make a good point there.

However, this then begs a question. If latency is important for some people, who-o-why do BT put everyone on the same standard FTTC profile (full-sync) and then rate limit at their equipment? (for the 40/10 connection, in my case). If the thing only synced at 40/10, it could probably operate fully at this sync speed without the need for interleaving, even with 20 more people coming into the cabinet generating cross talk. Instead, they choose to make the line sync at the maximum possible and then rate limit to create their 40/10 connection. Seems backward to me.

my oh my arnt you the tender one!

i know and understand how and why interleaving works, on poor connections its valid and has its good points on A1 connections ie 75 yards from my cabinet with a brand new line and what can frankly be described as perfect connection ie 75-83 MBs down and 17 up why do i need to have it ? AND why do i need to involve OR to maintain my ZEN connection read the whole thread and absorb thye reason for my complaint before you get all uppity please there is no need for DLM on my connection its perfect the DLM i suspect is broken which echoes a huge swage of complaints on the BT infinity 2 forum btw

I read the thread.
Highly doubt it's broken.
It's a bad system granted however even on full sync I frequently see interleaving come on. When I look back it's always for a reason (I have my stats recording).

If you keep the equipment on for 21 solid days I'm sure things will improve in that time. If they don't I'd say that it's due to your line conditions / as you say a fixed profile which isn't overly common nowadays.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 27-May-13 15:45:53)

Think about it, where are the cables with the highest number of VDSL circuits within them ?

Those closest to the cab. So the closer you are, the more likely you are to have more VDSL circuits running in the same cable as yours.

AND why do i need to involve OR to maintain my ZEN connection

Because Zen are reselling an Openreach product.

yes the isp needs to get the engineer out, so whilst not impossible openreach have made it a much more harder process than it needs to be I expect as a deterrent.

whilst I agree the isp's are put in a tough position. I certianly dont let openreach of as easy as you.

there is quite a few things openreach could do but simply they choose not to.

eg. they can choose to not have a 24/7/365 DLM so the line might go unstable but with the benefit of always fast path.
they can make DLM up the snr or band the line in preference to applying interleaving, they choose not to.
they can decrease crosstalk by lowering density of lines, applying vectoring, thus far have chosen not to although vectoring is been trialed now.
they can maybe resolve it by a pair swap, we dont know if this would help the OP as he hasnt managed to get it that far.

of course we dont know why he is been interleaved it could be crosstalk, it may not be crosstalk.

if his fault is ongoing ie. the FEC error rate is high, then there is little point in having the profile reset, the source of the errors has to be squashed first else interleaving will just come back.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 27-May-13 20:04:31)

In cases where there's been a fault that has affected a profile, and the profile isn't changing back as it should, we would send an engineer out. The individual circumstances will determine what corrective action is taken (or if any is appropriate at all).

regards,
Phil.

In reply to a post by mixt:

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

The way fibre works means that overtime as more and more people get fibre crosstalk becomes higher and higher between lines. This means that over time the chance of interleaving coming on is higher and higher.

Never considered crosstalk over time. You make a good point there.

However, this then begs a question. If latency is important for some people, who-o-why do BT put everyone on the same standard FTTC profile (full-sync) and then rate limit at their equipment? (for the 40/10 connection, in my case). If the thing only synced at 40/10, it could probably operate fully at this sync speed without the need for interleaving, even with 20 more people coming into the cabinet generating cross talk. Instead, they choose to make the line sync at the maximum possible and then rate limit to create their 40/10 connection. Seems backward to me.

latency important?


taken, copy and pasted from test results about 3 racers from the northwest 200 road races. expert opinions. and results they gathered just this nw200. it's up on bbc now.

Human reaction time is between 150 and 300 milliseconds. If a rider is travelling at 200mph, he is travelling 90 metres per second. In the one-fifth of a second he takes to react, he will have travelled about 18 metres. This means that if anything unexpected happens within 20 metres of a rider, a high speed collision can be unavoidable.

the report goes on to show that you react differently at different heartrates.

interesting read and relavent in my opinion.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/22488580

good luck in sorting it.

Edited by deleted (Tue 28-May-13 19:21:14)

However, this then begs a question. If latency is important for some people, who-o-why do BT put everyone on the same standard FTTC profile (full-sync) and then rate limit at their equipment? (for the 40/10 connection, in my case). If the thing only synced at 40/10, it could probably operate fully at this sync speed without the need for interleaving, even with 20 more people coming into the cabinet generating cross talk. Instead, they choose to make the line sync at the maximum possible and then rate limit to create their 40/10 connection. Seems backward to me.

Um, is that true? My line is able to support well over 80/20 and when I initially had it activated, it sync'd at 40/10 (because that's what was ordered). My line can sync in excess of 80/20 (about 96/25 by my estimates from Openreach's test equipment. So if it always sync'd at the max possible, surely I'd have sync'd at 96/25 or 80/20 even though I was on 40/10 - as I understand (and based on everything I've ever seen), it sync's at the rate the line is actually provisioned at (or the nearest lower down if it can't support the full rate), but it doesn't sync above the agreed speed.

ah well thanks all for the responses its pretty academic now the connection has gone even worse to the point i ping google (8.8.8.8) at 70ms yet i just downloaded a linux iso on torrent at 8.9MBs and currently uploading the same at 2.1 MBs granted the number of seeds etc can slew the results a little, current ping to our gameserver is 65 and a trace shows the contention is within zens network which peaks at a ping of 55 on 2 hops the nl hops show 17 and 22 respectively i guess zens network or peers are just causing the issue i also went direct to the bt modem to eliminate the router, just used my MAC and will be off Zen in 2 weeks shame its my local co and i have been loyal for many years paying what frankly is over the odds for limited download capacity but the ping made it worth it now thats gone i may as well save the money, just got my zen bill today £62.00 thats the monthly loss they will have in future.

I did a traceroute to your server the other day and the latency shot up at their london node. It would be fine if the packet loss was low, I used to play quake2 on US servers with a ping of 300 and still hand most players their bottom.

Go elsewhere. BT is far cheaper & ultimately on fttc you don't get the advanced management as much.
I agree that on fibre anything other than mass market ISP is currently overpriced and not really any better.

I had an engineer out once to reset my profile via sky. They promised me no fee. The profile got stuck after a line issue. It was pretty painless.

I like zen & think they're great but it's not worth £62!!! I have sky TV fibre & line rental for less.

In reply to a post by cssuk:

just used my MAC and will be off Zen in 2 weeks

In your first post you stated:

i took out the fibre service last october and use my own router

As the initial minimum contract term for FTTC is 12 months, are you not in danger of being 'pinged'* by Zen for the cost of the contract through to October if you leave early?

* Sorry - couldn't resist.

Hi,

I've really tried my best to explain that final hop response is all that matters - but perhaps this explains it more clearly than I can - it's from Nessoft's Ping Plotter documentation:

Packet loss or latency at intermediate hops

We know we can't address the interleaving issue as that is a consequence of line conditions. If there was something else happening then we could have looked at it, but all we've seen is evidence that interleaving is affecting latency; which is what is expected. It may be the case that over time we can get more control of that from Openreach (as FTTC becomes more commonplace), but for the immediate future we and any other ISP are stuck with it as it is.

I'm sorry you feel you have to leave over this issue; we would naturally have preferred to be able to improve matters if it was possible. Hopefully the service you choose is more suitable than FTTC is to your requirements.

kind regards,
Phil

its ftcc again with another provider but there are some differences firstly its unlimited wheras zen has a GB cap and non traffic shaped as is Zens tbh but secondly i will be paying a lot less the way i look at it if BT is about to stick there nose into my connection which as others have mentioned several times is inevitable with Fibre then frankly i may as well save myself £30.00 a Month and nip off to the pub on high ping nights with the proceeds, i guess what i am saying is zen currently dont have a reason for me to stick it out you cant /wont do anything and your limited and expensive to boot not exactly a glowing referance is it, whoever negotiated the contract with OR really needs to consider the long term implications of being just another third party provider at a higher price point, right now i do feel the whole industry really is mis selling the fibre dream as none of this DLM is mentioned anywhere just "blazing fast speeds" etc

now if only the end hop mattered please can someone explain why my pings increased to the levels it has when ping plots show the last hop as 17ms you would asume the game would be at about that less overhead and the overhead is the interleaving but i guess we agree to disagree i have sent enough plots and spent enough time on this as it is i have moved on

Edited by cssuk (Wed 29-May-13 15:54:02)

seems I got it wrong.

My friend corrected me, the did get the engineer out and the profile reset but aaisp didnt allow it just for a profile reset, they found what they thought was a fault (and causing he high error rate) so thats why the engineer came out, there was a fault fixed as well, he has no idea what the fault was tho.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 01-Jun-13 03:29:58)

now days the mass market isps offer a better service than they did say 3+ years ago I agree. With the lack of short term contracts as well and LLU on FTTC things are much closer.

However if IPV6 or/and a static ip is required there is still reasons to go away from mass market.

In reply to a post by kamelion:

I did a traceroute to your server the other day and the latency shot up at their london node. It would be fine if the packet loss was low, I used to play quake2 on US servers with a ping of 300 and still hand most players their bottom.

what the complaint is about and css i can see where he comes from. ..............sodding pixel campers:P. anyway adapt the play if your at a disadvantage.

In reply to a post by lexden16:

In reply to a post by cssuk:

just used my MAC and will be off Zen in 2 weeks

In your first post you stated:

i took out the fibre service last october and use my own router

As the initial minimum contract term for FTTC is 12 months, are you not in danger of being 'pinged'* by Zen for the cost of the contract through to October if you leave early?

* Sorry - couldn't resist.

same. dof you say?

well happy to report my migration went through a day early and i am now on Sky Fibre, speeds are if anything a little better than zens at 86Mb down and funnily enough 21Mb up which is more than advertised but hey ho, best thing though my pings have gone back to normal ie 12-16 uk and 20-24 in NL and bbc pings are normalised

C:\Users\css>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.253.67] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 212.58.253.67:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 12ms, Average = 12ms

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

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms SkyRouter.Home [192.168.0.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 17 ms 15 ms 15 ms ip-84-38-37-16.easynet.co.uk [84.38.37.16]
4 14 ms 14 ms 11 ms 027809a5.bb.sky.com [2.120.9.165]
5 17 ms 15 ms 15 ms lon.tc2.leaseweb.net [195.66.225.100]
6 19 ms 20 ms 18 ms po80.sr2.evo.leaseweb.net [62.212.80.74]
7 18 ms 18 ms 17 ms hosted-by.leaseweb.com [85.17.208.105]

what cant speak cant lie so i guess the lesson here yet again to Zen is grow a pair if BT is messing with your Customers bang the drum and stand up for them, i moved after being a Zen customer for many years as this is the second time i have had an issue where Zen made me put up with poor service simply because it required an engineer visit and it would potentially cost, hmm guys if things work ok people wouldnt be calling to complain, if the addition of the interleaving only had a neglible effect on my gaming why did i call and pinpoint the exact day when the connection went bad, perhaps Zen is immune from current issues and can afford to lose custom at the hands of BT who knows but long term it isnt really a winning formula is it?

anyway line drawn sadly i still dont have an answer from Zen about the poor service i have been in touch with Richard Tang who has passed the issue on to head of networking/problem resolution and it seems he is struggling too as he is still looking for answers a couple of weeks later, perhaps the BT deal really is as bad as it looks from where i am standing who knows, Sad day tbh.

By the sound of things (ignoring the incorrect reporting of speeds) the migration has led to DLM being reset. I would expect, over time - and assuming Openreach haven't made any physical changes as part of the migration - DLM will take effect again and you'll see your line tend towards similar performance as it settled at with Zen, as it isn't something the ISP controls.

regards,
Phil.

Zen - 9 hops to leaseweb.net

Sky - 5 hops to leaseweb.net

That I believe, is controlled by the ISP.

The number of hops is largely irrelevant. With high speed (10G) Ethernet links the serialisation delay is pretty much insignificant, instead distance is usually the significant factor.

I suspect the reason the trace via Sky shows less hops is due to them using layer 2 backhaul to a London BRAS or using MPLS/L2TP which will hide the intermediate layer 3 hops (can't tell as the 2nd hop in the trace didn't respond).

Zen peer with leaseweb at LINX exactly the same as Sky do (195.66.225.56 is a leaseweb router on the LINX LAN, as is 195.66.225.100).

I've included a traceroute from one of our servers located in our headquarters (Sandbrook Park, Rochdale) showing several hops with no noticeable latency increase. With a non-interleaved FTTC circuit you'd expect latency of around 5-6ms so add this to the 12ms shown below and the results are identical.

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

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 212.23...<removed>
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 88.98...<removed>
3 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 88.98...<removed>
4 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms ae1-0.dr2.sp-roch.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.94]
5 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms ae1-0.cr2.kp-leeds.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.98]
6 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms ge-3-0-0-0.cr1.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.78]
7 6 ms 7 ms 7 ms ge-2-0-0-0.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.42]
8 18 ms 16 ms 14 ms ten4-0.lon.leaseweb.net [195.66.225.56]
9 12 ms 12 ms 14 ms po100.sr1.evo.leaseweb.net [85.17.100.226]
10 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms hosted-by.leaseweb.com [85.17.208.105]

Trace complete.

cssuk - Do you know who specifically your query was referred to?

It's unfortunate that we weren't able to resolve the interleaving issue for you, being an ex-QW/Q3 player I fully understand the frustration of having poor latency. We do need work with BT Openreach further in order to establish a mechanism for us (and other ISPs) to have more control over FTTC line profiles.

Regards,

Carl

Design Team
Network & Infrastructure

Sounds interesting because the speed of my 80/20 service on Sky is exactly 80/20.

I smell a rat.

I've yet to see a single case where the line provisioned at anything over 40/10 or 80/20 if it was fast enough for those speeds regardless of provider.

In reply to a post by Acidic:

The number of hops is largely irrelevant. With high speed (10G) Ethernet links the serialisation delay is pretty much insignificant, instead distance is usually the significant factor.

Thank god someone said what I was thinking. The ping and hop obsessives haven't a clue. Sky could well not show all hops for all I know to make it look better, via various perfectly legitimate scenarios.

Hops are meaningless in this context.

I suspect the reason the trace via Sky shows less hops is due to them using layer 2 backhaul to a London BRAS or using MPLS/L2TP which will hide the intermediate layer 3 hops (can't tell as the 2nd hop in the trace didn't respond).

*nods* - which is what I wrote above basically before I'd read this bit of your post.

In reply to a post by Acidic:

The number of hops is largely irrelevant. With high speed (10G) Ethernet links the serialisation delay is pretty much insignificant, instead distance is usually the significant factor.

So you seem to be saying Zen has no control over the number of hops. I think the number of hops is important because each one increases the likelihood of latency occurring.

That isn't what's been stated. However, the issue here wasn't due to latency occurring within our network, so what could happen is irrelevant.

An ISP does control how it's network is designed and configured, but without a customer knowing the specific designs deployed by two ISPs being compared it's not possible to say with certainty that less hops displayed actually means less hand-over points in an ISPs network - i.e the point Carl's made regarding layer 2 back-haul - which would hide hops, essentially. Sky won't have built their connectivity from London directly to Rochdale without data passing through intermediate locations - which simply don't appear on a trace route; however, if you take the Sky traceroute as representing every handover point in Sky's network that would be the only conclusion you could come to.

As Carl's highlighted, the latency on Zen and Sky's networks match very closely for non-interleaved lines - which makes sense given the data is travelling about the same distance and our handover to Leaseweb is in LINX, as is Sky's.

regards,
Phil.

So you don't have any control over interleaving either?

On FTTC, no. No ISP does - and that was the point in this thread, if you've followed it all.

It's purely down to Openreach and DLM unfortunately. An engineer can attend to change it, but it would be re-applied when DLM determines it's needed again - and if the engineer wasn't fixing a fault condition it would be a chargeable visit too.

On ADSL/ADSL2+ we could opt out/in or set as auto. No such functionality exists for FTTC - and that's something we'll take up with Openreach (as, hopefully, other ISPs will too).

regards,
Phil.

Re: interleaving on FTTC

I have a suspicion that this is all to do with the application of vectoring in the future. This will require the DLM to be in TOTAL control of all the lines in a cable binder.
It is not helpful having someone outside the loop (the ISP) unilaterally decide that they want to switch interleaving off on one line. Under vectoring this would mean the DLM will now need to alter(or at least re-analyse) the parameters on all the other lines in the same binder.

So my best guess (I'm prepared to eat my hat) is the BTOR will not release control of interleaving.

That's a good point, I hadn't considered. Probably a discussion more suited to the FTTC forum here, but the vectoring solution would need to be re-analysing regularly in any case I would have thought - as the results of crosstalk isn't the only thing DLM is adjusting to handle?

In reply to a post by Acidic:

I suspect the reason the trace via Sky shows less hops is due to them using layer 2 backhaul to a London BRAS or using MPLS/L2TP which will hide the intermediate layer 3 hops (can't tell as the 2nd hop in the trace didn't respond).

Yes indeed. Straight into an all MPLS network so no intermediate hops visible from IP's point of view.

The individual exchanges go to edge routers, ERs, which function as MPLS PEs. On the Sky MPF network the MSAN doesn't respond to pings generally and is the CE so from there it's all blank until leaving the MPLS network. Looking at traceroutes seems Sky use PHP to reduce load on some core routers.

Been a very long time since I touched that network so can't assume a whole bunch of things haven't changed. It was originally conceived to only run native IP in the core for the IGPs.

Finch Read is his name, still no response other than he is awaiting information 3 Weeks+ now, btw my Sky connection is still working 100% perfect can DL torrents at 8.9MBs and upload the same at 2.1-2.2 if the demand is there obviously there are some overheads involved but two seperate Torrent clients reported the same results, pings are still the same as well only thing am unhappy about is the sky hub i have to use as it only supports 2.4Ghz wifi but am working on that and expect to be able to use my own router shortly.

FTTC is still a fickle beast. Like all the broadband products released in the last decade, it will probably follow the same path of flaky, not bad, bit unreliable again, massively oversubscribed, finally has enough bandwidth, lines settle down again.

It's all about what you need though - if the automated systems take your fttc down to half it's speed, then that's one thing, but if they drop 5 or even 10% off but then remain stable then that's often worth living with.

In general we always tell customers we'll sacrifice speed for stability, and that's with individual line faults as well as with bonding internet lines. What use is bandwidth if the service is up and down like a yo yo or every 5th packet is lost!

I hope your line continues to be stable - we're waiting for cross talk to become a widespread issue, so will be useful information when people start posting slow downs in specific areas.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

You're aware that if you use FTTC again exactly the same thing will happen with the new ISP and they'll be completely unable to do anything to improve your latency, right?

If you need an ISP that has end to end control to ensure your latency isn't increased by line management your only option is to take an LLU service. Sky interleave and run line management, Be and O2 are going to be assimilated into Sky's packages in the not too distant future, your options are a service that resells TalkTalk Business or one that resells Cable and Wireless.

just thought an update was in order been on skys ulimited fttc service almost a year had 1 issue in that time where engineer disconnected me in error resolved with a single call, for the record heres my ping to bbc.co.uk btw ping to NL server is 20ms uk servers is 16ms or less, couldnt be happier with the service

C:\Users\Css>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.246.104] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.246.104: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57
Reply from 212.58.246.104: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=57
Reply from 212.58.246.104: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57
Reply from 212.58.246.104: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 212.58.246.104:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

hopefully Zen will one day return to being as good as they once were

Zen are probably still in denial.