Another routing/gateway problem?

[#1]

All day today the web has seemed quite 'sticky' when browsing - sometimes loading up a webpage has worked fine, whilst at other times webpages have been pretty slow to load. A traceroute to bbc.co.uk, included below, shows that vl23.thn-gw2.plus.net is taking about 200ms to respond, so I'm presuming that's the culprit.
[tt]
1  10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1)  1.261ms  1.145ms  1.404ms
2  lo0-homesurf.ptn-ag1.plus.net (195.166.128.124)  40.216ms  32.281ms  27.105ms
3  ge1-0-0-306.ptn-gw02.plus.net (84.92.3.21)  24.565ms  37.777ms  40.329ms
4  te2-2.pte-gw2.plus.net (212.159.1.106)  23.519ms  26.368ms  28.810ms
5  vl23.thn-gw2.plus.net (212.159.4.20)  168.736ms  223.376ms  223.894ms
6  rt0.thdo.bbc.co.uk (212.58.239.25)  27.037ms  28.951ms  31.096ms
7  212.58.238.149 (212.58.238.149)  30.607ms  27.389ms  28.283ms
8  * * *
9  * * *
10  * * * etc.
[/tt]

[#2]

Hmm, well things seem to be Ok now. However, I have attached a copy of the ptn-ag1 packet loss graph which I've just looked at, and something dodgy definitely seems to have been going on with it earlier - it reaches about 17% of bronze traffic being dropped at one point! What I don't understand though is why that affected HTTP browsing? As far as I can see, gold drops have been minimal... so why was I seeing high pings to the gateway and slow browsing at times today?

[#3]

I had the same problem about 2p.m. Saturday.  I was trying to get to the BBC News pages.  Other BBC sites seemed to work OK.  I just assumed lots of people were streaming on FA Cup Final Day!  I was on ptn-ag1 gateway.  I looked at the gateway graphs and the others had similar packet drop with the exception of pcl-ag01 which has shown none all day.  I assume it is out of service or not reporting!

[#4]

Actually jnwright, the others don't all have similar packet drops: the graphs look like they do, but if you check the scale on the y-axis, you'll see the graphs vary widely. The scales go up to 20% on both ptn-ag1 and thn-ag3, yet only go as high as 2% on thn-ag2! So I don't know what was going on, but it certainly seems something fishy happened today.

[#5]

I was also having problems on Saturday morning (around 11:00) accessing some web sites. At the time I put it down to problems with the sites themselves. It was ok again by Saturday evening.
Bob

[#6]

Hmm, the plot thickens... the internet's still been acting a bit weird today, and I've just run a speed test and only got 342Kb/s upload despite being on Max Premium. (Actually, I did a speed test yesterday too and got exactly the same result then, but didn't twig that something was wrong with the upload!) Download speeds however appear to be fine, as do traceroutes, so I don't know what's going on.

[#7]

Certainly not aware of any issues Be3G so I'd be interested to hear how things pan out.

[#8]

There were general issues with the BBC site for a short time on Sat afternoon.  I know this from other motorsports forums where users (myself included) were trying to stream live motorcycle racing provided by the BBC.

[#9]

It's not just the BBC that's being affected with my problem though: Orange, PN's portal, Photo-i, and Facebook are all sites that've been 'sticky' during the past 24 hours or so. Assuming Facebook have some UK servers (which they might not, I'm just guessing), it would appear that most of my problems are happening to UK destinations. It wouldn't appear to be a 'normal' broadband fault because I can get perfectly good speeds, but it's as if they're in bursts - e.g. when trying to browse a webpage, sometimes I have to wait a few seconds before it starts downloading, at which point it downloads at full speed. And I'm still only getting standard non-premium upload speeds...  an exchange problem maybe? Although I do notice that my gateway (ptn-ag1) is currently dropping 1% of gold packets... and I guess I could be in the unlucky 1%. Anyone have any ideas?

[#10]

Hi Thomas.
Have just had a meeting with networks and products re this issue and we'll investigate further and get back to you.

[#11]

Not sure if it's relevant but reports I've read suggest LINX has apparently had some problems recently, from last Friday and particularly on the 18th causing problems within the UK networks.

[#12]

Interersting, that'd certainly corroborate my experiences, although it wouldn't explain what's happened to my upload... guess that could just be a slightly bizarre fault, which I've only noticed after doing speed tests to investigate the 'stickiness' issue.

[#13]

I am on another ISP and our forums have been flooded with complaints so I would say its LINX. There was a status article on there site about it.
Apparently its sorted now though.
James