Hi All,

I have been quiet because I have been giving ZEN plenty of time to investigate my issues and to cure the issues that I had.

In between times ZEN put me back onto the BTW Backhaul which in my case did not make any real difference to me as the speeds were still all over the place so my return to the BTW Backhaul was not the answer.

Zen then arranged a site visit from some helpful Openreach Engineers, (last Monday 18th July 2022), who did all that they could, they remade a connection and cleaned some others, checked the light levels at a few points and who said that they found nothing and I was then on the Manchester Corn Server which did not seem any better when they left but from late on Monday night and for the last 4 days my connection has been cooking on gas with consistently good Ookla Speed Tests and some odd Thinkbroadband band speed tests.

I always had faith that ZEN would come good and I thank the ZEN support staff including Andrew and Brandan on this board for their assistance but the issue I had has been a real PITA for months after a similar [censored] period about 21 months ago and I do not know if Openreach or ZEN or a combination of both has cured the issues. - (Presuming that the speed issues do not return).

I have no idea why it has improved, it would be nice to know why but I suspect that I will never know but if it does go down the toilet again I will reluctantly move elsewhere.

I say reluctantly because I suspect that other ISPs would not have tried as hard as ZEN to sort out the issues.

Regards,
Fido

Edited by Fido (Thu 21-Jul-22 20:55:57)

Hi Fido,

Glad that you have a resolution (for now), it's starting to sound like there may not be a simple one-size-fits-all solution here perhaps. It IS odd though that the problems seem to start coincident with the migration though?And end with all parties 'playing around' and it's common that both you and Jake don't seem to have a hard and fast diagnosis of the actual problem, which means that it is really going to be hard going forwards (in terms of both Zen giving advice or this forum as well similarly). I know that faults that 'go away' of their own accord are really frustrating.

I have no idea why it has improved, it would be nice to know why but I suspect that I will never know

It would be terrific to hear Zen's view on this?

My new router arrives tomorrow, to be used on the second FTTP line here, and the line goes active on the 27th, perhaps some clarity may come out of that (I live in hope).

In the meantime, I guess you're good for now, just hope it stays that way! Please keep us updated.

In reply to a post by Fido:

from late on Monday night and for the last 4 days my connection has been cooking on gas with consistently good Ookla Speed Tests and some odd Thinkbroadband band speed tests.

Glad the issue has gone away but without a clear resolution I fear it may return, I am probably being pessimistic but thats just me

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by Fido:

from late on Monday night and for the last 4 days my connection has been cooking on gas with consistently good Ookla Speed Tests and some odd Thinkbroadband band speed tests.

Glad the issue has gone away but without a clear resolution I fear it may return, I am probably being pessimistic but thats just me

Hello Dect,

Realistically, I never expected that anyone would fess upi and/or admit to finding a defect or maybe know what had been cured as in checking through stuff they can disturb/reset items and/or notice and correct a design defect, (perhaps, a narrow fibre line offshoot line to my road creating a bottleneck), or a software preference to a bad server or a bad card. - I don't know .

If the speed issues do come back in the next few months then I will sign up elsewhere but for now I am being optimistic that all is well. -

That said; I have made preparations to make an ISP change easier if an ISP move is ever required in that I have already cancelled the separate phone contract, (that was completed a few years ago), for a Copper Phone Line with calls and have set up a VOIP Phone System, (I made sure that the phone copper line and FTTP fibre line contracts were kept separate and that they were not linked and I did not port the old phone number to save the possiblity of broadband cancelation hassles when the copper line is cancelled), therefore, I can now move to a new broadband without moving the phone if a broadband ISP move is needed. - (In any case since I am now almost out of the two year contract if it is not cured, since ZEN are quality ISP, ZEN should allow me to move early).

Right now my intention is to just stay with ZEN but If the speed issues do return to me in the next few months I will definitely move elsewhere but if that happens I do not know where to move to.

Regards,
Fido

Edited by Fido (Fri 22-Jul-22 17:51:19)

In reply to a post by Fido:

Right now my intention is to just stay with ZEN but If the speed issues do return to me in the next few months I will definitely move elsewhere but if that happens I do not know where to move to.

Well it was nice while it lasted.

For almost a week the speeds were consistently good, (at over 900 mbps), and tonight we are lucky to get 400 mbps and dropping.

We are supposed to be back on BTW and not ZEN GEA so that cannot be the issue.

Since I cannot see anything in the ZEN reported or planned outages issues in my area that could affect me the fall in speed is either an Openreach issue or a ZEN issue.

Perhaps, someone at Openreach has had a brain fart and flicked my connection back onto a duff system or there is an issues somewhere within ZEN infrastructure or the ZEN Traffic Management System. - Who knows?

We are not heavy internet users but we do watch a lot of Netflix, (40 mbps per tv), and some Xbox and a lot of browsing.

Right now I am considering moving to BT since we do not need a fixed IP address,

At present BT 900 mbps will cost £55.99 per month which is presently more than ZEN cost to me and over the years the BT costs will rise even higher while the ZEN cost per month, (which is subject to the ZEN Price for Life Guarantee should cost less a lot less as the years pass but who wants to buy a bag of [censored] even if it costs less money per month?

Edit:
Due to planned maintenance after mid-night from 00:01 hours the ONT went red for a few hours from 00:30 hours and it came back OK so it could have been someone faffing about some hours prior to the planned event which is not good. - I don't know but due to the months of hassle I am much less tolerant of any speed issues on my line.

Therefore, I may put it down to a blip if it now stays OK but it's heading towards the Last Chance Salloon.

Edited by Fido (Tue 26-Jul-22 03:30:39)

In reply to a post by Fido:

In reply to a post by Fido:

Well it was nice while it lasted.

We are supposed to be back on BTW and not ZEN GEA so that cannot be the issue.

Edit:
Due to planned maintenance after mid-night from 00:01 hours the ONT went red for a few hours from 00:30 hours and it came back OK so it could have been someone faffing about some hours prior to the planned event which is not good. - I don't know but due to the months of hassle I am much less tolerant of any speed issues on my line.

Therefore, I may put it down to a blip if it now stays OK but it's heading towards the Last Chance Salloon.

Well Fido, you really do seem to be having some issues! Firstly, have you been TOLD that you have been put back on BTW? If that's the case, then along with your ONT disconnect, I would suspect BTW. The real issue here seems to be one of communication, so I assume that you'll be calling Zen today to ask what happened? It will be really interesting to hear their reply, but I suspect that after a discussion with BTW, they will say something about 'routine maintenance' or similar.

It sounds like the '400Mbps and dropping' would be below what Zen 'guarantee', so you do seem to have a cause for complaint, but like me, I suspect that you expect a modicum of reliability, which you really don't seem to have.

I was worried (as was Dect) that your problems seemed to 'just go away', and I rather fear that they haven't.

I get my second FTTP line installed tomorrow, so may be able to make direct comparisons between BTW and ZEN GEA then, but I am not sure if that would in any way help give pointers to assist diagnosis with what you are seeing.

Hmmm.....

Looks like Zen are having DNS issues right now (08:50) at least !

steve@Steves-Mac-mini ~ % ping 212.23.3.100
PING 212.23.3.100 (212.23.3.100): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
Request timeout for icmp_seq 6
^C
--- 212.23.3.100 ping statistics ---
8 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
steve@Steves-Mac-mini ~ % ping 212.23.6.100
PING 212.23.6.100 (212.23.6.100): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=12.601 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=12.258 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=12.295 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=12.184 ms
^C
--- 212.23.6.100 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 12.184/12.335/12.601/0.159 ms
steve@Steves-Mac-mini ~ %

GRRRRR!!!!!

09:15, it's back

steve@Steves-Mac-mini ~ % ping 212.23.6.100
PING 212.23.6.100 (212.23.6.100): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=12.685 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=12.334 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=12.516 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=12.363 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.6.100: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=12.643 ms
^C
--- 212.23.6.100 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 12.334/12.508/12.685/0.142 ms
steve@Steves-Mac-mini ~ % ping 212.23.3.100
PING 212.23.3.100 (212.23.3.100): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 212.23.3.100: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=18.772 ms
64 bytes from 212.23.3.100: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=18.431 ms
^C
--- 212.23.3.100 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 18.431/18.602/18.772/0.170 ms
steve@Steves-Mac-mini ~ %

And that is Zen's issue - if one of their DNS's respond and the other doesn't ! NOT BTW

Steve

That is after all why they have two DNS servers.so that one can be down while the other responds.

That is how the network is designed to work. Failure of pings to one would be seen as no issue as pings are not a service but an optional extra. Failure of both would be a service failure.

Hi Kitcat,

Yes, of course I am aware that there are primary and secondary DNS's and 'why' that is, but on this particular occasion, my Macs and Windows machines were simply hanging when making internet requests, investigation revealed that one of the Zen DNS's was down. Obviously, the router (FritzBox) is aware of both DNS instances (in my case the Fritz is on 192.168.1.254), but actually the FritzBox IP is the only DNS advertised to my network via DHCP, the Zen pair being available (and known) only to the FritzBox. So what had happened was that internal intranet addresses on my LAN were not aware of a single (external) DNS outage as the Fritz seemed stuck on the primary DNS. In any case, the Fritz is Zen's supplied router, and therefore what they support for such occasions I guess. I did the change to 8.8.8.8 as DNS on my Mac settings, and all was good. I rebooted the Fritz, and all was bad from there until later on when the priomary DNS started working.

It just seems that Zen are having rather a lot of 'issues' at the moment, I am simply reporting them.

Edited by SteveBushell999 (Tue 26-Jul-22 13:41:57)