Noticed some (subjective) slowdowns...

I've been on Zen for the past 10 years. It has always been rock solid. Flawless streaming, video conferencing etc.

In the past month or so I've subjectively noticed slowness in responsiveness when browsing, particularly in mobile apps like Reddit, wife has noticed in Instagram etc. For instance, Reddit comments and content takes forever to load broadband, but as soon as I switch to mobile data it's pretty much instant. Problem is this is really difficult to quantify and troubleshoot.

Any ideas on collecting evidence? Dealing with Zen support (when I last called them, they stated that my Technicolor router was no longer supported, and they wanted to do a WiFi check - I use Ubiquiti APs wired directly into a switch in the house and this isn't a layer 2 problem)

Check your Zen control panel for any recently completed orders that mention something along the lines of "GEA migration".

Zen are moving lots of their customers from BT Wholesale and Talktalk Business backhaul on to their own backhaul network. This has resulted in lower performance for many who have had this change enacted.
Zen don't give any notification this change is happened or that it has happened.

My GEA order was May 2019. Everything has been fine for years, but suddenly things like Reddit comments, LinkedIn comments, picture content take forever to load. Streaming works fine. I've changed routers, using an OPNSense build now with a Draytek modem, but still the same.

Following advice derived from three years supporting people WFH on various ISPs in various parts of the country, been a Zen customer myself since 2014 and also been WFH since March 2020 over my Zen fibre to the premises connection.
If you've noticed a slowdown, irrespective of whether it's in general or specific sites/apps power off your router for two minutes to allow the caps to fully discharge and the session on the various bits of kit to time out then plug back in.
This has solved a variety of problems for those I've been supporting, if this doesn't work, then progress to talking to tech support.

It might be worth checking on your DNS setup, which resolvers do you use?
If you swap to one of the "public resolvers" like 1.1.1.1 (CloudFlare) or 8.8.8.8 (Google) does it help? There are other public dns servers you can try these are just the ones i remember of the top of my head.

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

It might be worth checking on your DNS setup, which resolvers do you use?
If you swap to one of the "public resolvers" like 1.1.1.1 (CloudFlare) or 8.8.8.8 (Google) does it help? There are other public dns servers you can try these are just the ones i remember of the top of my head.

Like the OP, I too have noticed intermittent browsing and I tried alternative DNS which made little difference.

When the browsing deteriorates the speed tests start, (personally I make very few speed tests when the browsing is OK but when it deteriorates the speed test get closer to 500 mbps instead of over 900 mbps. (BT have a speed Guarantee of 700 mbps (whatever that is worth), in my area.

I suspect that the intermittently poor browsing and poor speeds are due to capacity in the Zen Systems and the Zen Traffic Management Systems as my Zen line is via Openreach but I do not know.

I do know the the ookla/Zen gateways move around between London, Manchester, the East Midlands, etc. and the browsing performance and speed test results tend to move in line with the gateway used.

For those who were with Zen and are are now with BT: How is the BT 900 mbps browsing and speed performance in comparison to Zen ?

I'm currently working through issues with them. It's been about 8 weeks now, and I've had about 4-5 OpenReach engineers come out check the line completely, replace connections and cannot see anything wrong. It's to the point where they have warned me not to let Zen just send out an engineer otherwise they'll blacklist me.

Zen are able to see problems, mine has intermittent availability. A few hours working, and then some time with nothing working, sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes longer. Zen sees around 30% constant packet loss with spike of 100% loss which makes it basically unusable. I've got two Fritz, they sent me a technicolour and I bought a Draytek Vigor167.

All have the same problem, which makes me think it's something at Zens end. I've also been with them 10 years.

Do you know if you are on Zen's GEA network? There is at least one user at present who may be having issues due to a recent migration; they're currently awaiting a migration back. I think personally it would be mighty odd for them to be the only one affected!
https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,27694.0.html
I myself had poor speed issues after being migrated around this time last year.

If you have been migrated off BTW to Zen it would usually show as a migration order you didn't ask for in your Zen portal account. If your line initially went live on Zen's network though it wouldn't show a migration order (I believe) and you'd have to ask Zen how you are set up.

I was migrated to the GEA back in 2019, so it could be that the GEA is terrible however I don't know how I could possibly get them to move me back after 4 years.

In reply to a post by jimbof:

Do you know if you are on Zen's GEA network? There is at least one user at present who may be having issues due to a recent migration; they're currently awaiting a migration back. I think personally it would be mighty odd for them to be the only one affected!
https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,27694.0.html
I myself had poor speed issues after being migrated around this time last year.

If you have been migrated off BTW to Zen it would usually show as a migration order you didn't ask for in your Zen portal account. If your line initially went live on Zen's network though it wouldn't show a migration order (I believe) and you'd have to ask Zen how you are set up.

The Zen Customer Account section has been changed by Zen, (from around the time of the GEA fiasco I noticed that Zen altered and editted your account records behind the scenes which is why I used to take screen shots of the previous records), so these days I suspect that any of us could we flicked over to GEA without any way of our being able to check via the Zen Account Records and I am now not sure Customer Services would tell us if we ask them about GEA or BTW backhaul.

The findings that the poster on the kitz site has been recently reporting on kits reminded me of my own line experiences/failings of a year or two ago and it is sad that no lessons appear to have been learned if the GEA fiasco is still going on behind the scenes.

It kinda put some of our recent cyclical experiences Zen into perspective in that sluggish browsing and half speed issues are nowhere near as bad as the intermittent locking up and crawler speeds I had then.

Personally, I have just about had enough and I am waiting for the next BT tempting offer if BT posters remain happy and a number of Zen posters are disappointed.


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