Thanks for that, Dave. I've spoken to Zen this morning, and the staff member I'm dealing with will be alerted to the ongoing problem when he gets in this morning (I called just after 0900, he doesn't arrive until 1000).

This thread is linked to the Zen ticket, so those within Zen following this matter should see any updates posted here. My PPP logs show "bras-red5.mqd", so it looks like I'm in the same pattern as your affected users. I wonder what "mqd" is an abbreviation for.

You had the spike last night too?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

You had the spike last night too?

Yes. I posted about this last night, though could have made it clearer that was the third night in a row.

You are not alone

http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/images/zenbqm.jpg
(One image is near perfect, which shows not a BQM issue, and while its not every Zen customer by a long way, it looks to be around 1 in 10 that have a BQM running)

Will take a peek at other providers now. Had to blank out personal information obviously, but left the odd large town place name in position. There were others with latency changes, but not of the same precise pattern and a lot more variable, suggesting line saturation from their own activities

Similar shape with PlusNet in around 1 in 10 of the BQM graphs.
Also on IDNet, and Andrews&Arnold same shape, same time similar amounts of users.

So the idea that it may be one node in the BT Wholesale network seems a reasonable guess.

Thanks so much for that investigative work. The composite you posted shows clearly that something is amiss for a proportion of users.

I'm not looking forward to this weekend if this fault isn't fixed, as I could have a much longer period of high latency and jitter when everyone is at home using their connections.


Hopefully the ISPs can put pressure on BT Wholesale to do something. It would be great if something could be posted about what went wrong, but I appreciate that may not be possible.

Maybe this part of the country has become the Bermuda Triangle of Internet connections. First the Northampton fire affecting the Be/O2 network, now this.

Tempted to suggest that as its affecting AAISP that Adrian Kennard are good people to talk to, past masters at pressuring BT, and as they run their own BQM targeting customers they will have all the location information to hand.

Time for ISP techs to do some emailing between themselves.

Hi all

I can confirm that we are working alongside PlusNet to resolve this issue and we have added Zen's affected lines to an open case at BT. The latest update is that investigations are continuing and it will be passed over to their 24/7 team to look at over the weekend.

Please accept our apologies for any issues that have been caused.

We are seeing this latency too... Seems to be on the various Milton Keynes BRASs, affecting all lines. FTTC, FTTP and ADSL affected.

Generally, we are seeing an extra 40 milliseconds or so, between 8pm and 11pm.

Edited by andrewhearn (Fri 27-Sep-13 17:01:38)

I've passed our affected lines (100's) over to BT too.