Packet loss in the evenings

[#1]

I'm experiencing rather high levels of packet loss, much higher in the evenings than at other times.  Example ping results (it doesn't really matter what I ping, just picking on this server as the one I was trying to access when I noticed the problem):

Quote

--- newswww.bbc.net.uk ping statistics --- 40 packets transmitted, 37 received, 7% packet loss, time 39145ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 24.040/39.985/176.295/30.738 ms

This seems to happen most evenings, to some degree or other (although the actual percentage of packets lost varies quite a bit).
Doesn't seem to be a problem with my broadband line, as pinging my gateway is fine:

Quote

--- 195.166.128.227 ping statistics --- 53 packets transmitted, 53 received, 0% packet loss, time 52210ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 23.302/41.512/136.528/29.704 ms

I did originally think it was a broadband line fault, but had my target SNR raised from 3dB up to the more usual 6dB -- this has fixed the rather large number of errors that were being detected there, but I still get the packet loss problems.
Any suggestions what might be going on?

[#2]

Hi there,
What's your sync rate like, and what kind of errors are you showing on the connection? If it's not already it might be worth applying interleaving on the line, but the router stats will confirm that and give us a bit more information to go on/

[#3]

Router stats currently:

Quote

Line Mode ADSL2+ Line State Show Time Latency Type Fast Line Up Time 03:21:39:31 Line Coding Trellis On Line Up Count 21 Line Power State L0 Statistics Downstream Upstream Line Rate 4019 Kbps 448 Kbps Noise Margin 6.7 dB 16.0 dB Line Attenuation 54.5 dB 29.8 dB Output Power 17.5 dBm 12.0 dBm MSGC (number in overhead channel data) 59 14 B (number of bytes in Mux Frame) 125 56 M (number of Mux Frames in FEC Frame) 1 1 T (Mux Frames over sync bytes) 1 1 R (number of check bytes in FEC Frame) 0 0 S (ratio of FEC over PMD Frame length) 0.9951 4.0000 L (number of bits in PMD Frame) 1013 114 D (interleaver depth) 1 1 Super Frames 20851817 20851815 Super Frame Errors 1954 15339 RS Words 0 0 RS Correctable Errors 0 3899 RS Uncorrectable Errors 0 0 HEC Errors 1149 0 OCD Errors 18 0 LCD Errors 0 0 ES Errors 0 0

When I was on 3dB noise margin, I used to get thousands of RS Uncorrectable Errors turning up all the time, but that's not happening any more, so the change must have helped.

[#4]

It looks like interleaving is on given the HEC errors showing but 1149 errors in nearly 4 hours is certainly nothing to worry about, the increase in SNR will definitely be the cause of the improvement.
Not sure about the ping traffic going missing though, I guess you're still seeing similar errors?

[#5]

Yes, the problem is still ongoing, although intermittently.

[#6]

If it's not causing problems with the broadband then it's not really worth worrying about, it's only if it starts to affect your regular use that we need to worry.