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Intermittent ping spikes and slowdowns/dropouts

Fat_Leonard
Grafter
Posts: 48
Thanks: 7
Registered: ‎23-03-2021

Intermittent ping spikes and slowdowns/dropouts

The broadband has just come back after an hour or so of crawling along. Webpages were unreachable and trace route showed variations on the attached. BT speedtest stopped after recording 450ms ping.

In the last few weeks I have experienced problems in online games, where ping will spike from 40ms to >600ms and fluctuate, while at other times remaining <100ms for days. In this time no changes have been made to our network or telephone setup. Throughout I have been on a wireless connection to my desktop, and for the past year have been used to ~30ms at speedtest.net when checking.

We had an issue previously (2019/20) where the wire to the cabinet, which is strung along a valley, caused noise on the landline and great broadband problems. The engineer tested the line, dried out the connections along the valley and service has been excellent up until now with no problems topping leaderboards or watching HD programmes on iPlayer.

Tests

Quietline is quiet. There are no telephone problems.

Router statistics (Archer VR2800) are as attached. The router is always on.

Tracert was run throughout the hour or so of very slow service. The time to the Plusnet Gateway is very high. This occurred with Plusnet and OpenDNS DNS.

A new BT speedtest performed just before posting this shows 94ms ping and 4.23Mbps, which is pretty good, as the highest we've had is just over 5Mbps.

The weather is clear and calm, so it's not the wind and the rain.

4 REPLIES 4
Fat_Leonard
Grafter
Posts: 48
Thanks: 7
Registered: ‎23-03-2021

Re: Intermittent ping spikes and slowdowns/dropouts

Today I noticed that the SNR Margin on the router dropped from ~6dB to ~2dB and webpages failed to load while the landline was in use. I replicated this by looking at the stats browser page on the router with the handset on the hook, and while listening to the dial tone. Every time it dropped the SNR margin. There is one filtered-faceplate telephone socket with the landline and router plugged into it. Removing the filtered faceplate and connecting the telephone and router to a microfilter fixed the problem with the dial tone dropping the SNR margin.

However, this evening with the same microfilter setup, SNR margin has dropped to 3dB and ping on games has been fluctuating significantly.

The line attentuation downstream is 52dB, and upstream 30dB. BT line tester reports no faults.

Fat_Leonard
Grafter
Posts: 48
Thanks: 7
Registered: ‎23-03-2021

Re: Intermittent ping spikes and slowdowns/dropouts

SNR Margin now sitting at 2.6dB after being 6.4dB for most of the day. I've set up a watch on Think Broadband, the live results of which are here:ThinkBroadband graph 

Dan_the_Van
Aspiring Hero
Posts: 2,484
Thanks: 1,117
Fixes: 73
Registered: ‎25-06-2007

Re: Intermittent ping spikes and slowdowns/dropouts

Hi @Fat_Leonard , welcome to the forum.

I would suggest not performing trace route tests to any plus net host as they are likely not to have ICMP enabled and thus will not respond to ping or trace route. Also advise trace router and ping are used on a hardwired device connected to the modem/router LAN port, not via wifi or homeplugs, these can add delays.

Take a look at MTR available for Windows and Linux, handy program that displays trace route statistics and repeats until stopped. dotMTR has a graphic display with a graph. You could set it up to trace route to www.thinkbroadband.co.uk

If you think you have a fault I strongly suggest to raise it at https://faults.plus.net these boards are not always looked at by PlusNet staff

Dan

 

Fat_Leonard
Grafter
Posts: 48
Thanks: 7
Registered: ‎23-03-2021

Re: Intermittent ping spikes and slowdowns/dropouts

Thank you, Dan_the_Van. I have since read up on some of the issues with route tracing. I didn't know its limitations. Yes, I'm aware of the possible problems from testing through a wireless connection. However, in this case the original Internet failure affected all devices in the house. For the last year, the wireless signal has been my datum as it has performed admirably as far as online game latency goes and there have been no hardware changes since.

I'm not sure whether there is an actual fault, which is why I thought getting some opinion here would be a good first step as I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether the numbers shown in the router, or the quality monitoring graph, are normal or abnormal for our attenuation. Doesn't the BQM monitor the WAN address, thus the wireless connection is irrelevant as far as judging the connection goes?

Currently the downstream SNR margin is 6.1dB, and the highest noted today was 6.7dB.

Today's Broadband Quality Monitor graph is here.

EDIT: I've just realised the previous BQM link in the post above doesn't work for me, but I can't edit that post any more. This one works for me.