Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

My connection has gone really bad over the last couple of months. Makes online gaming pretty crap to be honest.

I think the modem connection power levels etc are within spec so am i looking at a high utilisation problem.

If so is there anything that can be done?

Startup Procedure
Procedure Status Comment
Acquire Downstream Channel 315000000 Hz Locked
Connectivity State OK Operational
Boot State OK Operational
Configuration File OK
Security Enabled BPI+
Downstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power SNR Docsis/EuroDocsis locked
Locked QAM256 220 55616000 Kbits/sec 315000000 Hz -2.2 dBmV 41.4 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 217 55616000 Kbits/sec 291000000 Hz -1.5 dBmV 41.9 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 218 55616000 Kbits/sec 299000000 Hz -1.7 dBmV 41.9 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 219 55616000 Kbits/sec 307000000 Hz -1.6 dBmV 41.9 dB Hybrid
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Upstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power
Locked ATDMA 1 20480 Kbits/sec 45800000 Hz 57.5 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Primary Downstream Service Flow
Downstream(0)
SFID 6626
Max Traffic Rate 53000000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 3044 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Primary Upstream Service Flow
Upstream(0)
SFID 6625
Max Traffic Rate 5140000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 8160 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Max Concatenated Burst 8160 bytes
Scheduling Type Best Effort

Posted on the community forum a few days ago but had no response from the virgin team on there yet.

Anyone got any ideas.

Thanks

J

re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

If you check the modem signal levels sticky you'll see that your upstream is too high. You may well be suffering congestion as well of course

re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

thanks i'll give virgin a call and see if i can get them to send an engineer out.

J

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Anyone know if this needs an engineer to fix? Phoned the helpline, got them to agree the upstream power was high. Was informed that this could be fixed without a visit and the problem would be logged and fixed.

J

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

if it a network issue that causing alot of people to have high upstream power it need ot be fixed at the ubr which wouldnt require a tech, but generally they have ot senda techa nd confirm the issue and raise it to networks i can only guess there a issue in there area did othey give oyu a fault reference number to quote to check on progress?

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

No fault number or anything, asked specifically if an engineer was needed and was told no.

I'll give it few days or so and call again if I need too.

J

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Change ISP. VM are by far the worst major ISP in the UK for jitter and packet loss, and consequently, gaming.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

For fixing the poor performance qasdfdsaq has probably hit the nail on the head but of course the ADSL option for many is even worse.

Regarding the power level then unless it's a networks issue which would have an associated fault reference then it would normally require an engineer visit - standard fix is to move you to a lower attenuation tap in the cabinet and fit a forward path attenuator to your modem cable.

At the low downstream power levels you have they could just change the tap without fitting an attenuator. I'd hazard a guess that some engineer moved your connection when installing another - that happened to me so I had to have an engineer visit to fix it. My betting is that the agent just fobbed you off and nothing will get done - report the problem on the community forum and wait a week for a proper tech to pick it up.

http://community.virginmedia.com/

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Looked at BT infinity but I don't really want to split my package up so to speak. '40' meg is available but who knows what I'd actually get.

Posted it on the community forum at the beginning of the week so I'll wait and see.

Shame really had virgin for over 10 years

Thanks for the help

J

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

I've got both VM50 & BT Infinity. For Infinity I get c. 35/8 and I'm 300m from the cabinet.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Thanks can't really justify 2 connections or should I say can't afford what it would cost to convince the other half to get it.

If only I could get her interested in MW3 lol

J

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Shame though. My other half accepted the diversity argument.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

having 2 connections allowed me to do some neat things back when I had adsl and VM together.

I could change routing at a whim in the command prompt without swapping any cables over.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

How do you do that, Chrys? It has puzzled me.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

I am curious to know myself. I have a similar setup as well.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

the windows route command.

My physical setup was something like this.

VM modem connected to dir615, dir615 connected to a gigabit switch (is a router but on my lan functions as a switch), adsl router connected to that same gigabit switch. cable from that gigabit switch to pc.

Configuration wise, its probably important to have both adsl and cable routers on the same subnet.

Then windows you configure one of them as your default gateway, pick one or the other. You can then add another gateway in the advanced tcp/ip config and set it a metric, the default metric is 10, a lower number is higher priority and a higher number is lower priority, so if you add a 2nd with metric 20 then the default gateway will be used unless it goes down.

Now you can do things like toggle the metric of the 2nd gateway to change the effective default gateway however what makes it much better is the route command. You can eg. set a route to 8.8.8.8 on the 2nd gateway with a metric value of 5 and that would route all google dns requests over that gateway whilst all other stuff still goes to the other gateway.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Thanks Chrys. I'll think that through.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Far as changing it on Windows is concerned you could script it so it's as easy as clicking a shortcut.

On the other hand, that obviously only takes effect on the local machine - in my case the router itself has a script to do a similar thing but as it's on the router it applies to all machines on the network (which may or may not be what you want).

Better route would of been to use a dual wan VPN firewall device

Then your network load balances between the 2 connections and if 1 falls over it switches to 2nd for 0 downtime

In theory when infinity get 80meg out the door and vm upgrade to 120mbit you should be able to get a load balanced download speed of 200mbit

Far more efficient way of using both connections simultaneously than switching between the 2 manually.

Seeming as you are paying for both may as well use both at the same time

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

thats ok if you happy with automation, it depends if you want automated balancing or control.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Other than the Draytek 3900, doe you know which other routers do dual WAN trunking?

And thanks everyone for the advice I'm getting.

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

The Mikrotik RouterBoards can be configured to handle dual WANs. This configuration example may suit your purposes, it routes traffic based on the LAN IP address allowing you to specify which gateway traffic from any given LAN client will be sent to:

Load Balancing over Multiple Gateways

You can also use a similar approach to route traffic according to type:

Per-Traffic Load Balancing

You can also round-robin with user sessions:

NTH load balancing with masquerade

Looks like these could all be augmented to failover automatically in case of an outage with scripting:

Improved Netwatch

An alternative would be pfSense on a PC Engines ALIX which should be good for +90Mb/s throughput.

Best regards
David

Re: Can anything be done about jitter and packet loss
 

Openwrt?