Can't actually believe it. My performance is back down at around half line rate with faster pings.
/me checks Zen portal...
Can't even make this up. They've gone and migrated me back to ZEN GEA again.
What a joke.

Does that now explain your outage yesterday?

In reply to a post by jimbof:

Well, got through on technical support, they did "something" to fix it and it started working again.

In reply to a post by jimbof:

Can't actually believe it. My performance is back down at around half line rate with faster pings.
/me checks Zen portal...
Can't even make this up. They've gone and migrated me back to ZEN GEA again.
What a joke.

I am not sure that GEA/BTW now makes that much difference but since the cause of the poor performance/slow speeds has never been admitted to by Zen we can only guess about what the cause is.

It seemed to be cured by an Openreach visit, (who said they found nothing), but I suspect that they sorted an exchange card issue.

Alternatively, it may have been the Zen Load Balancing, (or should we just call it a Trafic Management System), even though I have read that Zen do not officially Traffic Manage was the cause of poor performance/low speeds.

The other day I felt that the performance was poorer than it was and when I checked the Zen Broadband Status site I noticed that there had been planned maintence a few days before for my line which had affected area. - Perhaps, Openreach were faffing about? - It did not say.

Since then the speed test have not been as good as they were, over 500 mbps but sometimes not the usual 900 mbps but presently it is not the same on all ooklla test sites. eg. When using the TNP ltd Manchester test site the ookla speed tests are consistently between 400 mbps and 600 mbps and the Ookla speeds reported by the test sites in Sheffield are consistenly over 900 mbps. - (At present the overall browning performance is OK and when it was bad, earlier in the year, even the browsing was dire).

I would like to know why the varoius Ookla Test Site results are so different and if these test sites somewhat match the Gateways that Zen use.

I am out of contract and every so often my finger hovers over the order BT 900 mbps button but I don't know if BT are better.

Sadly I think yes.

I had a similar outage with not being able to authenticate a PPPoE session when they migrated me from GEA to BTW. It appears the authentication stuff is specific to BTW vs GEA, and they have to move some setting or whatever over when your connection moves.

Twice now this hasn't seemed to happen properly. Once from GEA -> BTW, and now this time from BTW -> GEA. Seems like something is held together with sticky backed plastic, to lose service twice for such a dumb reason with something that you'd figure should be automated.

I can't help but feel there are some things about how the whole migration between the services happens that are note very well handled, as evidenced by my recent experiences.

Well, for me here in Norwich City Centre, GEA vs BTW makes a huge difference. I don't know if that is a local issue - perhaps the GEA links in the area are contended or somehow faulty or poorly operating - but it's happened twice now for the same line that the performance drops to a certain level for most speed tests when on the GEA network vs the BTW network.

I can't see how any BT visit here would do anything for my issue. And I'm not really sure there is even likely to be anything wrong at the exchange end of the fibre, given that performance on BTW is fine. I'm pretty sure whatever is going wrong is either in the GEA network, or the link from the OLT to the GEA network.

My speedtests on BTW are reliably over 900mbps (there is a proviso that some of the gateways don't seem to manage quite that high). With Zen GEA they're pretty much always pegged at the 500-550mbps level except to a few places - for example, on Zen GEA speedtests to some particular server from VoiceHost (Norwich) are at closer to line rate.

I'm kind of losing interest in the analysis of what or why exactly bits of their network seem to perform so poorly, and I think I'm at the point where I just want to migrate off to somewhere else. There are too many variable factors here at play in just exactly what performance you end up with - whether you get gateway'd into London or Manchester, whether your connection is migrated or not migrated, exactly what gateway you end up on, etc. It's just a poor show.

Edited by jimbof (Thu 29-Sep-22 11:54:35)

I've been seeing issues this week (central Beds) - on 900 but speed tests show a few mbps, but uploads are always around line max - resetting OTN seemed to cure it for a while.

Looking at quality monitor I've have setup on here I'm started seeing some packet loss late August, had a total loss on 30 August (had to reset router) which then gave very slow link till I reset it again next day. This week packet loss seems much higher

This sounds highly reminiscent of my experience when originally migrated to GEA, have you tried a direct PPPOE connection... It may show bad still though, but I had really variable results depending on the stack connected to the ONT (Fritz BAD, Windows 10 different to Server 2016 - same hardware, Mac apparently good) But that was a bit false as it depends on how each TCP stack handles disconnections (it seems). - I am assuming that you have been GEA migrated? Upload was always unaffected.

Edited by SteveBushell999 (Fri 30-Sep-22 15:30:02)

Portal Order history suggests I was migrated back in May and haven't really noticed any issues until this week

Not tried direct PPPOE yet and using my own router (a tri-band Asus) - currently it seems to be behaving itself

In reply to a post by Kenneth:

I was migrated back in May and haven't really noticed any issues until this week

One thing this may highlight, once you have been GEA migrated to Zen backhaul you are never safe from these issues.

I've been released from contract now by Zen, so off to pastures new. Hopefully greener.

Recommendations for FTTP 900 providers (not on Zen backhaul for sure!!!) with strong single thread and multi thread performance very much welcomed. Need ipv4 and a static address, no other frills.