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Evening disruptions

shure
Grafter
Posts: 509
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Evening disruptions

Lately I've been getting some fairly heavy disruptions, with high latency and slow page loading. 
I did have some issues a few weeks ago but I made some intensive changes, including replacing the router and rewiring the extension sockets in the house and replacing the cabling with new CW1308 cable. I have also unplugged my Sky boxes and only my telephone and router are connected to a single extension socket in the house.  For a while all seemed good but the last coupe of days have been interesting, to say the least.
Thursday lunchtime:

Bt Speedtest brought the following results:
"The Performance Tester is currently unable to run a speed test for your broadband connection. Please try again shortly, however if this problem persists, raise the issue with your service provider."
I posted on the high latency thread and at least one other user had the same issue with the BT Speedtest site at the same time as me.
Then Thursday evening:

The TBB graph entitled "Thursday evening" shows a 24hr period where everything goes slightly haywire, while the Friday evening graph shows the current results after I manually disconnected and changed to a different gateway.  From an amateur perspective it looks like it's not down to the gateway as I'm getting poor results from more than one.  The wiring's all new so hoping it's not down to that.  Outside these times everything runs very smoothly and trouble free, so the problem is intermittent at best.
I'm on 20CN ADSL with an IP Profile of 7.15Mbps and I'm usually close to that speed.  Generally happy with the speed apart from the occasional problems as outlined above.  I've attached latest Routerstats SNRM graph.  Any help or ideas gratefully received

12 REPLIES 12
Anotherone
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Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: Evening disruptions

Hi again.
Well the Bits/Tone plot doesn't show any immediate concerns, could you post the DS Noise Margin plot?
Are you able to say what usage your connection was getting between just after 12pm to around 7pm today?
shure
Grafter
Posts: 509
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Evening disruptions

Hi Anotherone,
attached the DS Noise margin plot.  I was out for a while today but the kids were home so I would guess and say a mixture of film streaming, gaming and facebook
shure
Grafter
Posts: 509
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Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Evening disruptions

but then this morning I'm back to
Anotherone
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Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: Evening disruptions

I'd also guess that when you ran that pingtest the children weren't using the connection - yes/no?
Edit: what sampling rate are you using on RouterStats and is that the Netgear at the moment?
shure
Grafter
Posts: 509
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Evening disruptions

this latest one, no.  Others I'm not so sure but I know at least one of the poor results was when no-one was streaming
AndyH
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Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: Evening disruptions

I was asking about leaving your connection unused/no ethernet connections and wifi turned off for a period (ideally at a peak time) to see what TBB ping graphs looks like. If you are still using seeing the ping spikes, then we should know that the problem is not your end.
The problem with a lot of streaming services is they are using more and more bandwidth - particularly for HD. Two people using iPlayer watching HD streams at the same time would pretty much use all of your connection speed. Things like browsing/Skype would probably slow down as a result.
shure
Grafter
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Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Evening disruptions

I see.  Fair enough.  Happy to try anything Smiley
I get what you're saying but then shouldn't I see the same issues every time they e.g. stream? I'm confused partly because the blips in connection don't always coincide with usage.  Sometimes when they are streaming and on facebook I can Skype with no issues, other times no-one is using it and Skype audio is awful.  I've tried getting them to e.g. stop downloading at the time but there seems to be no noticeable impact upon perfomance
AndyH
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Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: Evening disruptions

It could be down to what they are streaming - HD vs SD etc.
It's a shame your router doesn't have some form of traffic monitor so you can see what is going through when you are having problems. Which technicolor router do you have?
shure
Grafter
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Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Evening disruptions

I don't.  I use my old Netgear DG834PN.  I tried the Technicolor TG582N but had enormous problems using Xbox Live and getting constant disconnections - I don't believe it ever went longer than one day without disconnecting at least once.  With the Netgear it only disconnects when I tell it to.  I also couldn't game at when others were streaming as it didn't seem to like multitasking, suffering from immense lag and drop-outs, but again that problem is largely - with some occasional exceptions - a thing of the past with the Netgear router
Anotherone
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Re: Evening disruptions

I can't remember whether you checked the VP status of your Exchange here and IIRC there is no 21CN at your exchange either  Sad
I'm  guessing at the moment that you might have been seeing a combination of Plusnet's network problem combined with a maxing out of your own connection in some circumstances, so AndyH's suggestion would be a good idea but the peak times might also be peak times of your usage!
If you look at your TBB graphs, they are nice a low and flat with no yellow or blue peaks during obvious quiet times (eg. middle of the night) and at non-peak usage Pingtest is returning excellent figures.
Once you connection starts getting usage, and the more intensive the usage, the greater the yellow peaks and spikes.
Audio on Skype doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, so that by itself, I wouldn't expect to have much impact on a TBB plot.
When you are Streaming, the bulk of the traffic is downstream and if there is other heavy usage on the connection, I'd expect to see some yellow peaks.
Now, I'm not a Gamer, but if I'm not mistaken there is generally a lot more Upstream traffic in Gaming, so if there were say a couple of games going on and especially if you were hosting, then with a 448kbps upstream connection it wouldn't surprise me if that easily got maxed out. That's when I'd expect to see large blue peaks and blocks of increased average latency.
One other thing with streaming, I've always noticed Youtube stuff is never as good as the BBC from the point of view of buffering or sound synced with video, and that has from time to time been dependant of the version of Flash at the time (ie some versions have been worse/better than others). I've not investigated any issues with my own computer that may contribute to that, I expect there's a few!
shure
Grafter
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Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Evening disruptions

Ah, OK, thanks for that.  Would that also explain why I sometimes get periods of constant packet loss?
My exchange is good old fashioned 20CN with no plans for 21CN and the word "fibre" isn't even in the local dictionary, as far as I can tell.
The reason for my concerns is that I never used to get the Skype issues before PN, but on the other hand my connection used to be a lot slower so my son didn't bother so much with streaming either (due to buffering every 20 seconds or so), so the two probably cancel each other out. Wink  As mentioned the only thing that still puzzles me a bit is that it's not as simple as "streaming=poor Skype", as sometimes it has no adverse effect at all.  Occasionally I have various people in the house streaming, on Facebook and Skype, all at the same time, while gaming runs fine.  Other times nothing seems to work well Huh
What you say makes sense but I'm pretty sure I was getting some blue peaks when I could have sworn that no-one was using the line beyond mobile usage, and does that really use a lot?  I could be wrong there, though, and will have to monitor more vigilantly.  I do notice that Xbox Live often has moderate NAT in the evening and rarely, if ever, during the day, but my son streams at all hours so don't quite see the correlation there.  Possibly that's down to PN network as you have suggested.
Anyway I'm generally happy with the service but it does seem odd that the issues don't happen every day, while my son is a creature of habit and usually visits the same sites so I would have expected things to be consistent in that respect.  I may be getting greedy but just looking for perfection Grin
Thanks again both for your help.

Anotherone
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Posts: 19,107
Thanks: 457
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Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: Evening disruptions

Try downloading and installing Wireshark see http://community.plus.net/library/faults/using-wireshark-for-data-capture/ ; &  http://community.plus.net/library/windows/how-to-use-wireshark-windows-video/ for info. Check that your Skype (and anything else you want to check on) is getting the right Traffic Prioritisation.
FYI I've experienced an occasional problem with poor Skype on 20CN, but it's usually only sporadic and not persistent and every time I check it's still been given the correct prioritisation!