Zen Broadband Deterioration Every Evening

I'm copying and enlarging upon the following Original Post of mine from the General Discussion section to this one which I can see is more appropriate:

My service is with Zen Internet and the package is Unlimited Zen Fibre 1 .
I've been happy for several years with consistent download speeds in excess of 30Mb/s.
For more than a week now I've been getting a much reduced service in the evenings, typically between 20:00 and 23:00 during which time video streaming is not possible.. The service returns to normal each morning.
I set up a monitoring configuration with the router connected into the Master test socket and just a single device connected - a Windows 10 PC with the Task Manager showing nothing running except my speedchecker.
Running the Zen speedchecker at any time during the day shows a DL speed of 30Mb/s or more.
Running the speedchecker at any time between 20:00 and 23:00 shows a combined DL speed of 7Mb/s with a tbbx1 (single thread) of just 1.3 Mb/s which is what prevents me from receiving video streams.

A tbbx1 reading this far below the combined/multithread reading can really indicate only one thing - contention on the Zen network. (Any alternative thoughts on what might be the cause of the problem would be welcome.)

My real problem is that Zen support is unable or unwilling to confirm that this is what's happening. Their response is that "they're looking into what might be the problem".

I'm happy to ride with a supplier I've had a good service and good support from if they admit/confirm there's a problem, that they're sorry and that they WILL find a solution. What I can't deal with is evasion, particularly if it's taken me hours to provide the test results I've been asked for and to still need to research the problem myself.

Hang on ...... hold the phone ...... within minutes of reposting the above I'm suddenly streaming HD successfully at 21:10.

Coincidence ..... or problem solved ..... or is it suddenly just a quiet time on the Zen network?

Will keep you posted.

Maybe you're now going out over the London gateway?

I've been having terrible packet loss, using the Manchester gateway. Then about five to nine tonight I was disconnected. Now I'm using the London gateway, and things are looking pretty good.

The exact same thing happened to me, at the same time too. The difference between the two is immediately obvious.

My Broadband Ping

Very interesting. How do you know which gateway you're on?

To find out which gateway you are on the easy way is to use tracert, on a windows machine open a command prompt, run tracert www.bbc.co.uk . You should see somethling like this ( i'm routed via london not manchester)

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.237.251]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.200.1 <- my router
2 249 ms 45 ms 258 ms vt2.cor2.lond2.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.72.45] < --- my gateway
3 121 ms 16 ms * ae-4.pe2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.110]

The 2nd link is the gateway i'm connect to. The manchester gateways have man in the hostname rather than lond.

The exact same thing happened to me.

Im no longer on the man gateway and now been transferred to london

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms testwifi.here [192.168.86.1]
2 21 ms 21 ms 20 ms losubs.subs.bng2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.21]
3 21 ms 21 ms 23 ms ae1-183.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.86.82]
4 21 ms 22 ms 21 ms vl-50.ae-5.pe2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.54]
5 26 ms 25 ms 25 ms ae-1.pe2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.97]
6 22 ms 22 ms 23 ms ae-2.br1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.125]
7 22 ms 22 ms 21 ms 195.66.225.91
8 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 151.101.0.81

Trace complete.

All of a sudden, full throughput and 0 PL.

And to think support have been denying it's a gateway issue....

Thanks for that. Here's what I get. Am I Manchester or London?

1 4 ms 1 ms 1 ms fritz.box [192.168.178.1]
2 15 ms 16 ms 15 ms lo1.subs.bng2.wh-man.zen.co.uk [62.3.89.166]
3 75 ms 39 ms 14 ms ae2-169.cr2.wh-man.zen.net.uk [62.3.86.38]
4 23 ms 17 ms 19 ms vl-50.ph-0-4-3.cor1.manc1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.58]
5 27 ms 15 ms 15 ms ae-22.cor2.manc1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.42]
6 23 ms 22 ms 23 ms ae-2.pe2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.24]
7 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms ae-2.br1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.117]
8 22 ms 21 ms 22 ms 82.71.254.134
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 22 ms 25 ms 22 ms ae2.er01.lbh.bbc.co.uk [132.185.249.7]
12 153 ms 39 ms 33 ms 132.185.252.126
13 25 ms 22 ms 22 ms 212.58.234.2
14 21 ms 21 ms 28 ms 212.58.233.252

You're definitely manchester;

lo1.subs.bng2.wh-man.zen.co.uk [62.3.89.166]

That's the gateway I was on but now on lon(don) with zero probs.

Mine dropped at 20:58 and come back at a much better rate. I’m still going via Manchester but the Gateway IP address has changed.

Now: gateway: 62.3.89.166

Was: gateway: 62.3.89.162

I’m going to continue monitoring to see whether it was a port issue/network switch within part of the gateway and Zen started moving users. It’s certainly better.

Edited by MercuryRH2 (Tue 30-Jun-20 08:39:35)