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Slow speeds afternoon and evening

randpwar
Grafter
Posts: 1,320
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Slow speeds afternoon and evening

I’ve noticed appreciably slower speeds in the late afternoon and evening over the last couple of days. Speeds are reduced from my constant 4250kbps ish to about 1250kbps; all is then back to normal after say 10pm and in the morning. Haven’t bothered checking on BT Speedtester but namesco speedtester confirms the visual proof of slow speeds. Router sync is unaffected at 5536 constantly. What can be causing these disturbances?
Regards
Rob
175 REPLIES 175
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Hi Rob,
I've just had a look at your account and can't see anything there that might have caused any issues, so I'd say it's down to congestion at the exchange or failing that the times you are talking about are those when the network is busiest.
penfold
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 2,280
Thanks: 25
Fixes: 5
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Orbrey.
I think the issue is the number of gold traffic packets being dropped lately at peak times.  People may think I have a bugbear about this, but according to your webpage, you aim to have zero gold drops.  I can appreciate at peak time this is difficult, but over the last couple of nights I have seem very laggy browsing, speedtester is up and down like a yoyo, not a smooth rise, this always is assopciated with large number of gold traffic being dropped. Also one of the edge routers appears to be offline, is this something to do with the upgrades you are doing, and causing the netowkr to be out of balance. Last time this happened was again when you tried to upgrade an edge router firmware, and had to roll back.  Can you provide any explanation as to the excessive numbers of gold traffic being dropped at the moment at peak times.  Also I am using the RIN network, that should not be affected by this, and am seeing laggness at peak times here as well, but it could be caused by something completely different.
Edit... My exchange is green, and has been green for ages.
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Quote
Also I am using the RIN network, that should not be affected by this

Hi Penfold,
You're correct - we don't have any control over the RIN network as it's owned by BT so it certainly won't be anything related to the gold drops there. With regard to that, there's been a bit more traffic this week because of patch Tuesday which will account for the majority of the gold drops we've been seeing. Even taking this into account though there haven't been enough drops on the gold protocol to cause any issues.
I'd recommend switching back to our network for a bit to see if your service improves at all - I know Chris was on RIN until last night or so and his Xbox live performace was much improved once he'd moved back to the PN network.
randpwar
Grafter
Posts: 1,320
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Hi Orbrey
Many thanks for checking that all appears okay with my account. My point is that I have a rock solid 4+mb connection at all times but that there has been a noticeable drop in speeds at the times I mentioned only over the last 2 or 3 nights, never before. I presume that congestion and ‘patch Tuesday traffic’ must be about typical.  Do you have any thoughts/analysis on what can be causing these problems this week specifically?     
Thanks
Rob
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Other than the increased traffic on the network causing congestion, nothing really. Patch Tuesday will cause issues long past Tuesday however as many people don't turn their PCs on every day. The effects should get less and less noticable as time goes on and the speeds should pick up as this stops happening.
Let me know if it doesn't get any better and I'll see if there's anything we can do. What status does your exchange show if you check it at http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/ ?
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Gold drops have been really high for the last couple of nights.  There was a large patch Tuesday, and the England match was only available on Setenta so there will have been a massive amount of streaming traffic.
I have a connection with O2 that has been about 3-5Mbps slower than usual over the last couple of nights, so I reckon it's affecting other ISPs too.
randpwar
Grafter
Posts: 1,320
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

I will of course check the exchange status tonight  (and I really don’t want to be seen as a ’dog with a bone’) but ‘increased traffic on the network causing congestion’ and ‘Patch Tuesday’ (regardless of how long the effects last) doesn’t explain why this hasn’t happened before and the demands must be typical; could be James' reasons but I'm not greatly convinced. You wait till my lad starts on his Power Rangers stuff on Youtube, now that really is high demand!  Smiley
ps Exchange Status ' No plans for 21CN'  Sad
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

It's worth considering that the number of gold drops we had on Tuesday night were the highest that we've seen for a long time - suggesting that the windows update was considerable.
I don't think my explanation is actually that far off the truth, especially coupled with my experience on a different ISP Smiley
randpwar
Grafter
Posts: 1,320
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Thanks for your answers guys, I do appreciate the interest. I'll take James viewpoint as a very well informed opinion.
Not with Plusnet then James?  Wink
zubel
Community Veteran
Posts: 3,793
Thanks: 4
Registered: ‎08-06-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

I think James is doing, uh "Competitor Analysis" Wink
B.
scootie
Grafter
Posts: 4,799
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎03-11-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

funny my sisters on o2 and has a full 8mb sync and has not had the slower speeds your talking about jamesh.
hope you dont mind me asking but why you with o2 and not pn. i only put my sister on o2 as she is at uni and has a o2 contract fone so was cheaper than a bag of chips for the 8mb product from o2 as she wasnt going to be doing more than genral web surfing I wasnt to botherd if there network didnt perform as well as pn.
There not to bad but i have seen them have alot of dns problems and the broadband member centre is lacking alot of information compared to pn. not forgeting there stupid in house firmware on there routers.
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Hi AB,
It will probably depend on where in the country she is.  My congestion yesterday will have been backhaul or exchange based and it's rather hard to tell which!
FWIW, I'm on O2 because I wanted to see what ADSL2+ was like from a curiosity standpoint and should (heaven forbid) Plusnet ever experience connection difficulties, I'm able to update people on the community site.  I also have an O2 mobile contract.
Their member centre is appalling compared to Plusnet.
penfold
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 2,280
Thanks: 25
Fixes: 5
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

Thanks James, at least I see where the gold drops issue lies.  Just out of curiosity, is there an edge router still offline??  THN-AG3.  If so I presume this will causes issues also.
Gorvul
Grafter
Posts: 161
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Slow speeds afternoon and evening

This thread's title and first post could nearly have been written by me too.  I also have noticed that in the morning I have a great connection speed, but by the late afternoon and evening my surfing becomes noticeably slower to a point where I start thinking about quitting PN and trying another ISP, but that could go bottoms up.  I've always liked Plusnet, so there's a lot in favour to keep me here, but rather than this being the last few nights(as in the original poster's case), this slowdown has been going on for weeks at the mentioned  times of the day, for me. 
These days I'm only using the internet for surfing, so I kind of expect it to work well, and fast!!  I'm not using P2P, nothing else, other than web browser.
I'd like to hear that there is a problem going on, and one that is being worked on with a solution in very near sight, because I get irritated when I can't surf as fast as I want to.  I don't have the patience to raise a ticket or do bt speedtests etc, because I think it is slow externally. 
Is superfast broadband coming? one which won't be so congested...  Or should I be paying more?  I didn't notice this when I was on premier (not that I remember, though my memory is poor).  Is it because I switched to broadband your way option 2?  Is it meant to be slow each evening?  sometimes it goes to about 1MB (kind of worst case) - at good times it's about 6MB - that's quite a drop no?