Fibre speeds slow down after 7pm

[#1]

Hi,

I recently changed over to Plusnet Fibre after a couple of years with Sky Fibre. Ever since the change I have noticed a significant reduction in the actual speed achieved each evening - usually after 7pm. While I understand that more users will be connected in the evening, the connection speed to the router is always around 22Mb as expected and we had no issues with the line on Sky, which was always around 17Mb - even at the peak periods?

I have attached some speed test results from Ookla, which clearly show a reduction in speed most evenings. Later that night or the next morning it is back up to 19-20Mb? The BT Openreach test also confirms this.

As we were on the same cabinet with Sky and the same line I can only assume that there is a congestion issue on the BT Openreach network in the evenings on this cabinet. Has anyone else noticed this issue? I have tried to ring Plusnet, but gave up after waiting 20 minutes to speak to someone. It seems you can no longer report anything by email.

Thanks

Andy

[#2]

While I understand that more users will be connected in the evening, the connection speed to the router is always around 22Mb as expected

Yes. Your modem's connection speed has no connection with the number of users on PN's network. However the number of users can affect how much of your connection speed you can actually use. It does sound like congestion but before assuming that how are you connecting the test devices? If you're not using an Ethernet connection all bets are off.

If it is congestion then it is probably relatively local to you. I say that because there's almost no sign of it for me. It's unlikely to be the cab because they have plenty of backhaul to the exchange and anyway Sky would have been impacted just as much. More likely it's your exchange. If you can tell us what exchange you're on someone may be able to confirm if there is a problem. Assuming it's the exchange backhaul itself BT will likely fix it in a couple of weeks.

[#3]

Hi Andrue,

Thanks for coming back so quickly.

I have done the test using a mixture of Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections. Both show the same issue. The BT Opernreach test was based on an ethernet connection directly to the router. The line is pretty stable and syncs to the same level that we had previously, so I am fairly sure we don't have an issue there - other than we are over 1km from the cabinet, so the sync speed achieved is not great to start with.

I have attached the line check statistics with our exchange details. If someone could please check if there is a known congestion issue with our exchange that would be great?

Thanks again for any help!

Andy

[#4]

Well there's this.

Maintenance is planned on your exchange or at least in your area at the moment. Not saying it's intended to address this particular problem though as I haven't yet found a site that gives VP status. It's looking like they've all gone 😕

I'm also not terribly impressed if you're only getting 22Mb/s connection speed since that's in the 'low' category. It might be worth trying to raise that as a separate fault though I'm not sure if openreach would accept it.

[#5]

Thanks Andrue.

We have had a few outages recently, but nothing major. I will see if anything changes after the 23rd!

I can't say as I am impressed with our connection speed either, but being as our guaranteed minimum speed is just 15Mb/s I suspect openreach will refuse to help. Having said that, our evening speed struggles to achieve half that!

Best regards,

Andy

[#6]

If the speeds don't improve in the evenings, get us a fault raised and we can do some digging in to the VLAN utilisation.

[#7]

Thanks Chris. Will do.

Andy

[#8]

Hi Chris,

It seems that any engineering works have not really helped. The speeds last night were even worse (see attached).

There is either some form of throttling going on or a congestion issue at the exchange. It is really odd that is always happens after around 7.15?

Andy

Andy

[#9]

When I've tested your line I've just got this result:

Problem Explanation: [ND506] Potential Performance issue has been identified related to VLAN Utilization.

The fault you reported has been passed through to our suppliers to investigate this, when we hear back we'll get the ticket updated.

[#10]

Thanks Chris - at least that proves there is an issue. Hopefully it can be resolved fairly quickly.

Andy

[#11 · Accepted solution]

I've just done some digging and we're being advised that the issue should be resolved by the 5th November.

[#12]

Great. Thanks Chris. I hope it does solve the issue. 

Andy

[#13]

---

Great. Thanks Chris. I hope it does solve the issue. 

If not I predict fireworks and someone might get burnt at the stake

[#14]

Hi Chris,

We had a visit today from a very nice man from Openreach, who confirmed that there was a problem with the line and after sorting that at the exchange was kind enough to check and update the socket in our house too. We are now syncing at 26Mb/s, which is way above the 17Mb/s max we got before and no apparent slow downs in the evening either.

Thanks so much for your help. I really do appreciate it.

Andy