Has this morning's latency fix helped?- 27th January

[#1]

Hi guys,
It looks like we've got several issues so I want to try and cover off which is which and try and identify who is affected by what so we can determine if the work we did yesterday has resolved that particular issue.
The first problem is the latency on 21CN on our network. The problem we've been investigating is that when our network gets very busy, traffic in the titanium queue in particular (things like ping and gaming) is starting to see an increase in latency. On 20CN this doesn't happen because the titanium queue has been set up to get the highest priority on the network so that no matter how busy our network is titanium traffic should never see any latency. For some reason this hasn't been working correctly on 21CN, but it has mainly only been seen around midnight because that's when it's been busiest. In the last week or 2 we have seen it creep a bit earlier into the evening as the network is getting busier, we've added 250Mbps of bandwidth to 21CN in the last week and will be adding more shortly.
The second problem has been caused by congestion on the BT side of the network, they've been doing some big upgrade works to try and alleviate any problems that people are seeing but there has been a bit of congestion in some areas which will cause latency and slow speeds across all types of traffic.
With the symptoms of both problems pretty similar it's hard to determine which of these problems are affecting which people (some will be affected by both).
What I want to try and establish here is whether the first problem has been fixed or not. For that I need to know what latency people are seeing when the network is busy, so particular around midnight but for a full view between about 8pm and 2am.
I've got this monitoring my connection:
http://f8lure.mouselike.org/auth.asp
But I think I'm also affected by the 2nd issue. I therefore want to find some people in areas that aren't affected by any congestion BT side and see what your latency is like between 8pm and 2am. If some people say they are seeing normal latency during these hours then we can conclude that the first problem is resolved. That doesn't mean we aren't working with BT on the 2nd issue and it doesn't mean there aren't other issues that may be causing slow speeds or latency increases I just for this thread want to concentrate on working out if the specific problem with high titanium latency on our network is resolved or not.

[#2]

Much worse than midday today which, itself, wasn't great. Something is seriously pooped.

[#3]

Quote from: dave

Hi guys, It looks like we've got several issues so I want to try and cover off which is which and try and identify who is affected by what so we can determine if the work we did yesterday has resolved that particular issue. The first problem is the latency on 21CN on our network. The problem we've been investigating is that when our network gets very busy, traffic in the titanium queue in particular (things like ping and gaming) is starting to see an increase in latency. On 20CN this doesn't happen because the titanium queue has been set up to get the highest priority on the network so that no matter how busy our network is titanium traffic should never see any latency. For some reason this hasn't been working correctly on 21CN, but it has mainly only been seen around midnight because that's when it's been busiest. In the last week or 2 we have seen it creep a bit earlier into the evening as the network is getting busier, we've added 250Mbps of bandwidth to 21CN in the last week and will be adding more shortly.

Since my exchange was upgraded on around December 12th, I'd say AT LEAST half the days since then I've had terrible lag on Xbox gaming between 7-9.30 (I don't play after that so cant say whether it gets better), When I say terrible lag I mean absolutely unplayable. Since the work on the 27th I found that yesterday it was terrible despite until I rebooted the router, then it improved but still not great, tonight it dipped into being terrible again and then was just choppy and laggy  but just about playable tonight.

Quote

The second problem has been caused by congestion on the BT side of the network, they've been doing some big upgrade works to try and alleviate any problems that people are seeing but there has been a bit of congestion in some areas which will cause latency and slow speeds across all types of traffic. With the symptoms of both problems pretty similar it's hard to determine which of these problems are affecting which people (some will be affected by both).

Yup getting that too. In fact my internet at work has been slow as well, that is Madasafish, which I believe is now owned by Plusnet, since it is the same exchange would we also be on 21CN at work now?

Quote

What I want to try and establish here is whether the first problem has been fixed or not. For that I need to know what latency people are seeing when the network is busy, so particular around midnight but for a full view between about 8pm and 2am. I've got this monitoring my connection: http://f8lure.mouselike.org/auth.asp But I think I'm also affected by the 2nd issue. I therefore want to find some people in areas that aren't affected by any congestion BT side and see what your latency is like between 8pm and 2am. If some people say they are seeing normal latency during these hours then we can conclude that the first problem is resolved. That doesn't mean we aren't working with BT on the 2nd issue and it doesn't mean there aren't other issues that may be causing slow speeds or latency increases I just for this thread want to concentrate on working out if the specific problem with high titanium latency on our network is resolved or not.

All in all I'd say its improved but nowhere near what it should be, or what I would consider paying for.

[#4]

My experience is very similar to the previous post by senote. My problem is that whatever is happening is happening between 7 and 9 pm, after 9 things appear to start getting better. Although I have not seen any extended ping times or packet losses there is something odd in that I do get timed out, perhaps it is only affecting certain ports and not all. This seems to contradict what Dave said in his post as his concern was later in the day around mid night. I don't think my problem is congestion as I would have thought that would show up with extended ping times (I get 37ms to ntp.plus.net no matter what time of day) and my download speed dose not vary by much.
Dave, could you clarify please.

[#5]

This morning the speeds are back to how they were the previous morning. (Pretty bad, but not as horrific as last night.)


Why is my ping jumping from 40's to 20's every 10 seconds?
Games feel quite smooth but still not ideal or at the standard the connection felt when I was first moved to Pro 21CN in December.

[#6]

david_g - there was plenty of capacity on our side of the network around midday so if it wasn't normal then I don't think the problem you are seeing is due to the latency issue on titanium (although if it hasn't been fixed it may be compounding the problem later in the evening).
If possible would you be able to do a couple of tests one evening around 10pm and again around midnight please? Could you run pathping to ntp.plus.net and post back the results, mtr/winmtr would be useful too if you can run that and let it get about 500 packets.
senote - it's unlikely the madasafish account will have been moved to 21CN as we've only moved a couple so far,  but it's possible, I think we have more Madasafish customers on FTTC than ADSL2+, but I can check if you want to let me know the username. I presume your gaming last night was all before 10pm, looking at our traffic graphs the gateway you were on had capacity before 10pm so I'm suspecting that it may be something other than the latency issue affecting your connection.
Docrob - I'm encouraged by the fact that you get a 37ms ping all the time? Have you tried it though around midnight. The 7-9pm issue might be BT congestion or something else (similar time to senote) so would be interesting to see what the ping was like around 10pm and midnight if possible.

[#7]

Have just notice this Bandwidth Quality Monitor over on ThinkBroadband. Might be helpful for monitoring latency and helping with the ongoing investigations?

[#8]

I've set mine up:
My Broadband Ping

[#9]

My Broadband Ping

[#10]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/d76d1aa3084f77bbbbd4a329142bd50a.html

Had to change settings on the router due to 100% packet loss
"Why does my graph show 100% packet loss?
This may be due to firewall settings or because your IP address has changed. If you have a firewall, ensure that it allows ICMP ping. You will also see 100% packet loss if the address we are monitoring is disconnected from the Internet."

[#11]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/3653ddd20dd8f4aaebf8beda978ed832.html

[#12]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/c058fc054eaf37f2319e452cb981c015.html

[#13]

Bob,
after getting download speeds of 10Kb/s since my migration to the 21CN network I've just tried the speedchek again at 7:30pm and got just under 4Mb/s - something must have happened. Hopefully the fixes you and BT have been implementing have had a lasting impact.
Anyone else seeing any improvements - I am in the Rochdale/Manchester area.

[#14]

Im seeing improvements and i live in west cornwall

[#15]

I have monitored the ping times to ntp.plus.net for the last 24 hours at 5 min intervals, during this period it has been a steady 43ms apart for a couple of spikes of less than 5min during yesterday afternoon and again  this morning around 5 am which were around 64 ms.
I still have an issue with latency when running Second Life at around 7pm to 9pm.