High packet loss and other DNS issues

[#1]

Still utterly attrocious for me, as I suspected. I'm on the 143.159.* range still. I'm resisting temptation to cycle the connection, as I've got a support ticket in and don't want to go down the rabit hole of "it's because your connection keeps dropping" or whatever - my patience is wearing thin as it is.

Some further traces/ping tests to google:

Tracing route to google.com [216.58.208.142]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.88.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms 137.hiper04.sheff.dial.plus.net.uk [195.166.143.137]
4 13 ms 12 ms 14 ms be3-3104.psb-ir01.plus.net [195.166.143.136]
5 13 ms 14 ms 12 ms core1-BE1.southbank.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.125.130]
6 15 ms 14 ms 18 ms peer1-et-10-1-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.127.3]
7 16 ms 14 ms 13 ms 195.99.126.105
8 16 ms 13 ms 14 ms 72.14.232.187
9 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 216.239.46.13
10 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms lhr25s08-in-f14.1e100.net [216.58.208.142]

--

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.88.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 14 ms 12 ms 13 ms be3-3106.psb-ir02.plus.net [195.166.143.140]
5 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms 195.99.125.138
6 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 62.172.103.23
7 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 195.99.126.185
8 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms 72.14.233.201
9 18 ms 14 ms 14 ms 216.239.57.89
10 17 ms 14 ms 14 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

---

Ping statistics for 216.58.208.142:
Packets: Sent = 49, Received = 46, Lost = 3 (6% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 22ms, Average = 14ms

[#2]

I was having the same problem with 50% evening packet loss but for me this maintenance seems to have fixed that, though there is still a few percent constant packet loss. Much better though.

[#3]

Mine seems to have been fixed overnight, although it looks like a resync the connections been up for 13 days.

There's cleary some different issues going on, mine never got any worse during peak time.

I've been with PN since 2003, yes they have the occasional problem and they clearly don't like to talk about it but they get there in the end. Support can be frustrating, you never get the same person and often go round in circles,  but I suspect that's the same for any large ISP. If you want fantastic support then expect to pay a lot more for it, check out A&A support  reputation and their prices!

[#4]

I've just had a reply from Plusnet on my ticket, they say:

I have tested your line today and it appears the issue you reported is no longer occurring

The connection is stable, with no drops for the last 15 days hours. The connection is also running at a good speed for your line, with a current connection speed of around 75mbps.

As you can see nothing whatsoever about the packet loss I reported, Which I still have. The maintenance apparently had no effect on my problem. My current live graph is: 

[#5]

Mine calmed down yesterday, but i could feel the packets being lost while on battlefield 4 last night and my graph only just shows them packets being lost around 8pm There were also packets lost at 7 and just before 12pm today (i was not on the internet then)



Live: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/monitors/share/8557b3917492f5cad0a1b58c7f9d63a8.html

[#6]

---

@UatuWatches wrote:

So, I spoke with PN customer support about this issue and they kindly offered me a static ip address to help resolve this issue. Which has helped. However, I noticed that my speeds have dropped from 70+ MB down to 38MB. Contacted them this evening about this and now they can only offer me 55MB.

I feel like I have lost out because I used the static IP address as a work around for an issue on the PN network.

Not happy at all.

You were paying for a 40mbps down/20mbps up product, recently changed to 55mbps down/10mbps up. In short, you should never have been receiving 70mbps+ down. That was a mistake on our part

@Wodge wrote:

I would love to set up a broadband quality monitor but I'm on a 2704n router and doing a quick google search says that it doesn't support ICMP, anyone know how to get it to work on this router?

It used to be possible, albeit via a very convoluted set of instructions. I'm not sure if it can still be done with the latest firmware revisions though. If you search these forums, you might find a thread or two where the current situation is clarified.

@Ronski wrote:

Mine seems to have been fixed overnight, although it looks like a resync the connections been up for 13 days.

 There's cleary some different issues going on, mine never got any worse during peak time.

There is/was. Your issue was related to a problem affecting the gateway pcl-ag07 on the old network as alluded to here (ref: 93862). I'm guessing you didn't disconnect/reconnect following my post? We kicked everyone off the gateway early hours of this morning which will be when your packet loss stopped.

In response to everybody else, it seems from peoples' replies that the maintenance helped in some instances but not others. Those of you experiencing the worst of the packet loss would all seem to be routing through Southbank which helps us narrow down where to look (ref: 93878 ).

I'll provide updates as I have them, but I'll probably not be about much at the weekend.

In the interim, keep the examples coming. It's appreciated.

Save

[#7]

@bobpullen Thanks for all the updates. Glad we are hopefully looking like some progress on this.

Just a quick question, I am on a dynamic IP and I can't set up a monitor for my connection yet I don't really want to pay for a static IP as I'm already paying for a VPN for the time being.

Is there any other methods?

[#8]

@bobpullen no I didn't. 

[#9]

Still no change for me, here's some new traces.

Packet loss snapshot.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/a566f01cb99ef771a374c1876810e6ec-12-08-2016.html

[#10]

At the minute, the packet loss seems to have calmed down for now, and after changing back to the old 582n router, I've been able to set up a thinkbroadband monitor. If it is possible to allow pings to WAN on the plusnet hub one, please let me know, as I believe that you can't.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/82e953580b7448fd201971e5f33d9818.html

[EDIT] It seems to be creeping back again

There were still the odd moments of packet loss, as seen in the image above, what I'm not entirely sure about is if the maximum latency is being so high and spiking so much, but that might be normal. I will keep posting until I am sure that the issue is completely solved. One thing that still seems to be an issue, while maybe not directly linking to the packet loss, is that I'm still getting a slow or no connection via 'tracert' to the "141.hiper04.sheff.dial.plus.net.uk" address,so I'm not really sure what is happening with this,but either way I hope the issue improves.

[#11]

@eatyourteeth

If you were maxing out your connection when you see the high latency spikes that would be normal, however if you were doing nothing and had no updates etc running then it would point to a problem.

[#12]

Thought it had been fixed when I had a max packet loss of around 1% last night, just logged on now and I have anywhere from 5-10% if not more, really getting tired of not being able to do anything on my PC until early morning hours

[#13]

The opinion from my teenage son is that since Thursday the packet loss has improved slightly, but there still is packet loss significant enough to affect his gaming.

[#14]

Same Ade, im getting packit loss still but its not shown on the thinkbroadband chart, ive also watched my ping change a few times from 25 to over 125, players jump around when they should not and i can not even jump over a simple wall.

[#15]

Same again this evening, peak time arrives and packets loss starts creeping in. Again though, nowhere near as bad as last week and better than last night so far....