Jitter on the line

[#1]

Hello,

I am experiencing a lot of latency jitter on my line. Average ping is about 30, but jitter every few seconds at +300ms, making anything real-time (say gaming) unusable.

Things I have tried that didn't help:

• Disconnect everything (20kB/s) on the line, so fairly quiet. No wireless enabled, single device connected by 1m of cat5.
• Different router with QoS settings.

I've also noticed that on my LAN side of the network there is no jitter, even under load (0.8ms deviation on average). Only appears to manifest once a connection leaves my home network. I also got out the 'ole wireshark to watch it, and i've noticed its entirely on my download packets, rather than my upload which remains jitterless. This is confirmed by some games that have telemetry built in such as CounterStrike which have latency/jitter graphs.

I've talked to support but they say theres not much to be done from their end.

Am I doomed to experience jitter? Does anyone have any thoughts as to what I could try next?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[#2]

What service are you on? - latency is often worse with ADSL than with FTTC (or FTTP) simply due to the lower speed.

Has it changed recently, or has it always been bad?

Unfortunately latency - like upload speed - is something Plusnet don't offer any guarantee for, so it needs the right member of staff to get latency issues investigated.

[#3]

Hello,
It's fibre to the cabinet is my understanding.

Unsure if its a new thing, only recently started playing games again.

Yeah, I fear you're right, which means I'm not sure it's solvable. Hopefully someone else has a solution, but we'll see. Thanks for your response though.

[#4]

@vertigo1 Hi there, Believe it or not, i am having the same issue at home at the moment (for quite some time may i add) and am currently in talks with some seasoned veterans of the plusnet back-end to figure out who i raise my issue to. 

Although the issue sounds very similar to mine i need to check something with you before i try and raise this. I see you've tried all the basic sort of checks and even used wireshark to track the packet loss. Have you tried a trace route with CMD or setup pingplotter to ping the internal network aswell as an external too? 

With my latency issue it followed me from FTTC to FTTP and using pingplotter i found hops 5 and 6 (especially 6) had 30% packet loss over an hour duration of testing. Latency hitting as high as 1331ms which is dreadful for all the competitive gaming i do. 

Ofcourse when we test your line its showing no faults, but believe me i when i tell you i feel your pain on this matter. My money would be on this being an external network issue that our testing doesn't pick up and if your case is the same as mine... its an IPP issue (internet peering platform). 

Being a staff member i have exhausted nearly every asset i have to resolve my own latency problem, having to call my own ISP to book Openreach to see if i could escalate it with them (no joy), countless changes in my internal network etc... 

Hopefully we will have a way to sort this for you if it is indeed the same problem as mine. 

But if you could, try some trace routes for me and post the results so i can see if there is any similarities to mine.

Cheers

[#5]

Alrighty im going to try this. Though I must admit im not certain as to what the plotter is showing me. For instance, the packet loss is listed as 99% on one of the hops as the route changes sometimes. Additionally, its not clear how bad the jitter is (only that it's happening). Do you have any recommendation as to where I should ping to, so I can do an hour capture? And what i should be posting back here?

Thanks for your help so far, it's good to hear its not just me...

[#6]

Attached a screenshot of an hour-long pingplot to the same tester domain as before.

[#7]

Hello,

I recently had a 900/110 FTTP line installed and I'm facing very similar issues, latency and packet loss. Did you manage to get anywhere with your personal line?

I've found this forum post on think broadband which could possibly be onto something?

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/4765634-fttp-packet-loss-when-using-full-speed.html?fpart=al...

[#8]

LOL, I don't know what you're all complaining about 

Here is what I get running 1000 passes of traceroute to the Counter-Strike servers in London -

                              Loss%    Snt  Last   Avg  Best  Wrst
1 - my-home-router             0.0%   1000   0.2   0.2   0.1   0.3
2 - my-ISP's-LNS               0.0%   1000   6.0   6.6   5.5   8.2
3 - my-ISP's-LINX              0.0%   1000   5.6   6.2   5.3   7.7
4 - 195.66.226.182             0.0%   1000   6.6   6.8   5.7   9.0
5 - 162-254-196-242.valve.net  0.0%   1000   5.8   6.6   5.8   8.3
6 - 162-254-196-67.valve.net   0.0%   1000   7.3   7.0   5.7   8.3

.

[#9]

Thanks for posting your MTR result, that's actually useful to compare against. Funnily enough CS is one the applications that is worst affected. I've attached a few MTRs from my end to 8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1 and the Valve server from your reply. This is running directly on the router as it's OpenWRT. It's a GL.iNet MT600 for reference.

[#10]

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@calloom wrote:

This is running directly on the router as it's OpenWRT. It's a GL.iNet MT600 for reference.

---

I assume you meant GL.iNet MT6000 ?

Nice ! 😎

I hadn't considered running MTR from my router's command line, but it worked -

                                  Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- my-ISP's-LNS               0.0%    10    5.5   6.7   5.5   9.1   1.3
  2.|-- my-ISP's-LINX              0.0%    10    9.5   6.5   5.3   9.5   1.4
  3.|-- 195.66.226.182             0.0%    10    8.3   7.0   5.5   8.3   1.2
  4.|-- 162-254-196-243.valve.net  0.0%    10    5.6   6.5   5.5   8.4   1.0
  5.|-- 162-254-196-67.valve.net   0.0%    10    9.7   7.1   5.5   9.7   1.5

Pretty much the same result, just with one less (first) hop on the trace.

.

[#11]

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@calloom wrote:

Thanks for posting your MTR result, that's actually useful to compare against...

... I've attached a few MTRs from my end to 8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1

For completeness, here are my MTR traces to Google DNS and Cloudflare DNS, for you to compare.

'dns.google.com' -

                               Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- my-home-router          0.0%   100    0.3   0.3   0.2   0.4   0.0
  2.|-- my-ISP's-LNS            0.0%   100    6.1   7.0   5.3  12.4   1.4
  3.|-- my-ISP's-LONAP          0.0%   100    7.3   6.9   5.3  11.0   1.3
  4.|-- 2a00:1450:8125::1       0.0%   100    7.1   7.8   6.1  11.5   1.2
  5.|-- 2a00:1450:8125::1       0.0%   100    6.3   7.7   5.9  11.5   1.3
  6.|-- dns.google              0.0%   100    6.2   7.4   6.0  11.4   1.3

'dns.cloudflare.com' -

                               Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- my-home-router          0.0%   100    0.3   0.2   0.2   0.3   0.0
  2.|-- my-ISP's-LNS            0.0%   100    5.3   6.7   5.3  10.5   1.2
  3.|-- my-ISP's-LONAP          0.0%   100    5.5   6.7   5.3  10.8   1.2
  4.|-- 2400:cb00:21:200::36    0.0%   100    6.5  11.6   6.1  40.4   7.2
  5.|-- 2400:cb00:377:3::       0.0%   100   24.5  12.3   6.0  55.5   9.3
  6.|-- 2803:f800:53::8         0.0%   100    6.3   7.2   6.0  13.1   1.3

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@calloom wrote:

Funnily enough CS is one the applications that is worst affected.

---

I only chose that because @vertigo1 had mentioned problems with "Counter-Strike" in the first post of this topic.

.

[#12]

Ah I did mean 6000, it's been a great router whilst I was on VM. I see you're using IPv6 there and it does have an option to use IPv6 however it looks here it's only for users with Static IP addresses? I've heard they've removed the ability to purchase one of these? I've heard it can fix the issue I'm seeing here because the traffic is routed differently somehow. I'd happily spend an extra £5 a month if it fixed the issue.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/04/broadband-isp-plusnet-uk-set-to-trial-ipv6-on-high-tou...

[#13]

@calloom The IPV6 trial is just that - a trial, it doesn't have an all-user release date yet, and the trialists have already been agreed. Static IP's are no longer available for those that didn't have them before a certain date - IIRC late October last year.

[#14]

@calloom 

Please see https://community.plus.net/t5/IPv6-Trial/Public-release/m-p/2011079#M3521 

Also worth pointing out that @outcast is NOT a plusnet customer

[#15]

Hi All,

Thank you for your responses. If I'm unable to purchase a static IP then I think that leaves me a little dead in the water which is really unfortunate. Does anyone have any suggestions before I finally concede and just wait out the contract?