Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Hi all, I've been having ongoing problems with my 50mb service for months now, and have contacted VM tech support several times. The problem has been that my speeds and connection quality are awful at or near peak times.

I have posted over on the VM help forums too, but I fear it just gets lost amongst the other hundreds of people experiencing problems: http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...ce/td-p/814921

There was an issue with my downstream power levels being too high, but a -15db forward path attenuator brought those into line:

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/5676/123sbu.jpg

However, things havn't improved.

These were my speedtest and pingtest results from last night, and are typical of my evening experience:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/21.png https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/22.png

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img] [img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

Pretty appauling I think you'll agree. It took me 10 mins just to put a post on the VM help forum last night.

VM say: "There is a local upstream utilisation issue on your chassis (local router) will be causing your speed to slow during busy periods. This issue is currently with our Planning team who will be publishing a fix date as soon as possible. The reference for this issue is F001761613."

The fix date given is the 23rd November, but I'm not holding my breath.

What does everyone think? Would an over utilisation issue be reducing a 50mb connection down to the above?

Any help appreciated!

Thanks,

Gareth

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

you need to remove the macc address and serial number from the above pictures

***********Edit************

Looks like you have already done it as i posted :)

***********Edit************


Over utilisation will impact your download speed at peak times most certainly

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

oops, done :)

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

If it's severe enough, yep.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

I see. So a case of wait it out then? Surely they can't charge for this level of service?

For comparison and to show my equipment is working ok, here are similar tests from this morning:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/20.png http://www.pingtest.net/result/50908418.png

I understand there is a legacy network which VM use for the 10mb service, which is often less congested. If I phoned up and asked to be "downgraded" onto 10mb for a while (until they fix the problem on the 50mb network), would this mean I would be using the legacy network and hence experience less congestion?

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Nope.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Why not? Could you elaborate a bit please mate? This tech stuff's all new to me, lol

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Whatever tier you move to because you have a DOCSIS 3 modem / Superhub you'll be stuck on the current network.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Sorry, I forgot to say I also have my old Ambit 256 modem here, from before I was given Superhub. IIRC it's not DOCSIS 3.

If I changed to 10mb and got them to activate it again? It always worked perfectly...

---------- Post added at 18:41 ---------- Previous post was at 17:27 ----------

Well, just got off the phone to a very helpful scottish man at VM.

He's downgraded me to the 10mb/s service, re-registered my old Ambit modem and we're good to go. :)

Just done some testing, and bearing in mine it's almost 7pm, they're a vast improvement over the super hub:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/19.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/50933490.png

So, until VM have sorted the over-utilisation issue (I'll give them a call in a few weeks with the ticket reference to see if it's been completed) I'll make do with the 10mb connection. Fingers crossed it stays this way! lol

Thanks for all your help guys!

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

My area wasn't that severe and I wasn't aware I'd stay on DOSCIS 3 when I downgraded to 10 but after I did I found that it would mostly deliver close to the sold speeds. I guess getting 8Mbps when you are paying for 10Mbps is perfectly acceptable while getting same when paying for 50Mbps isn't. VM are now saying my area resegmentation is now complete but looking at the TBB chart I'm very very dubious about upgrading again so I'll probably just stick with 10Mbps.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

even better tonight:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/18.png http://www.pingtest.net/result/50987564.png

And for the last day:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...21-11-2011.png

compared to the Superhub on 50mb:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/31.jpg

Very pleased with the old Ambit modem. I'd love to try and get my hands on an Ambit 300, to see if it's any better than the Superdud... Hmmm

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

I think we now seeing downstream congestion becoming more widespread which is why we seeing graphs that look not too bad but with poor speeds.

Check this graph (mine, current)

and my speedtest result (bear in mind higher tiers would get same speed as there is no prioritisation). So if a 30mbit customer cant get full speed on a port then 50mbit and 100mbit customers are going to be seeing aweful speeds for their tier.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/17.png

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

its even poor 1pm. in fact slower.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/12.png

I am starting to think there may be a transit issue on VMs network affecting me, as the namesco server is 5mbit slower than maidenhead when usually its far more reliable. Neither server is giving me full speed tho, seems i am limited to full speed now in a very short time frame, from about 4am to about 8am. Upload is full speed all the time I am testing. If its local congestion then to me its severe if its bad enough to take effect 16-20 hours a day.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

You could check for local congestion by downloading the VM game files they mention in the community forum sticky.

Something looks very regular about your TBB chart. I don't know enough about cable or exactly what it may mean but it is still visually strange to me.

BT are finally advertising a date for Infinity on my local exchange - Dec 2012. Of course there is no guarantee that they'll be doing all the cabs though. Anyhow I've registered an interest.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

yeah I cant get max speed from anything really. So the speedtests results are reasonably accurate.

also reflected on samknows results.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

latest

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/11.png

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Mine's still holding up speed wise on 10Mbps

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/11/10.png

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

All ok here..

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

My 10mb "downgrade" is still holding up ok:

http://www.pingtest.net/result/51100501.png https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/11/9.png

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...22-11-2011.png


However, when compared to my old man's BT infinity:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...22-11-2011.png

I can't believe how uniform the BT graph is....

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Strange that Infinity shows some packet loss though - perhaps somebody who knows about this stuff will comment.

I'm pretty sure that the way cable upstream works makes jitter inevitable to some degree - I guess it's a question of what that degree should be as I'm sure somebody on cable posted up a test showing 0 jitter fairly recently either here or some other BB related board I've seen.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

the BT packet loss could be line issues. Even tho FTTC is superior to ADSL it still has to traverse a copper run which will be subject to noise etc. Regardless the VM line has worse packet loss anyway.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Probably just the TBB tester - I see low level packet loss here but none in operation. Well, apart from this morning.

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

I'll buy that. I guess the odd CRC is inevitable even with short lines and tiny packets. It was just that I hadn't noticed them on the few other Infinity charts I've seen.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

when you say tester do you mean the tester itself?

or more like the transit to tbb specifically been the problem rather than generic loss on the connection.

The loss seems to be more at peak times, I would expect the actual tester hardware to be under even load 24/7 as most graphs are 24/7 so it would suggest some kind of transit or switch capacity issue.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

Who knows? Still a hell of a lot lower than the VM line though. I'm tempted to say the least.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

interesting results.

aberdeen 28mbit
namesco 21mbit
maidenhead 30mbit (just about)

traceroute to namesco

Tracing route to speedtest.bbmax.co.uk [85.233.160.167]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms home.gateway2 [192.168.1.1]
2 7 ms 7 ms 10 ms cpc14-leic14-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com [8
2.30.112.1]
3 7 ms 5 ms 8 ms leic-core-1b-ae3-2232.network.virginmedia.net [8
2.3.33.173]
4 6 ms 7 ms 7 ms nrth-bb-1b-as6-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.10
5.172.41]
5 46 ms 27 ms 19 ms nrth-tmr-2-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.10
5.159.34]
6 119 ms 112 ms 116 ms tele-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
184.2]
7 114 ms 110 ms 113 ms linx-gw1.plus.net [195.66.224.164]
8 111 ms 111 ms 111 ms thn3-gi2-1.namesco.net [212.159.1.66]
9 109 ms 111 ms 113 ms gonzales.namesco.net [85.233.160.167]

congestion between hops 5 and 6 within VM network by look of things.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

traceroute to 85.233.160.167 (85.233.160.167), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets

1 cpc8-mort6-2-0-gw.croy.cable.virginmedia.com (82.43.108.1) 11.085 ms 9.557 ms 21.443 ms

2 mort-geam-1a-ge115.network.virginmedia.net (81.96.225.25) 9.821 ms 20.102 ms 10.175 ms

3 croy-core-1b-tenge81-490.network.virginmedia.net (62.30.242.57) 7.700 ms 9.958 ms 9.843 ms

4 popl-bb-1b-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net (195.182.178.86) 18.305 ms 11.613 ms 11.253 ms

5 nrth-bb-1a-as1-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.64.17) 24.937 ms 13.143 ms 11.440 ms

6 nrth-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.185.118) 20.042 ms 14.445 ms 10.285 ms

7 nrth-tmr-2-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.159.34) 13.945 ms 13.252 ms 12.794 ms

8 tele-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.184.2) 15.128 ms 15.806 ms 15.131 ms

9 linx-gw1.plus.net (195.66.224.164) 14.008 ms 20.971 ms 14.309 ms

10 thn3-gi2-1.namesco.net (212.159.1.66) 14.413 ms 13.505 ms 14.118 ms

11 gonzales.namesco.net (85.233.160.167) 27.594 ms 11.959 ms 15.688 ms

Trace complete

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

its on and off ignition, nevetherless its there on my traceroute to see, early hops fine, later ones not.

I plan to check some other routes as well later to see if I see any pattern.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

It wouldn't be the first time VM's transit to Namesco had run hot to be honest.

Re: Absolutely awful bandwidth and ping/jitter at peak times
 

today its reverted.

namesco at approx 23mbit/sec steady during test
maidenhead started very slow for about 5 seconds at about 4mbit/sec then sped up to about 22mbit/sec, so was all over the place severe congestion.
aberdeen 21mbit/sec

I seem to be suffering from a mixture of local congestion and transit congestion/fault, regardless of the cause the service has degraded significantly during the past month.

On traceroutes I cannot repeat the traceroute I posted, but my routing has now changed to namesco as well.

Iplayer has to rebuffer and my football radio stream which only requires tiny bandwidth also cont keep going without rebuffering as well.

I keep waiting and since I have an outage almost every week I always check if one of these extra downstream channels appears, never the case :(

--edit--

doing a 2nd test on namesco gave 14meg/sec so its all over the place, and also upload is showing signs of congestion now as well as I am getting sub 3meg/sec again.