Signs of oversubscription/over-utilisation or something else?

[craigj2k12]

Never had a pingtest with jitter less than 5ms. (never had one less than 10ms on the superhub, but thats another story for the grandkids in a few years time! LOL)

Im on the VMNG300 with an Asus RT-N16, which performs fine, im connected via ethernet at gigabit speeds. But the best pingtest I can get has about 5ms of jitter between 4am and 9am, after 9am it gets gradually worse untill 6/7pm when jitter is at its high of 10-20ms.

Im not in studentland, im on the knowsley UBR (know-12-2-0), and when I activated my modem with the CEO office, he said there were no area faults, so it must be down to the superhub. since getting the modem, i have had no LAN side faults, and not random disconnections, reboots etc, its been solid, but it would seem that area utilisation is high.

A while before the modem/superhub/ceo incident, I posted on the VM community forums about ping, and they said the ubr which handles my connection is suppering from very high utilisation at peak times, and if it continued, it would be passed to the networks team for them to upgrade, however, they posted back after a couple of days to say that since the original post, utilisation had decreased and there was no need for upgrades to be made, i posted back to say that pings and jitter were still a problem, but there was no further reply.

getting one of my better results now at half 8
http://www.pingtest.net/result/38746961.png

also, i noticed the other day, the door was hanging off the green cabinet and most of the coax cables are connected to what are presumably the taps, but one tap was connected to two cables via a splitter, I know this might not be mine, but my luck and sods law etc, could this be it?

[Neo-Tech]

Have you setup a thinkbroadband monitor up? That's a good reference point to see if there's utilisation on your UBR. :)

[pip08456]

Never had a pingtest with jitter less than 5ms. (never had one less than 10ms on the superhub, but thats another story for the grandkids in a few years time! LOL)

Im on the VMNG300 with an Asus RT-N16, which performs fine, im connected via ethernet at gigabit speeds. But the best pingtest I can get has about 5ms of jitter between 4am and 9am, after 9am it gets gradually worse untill 6/7pm when jitter is at its high of 10-20ms.

Im not in studentland, im on the knowsley UBR (know-12-2-0), and when I activated my modem with the CEO office, he said there were no area faults, so it must be down to the superhub. since getting the modem, i have had no LAN side faults, and not random disconnections, reboots etc, its been solid, but it would seem that area utilisation is high.

A while before the modem/superhub/ceo incident, I posted on the VM community forums about ping, and they said the ubr which handles my connection is suppering from very high utilisation at peak times, and if it continued, it would be passed to the networks team for them to upgrade, however, they posted back after a couple of days to say that since the original post, utilisation had decreased and there was no need for upgrades to be made, i posted back to say that pings and jitter were still a problem, but there was no further reply.

getting one of my better results now at half 8
http://www.pingtest.net/result/38746961.png

also, i noticed the other day, the door was hanging off the green cabinet and most of the coax cables are connected to what are presumably the taps, but one tap was connected to two cables via a splitter, I know this might not be mine, but my luck and sods law etc, could this be it?

Looks like over subscription/utilisation. I'd report the cab door though asa that is an accident waiting to happen.

[Ignitionnet]

I wouldn't say that's especially bad however upstream utilisation only needs to get around 70% to cause the symptoms you describe.

This said is this actually causing a problem? You seem to not comment on any symptom beyond pingtest.

[craigj2k12]

Neo - all the messing about IV been doing I had a couple set up but not for long enough to monitor properly. It needs a good couple of days to get a good graph and some hard evidence.

pip - I reported the door straight away and it was fixed the following day

Igni - yeah the problems I'm having are online gaming. In the morning its fine, but IV only ever played twice in the morning as I'm usually in work. When I play at night there is a noticable difference, but nothing too bad. Pings go from solid 35ms in the morning to 50 - 80 at night, which is playable but around 6pm to 7pm the ubr seems to max out and my ping can spike into the hundreds, which isn't good, especially when hosting games.
If the service starts to deteriorate at 70%, when do Vm report high utilisation?

---------- Post added at 23:26 ---------- Previous post was at 23:23 ----------

Maybe the VM techs on here could take a sneeky look at the utilisation on the knowsley ubr?? ;)

Know-12-2-0

[Ignitionnet]

They don't report it as high at sub-70% I'm quite sure of that.

know-12-2 unfortunately won't help people to advise on utilisation, there will be tons of ports connected to Knowsley CMTS 12 :(

[Chrysalis]

VM's thresholds dont make sense to me.

They considered my port high enough to fix when I had jitter of about 50-100ms at peak. However I seen people with jitter of 200+ms been told their utilisation is not yet high enough.

Going on what ignition has said about the 70% etc. I think VM's thresholds must be quite high, I suspect well over 90%.

[pip08456]

I find it rediculous that VM can turn round and say that they can see high utilisation at peak times which will effect a customers connection but it has not yet reached a level where it can be raised to networks to sort out.

It beggars belief that VM can and do treat their customers in this way.

[craigj2k12]

I find it rediculous that VM can turn round and say that they can see high utilisation at peak times which will effect a customers connection but it has not yet reached a level where it can be raised to networks to sort out.

It beggars belief that VM can and do treat their customers in this way.

they said it was "very high" at peak times, those are the actual words! then they posted to say that usage went down and that its okay!! ill post a link to the thread if I can still find it

---------- Post added at 16:26 ---------- Previous post was at 16:22 ----------

the original thread on VMs forums:
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-50Mb-broadband/High-Jitter-and-varying-pings/td-p/350185

---------- Post added at 16:26 ---------- Previous post was at 16:26 ----------

note the phrase "very high utilisation", particularly note "very"

[pabscars]

Well if my experience is anything to go by, it would suggest load has to reach an unbelievable 100% for a duration of xxx ammount of hours before the system can flag it to networks.

Mine has been well into the high 90's yet hasn't been flagged which suggest's the 100% rule might be true.

The reason my load (and possibly yours) goes that high is due to intermittent noise on the network causing the modulation to switch randomly between Qam16 and QPSK, when this occurs the amount of bandwidth available on my port is significantly reduced which causes it to easily become saturated.

Its a bit like when a cars engine management system detect's a fault and goes into "LIMP HOME" mode and only allowing you to do 50Mph on the motorway.

Up untill recently this has been difficult for Virgin to spot but thanks to the Think BB ping monitor highlighting the times the load is high, virgin have finally managed to spot the modulation swap on their equipment and are starting to investigate and monitor it more closely.

So my advice is set up the monitor and view it regularly to see the evidence for yourself (+POST ON HERE) , make a note of the times when you are actually online as your own activity can effect the results, especially if your a heavy peak time downloader.

This evidence can then be sent to Virgin as proof at just how good or bad your connection is and might help diagnose hard to spot issues.

[craigj2k12]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/6fced0772f5e607c9982db840482568e.html

its a bit empty at the moment, I only set it up before

[Neo-Tech]

Hmm, interesting to say the least for now. My graph is very similar to yours and I haven't noticed much in terms of ping increasing.

Time for me to monitor my ping on Pingtest and games now ;)

[craigj2k12]

its looking good now, its usually around now (7pm) it gets worse for me, it will be interesting to see the graph!

---------- Post added at 19:05 ---------- Previous post was at 19:04 ----------

Download Failed (1)

WOW!

lets check back in half an hour though

---------- Post added at 19:41 ---------- Previous post was at 19:05 ----------

as promised, no change in jitter, but this is my lowest ping result:

Download Failed (1)

[pip08456]

its looking good now, its usually around now (7pm) it gets worse for me, it will be interesting to see the graph!

---------- Post added at 19:05 ---------- Previous post was at 19:04 ----------

http://www.pingtest.net/result/38801797.png

WOW!

lets check back in half an hour though

---------- Post added at 19:41 ---------- Previous post was at 19:05 ----------

as promised, no change in jitter, but this is my lowest ping result:

http://www.pingtest.net/result/38803922.png

No, the lowest was in the result above, 19ms:D:D:D

[craigj2k12]

No, the lowest was in the result above, 19ms:D:D:D

no, I meant I ran a few tests, one after the other, and that was the lowest

[pip08456]

no, I meant I ran a few tests, one after the other, and that was the lowest


https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/12/3.gif

[craigj2k12]

???

[pip08456]

Sorry Craig,, but if you cannot see the humour then you're lost!

[craigj2k12]

After some consideration.... I am lost

[pip08456]

After some consideration.... I am lost

Don't worry, it happens to us all now and again! :D

[craigj2k12]

tell me whats funny, and while your there, tell me whats wrong with my connection

[craigj2k12]

tell me whats funny, and while your there, tell me whats wrong with my connection

come on!!! IV gotta hear this one! =/