GEA November migration has wrecked my London FTTC connection

After spending two months with Zen support trying to get this sorted, I'm seriously considering swapping providers. Prior to this event, Zen was always great. My connection was pretty much perfect, max sync and 0 packet loss. Since Nov and the GEA migration (which I wasn't aware of, until Zen finally admitted it to me - and still not entirely sure what it means), my connection has been plagued by constant packet loss that spikes during evenings. It's not major, but it's enough to affect gaming and be generally noticeable - on the order of 1-5% packet loss at all times. In the last couple days, this has gotten far worse - spikes of 20% packet loss during the day for a couple hours. And occasionally there will be similar spikes, amongst the constant packet loss. I'm getting sick of the terrible connection!

I have collected reams of evidence showing the problems since November, as I actively monitor my connection via the BQM charts over the last 2 years, as well as active DSL monitoring via an unlocked HG612. I have sent this many times to Zen support, who keep asking me to send it over and over. I have done everything they wanted including replacing modem, and so on, but nothing helps.

Is anyone else having similar problems since GEA?

The GEA migration means you moved from BT Wholesale backhaul to Zen's own backhaul. Zen are gradually rolling out their network and will move traffic to their own backhaul wherever possible.

The Zen backhaul network can be wonderful (look at my BQMs - I'm about 45 miles north of London), but it's not perfect. I suggest you PM jongreen84, who works for Zen and is often able to help with this sort of issue. It's best to include your Zen user name when you contact Jon.

Hi,

Sorry to hear about this. I'd like to take a look and check it's nothing on the backhaul/core network side, so please do get in touch via PM and provide your username please.

Cheers,

Jon

I contacted Jon, he did some magic in my exchange, and now all the packet loss is gone. Can I send you a beer?

I haven't tested it beyond today, so I'll keep an eye on it and see how it goes.

Thanks for the feedback! I can confirm I've updated the backhaul configuration for your exchange, so I'm glad to see it's made an improvement.

Thanks again for bringing this to our attention. As I've said previously, it's only in a very specific set of circumstances that this fix is needed, and we're working on a network-wide fix so that we no longer need to do these tactical fixes.

Please do let me know if you have any further issues.

Thanks, and enjoy the long weekend.

Jon