Intermittent high latency issues even on WIRED.

[#1]

Hi Kerrypuricelli, Apologies for my late response, rota days off got in the way of me getting back to you. I've received word back from the digital team that the issue I believed to be causing your problems is resolved and should not be affecting your service. Whilst it's frustrating to not have the answer, it at least rules out one or two things. As the hosp that are failing are different on each tracert, it certainly hints at a setup issue rather than a fault. Are you able to ensure that only the router is connected to the network via cable to then run another tracert?

[#2]

Please accept my apologies for the poor formatting, I'm having some issues with our Community client this afternoon.

[#3]

I believe I've found the issue.

I did a test with only my computer plugged in and wireless turned off. I did a ping test and it was fine (barely ever reaching over 10ms.) I then enabled wireless again while the ping test was happening and almost immediately noticed jumps to 3000ms+

Now that I know that's the issue what is the best way to fix this?

[#4]

Hi @kerrypuricelli
 

What wireless devices are usually connected to the router when your wireless is enabled? It might be a good idea if you turn on your wireless and by a process of elimination connect each device one at a time to see if there is a particular device is causing the issue or whether it happens when a certain number of devices are connected to the router's wireless.

[#5]

So I did it again, again with only my PC connected and... I still got the latency spikes???

I'm so confused now. Could it be our router is just malfunctioned or something?

[#6]

Looks like you've always got 2000 ms of latency in your ping test, 

How is your network setup? no home plugs? no weird RJ45 / Ethernet cable extensions? does your PC also have WiFi? if so make sure its disabled during the tests

Does your network setup look something like the below?

Modem / Router > network cable > PC?

Can you view performance counters on your modem / router? (look for high CPU at the same time the latency occurs)

I would start by looking at your internal network and hardware, then moving on from there,

Do a continuous ping to your default gateway (.254), do you get any latency?

Thanks,

[#7]

it is unusual for a router problem to cause a specific issue like latency at random intervals but if possible it would be a good idea to try another known working router if you can get your hands on one. 

[#8]

The point was, need to start at the basics first and rule out where the issue may lay, is it internal or external, is there something from the PC to the router causing latency (home plugs or some kind of interference, outdated drivers, alarm systems, cables etc)

With out knowing an end users setup, its hard to troubleshoot correctly and advise the best course of action.

Thanks,

[#9]

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@DS wrote: snipped

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the tracert results are showing dsldevice.lan on the first post. This could be due to .. using an Openreach modem, though shouldn't it be pnh1 or PNHUB1 or similar on the first hop.....?

So, if no modem is in use, why is the first hop not showing what I'd expect to see (is the router authenticating correctly Plusnet?)

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I still think the above is not helping matters.

I can't reiterate enough that the only time I see dsldevice.lan in a tracert is when I do some trickery and force the router to not authenticate.

I've now seen 3 other users on these forums recently, whom all report latency issues and their tracerts all show dsldevice.lan and NOT pnhub1 at the first hop.

(I'd walk you through how to manually input your credentials needed into the hub one, but don't have mine online at the moment - maybe someone could post this up)

I therefore conclude, that imho the router is micro dropping the credentials during the auto handshake and thus it more than likely (briefly) reverts the routers username to setup@plusdsl.net - I could however be wrong, but 3 users having the same 1st hop tracert is something that needs looking at. I've gone back and checked some of my old posts when I was using a hub one and all of them do not show dsldevice.lan on the 1st hop.

[#10]

Our router was reset by someone at Plusnet and the problem hasn't been fixed. Let me be more clear.

The high pings (3000ms+) haven't been seen in a while but i'm still getting 100ms & 200ms+ which affects the multiplayer game and still is noticeable when using VOIP. The latest tracert to steamcommunity.com is:

and another tracert shows:

I feel that these tracert results might be helpful as I notice the majority of the latency is from a BT hostname.

Just for consistency here are a few ping tests:

Might it possibly be that the 1000ms+ went away because the router reset fixed the authentication issue people were talking about? It seems this current issue has something to do with BT?

[#11]

@kerrypuricelli,

The telehouse hop, where the spikes are happening, is a Datacentre that we will have little control over. 

Upon some investigations there is a 200+ page thread on the BT forums where it looks that an issue is present at the data centre causing gaming lag spikes when other intense processes are occurring on the connection (specifically streaming). We're going to raise this to our products team to see if we can get some push from our side for a resolution, but a standard faults process will never resolve the problem you're experiencing. 

As a temporary solution we're are more than happy to add a pro add on to your account to try and prioritise the connection in the hopes of reducing the issues you're experiencing, but we'll need your go ahead before doing this. This product is normally chargeable but we'd be providing this for free on a temporary basis. It will show as a charge on your bills with a credit off for the product manually added by ourselves until it's removed. Once the order's placed it generally completes overnight. 

As long as you're okay with this we can get it added on for you. 

[#12]

I would appreciate that add-on. There is plans to get a more gaming-orientated router that have QoS and such so maybe that'll help as well when we get it?

Either way, I'd like the add-on, thanks.

[#13]

Hi @kerrypuricelli., thanks for getting back to us.

We've just added it to the account as well as the relevant credit.

Please let us all know how you get on.

[#14]

Just did a tracert test and started getting latency before the telehouse datacenter. Any thoughts?

Good to note that yesterday I was able to play three games without any major latency issues like before but I'm certain if I played now it would be a nightmare.

[#15]

Thanks for getting back to us with this.

What we suspected to be a problem may not be as upon further investigation there doesn't seem to be anything definitively in common between people who have been contacting us about high latency. 

I've passed your traceroute to one of my colleague in network engineering I discussed this with yesterday and he aims to be able to carry out a good investigation next week.

At this stage I'd probably say it's worth arranging an engineer to investigate the Openreach network so I'd head on over to http://faults.plus.net. Having said that, I've first sent out a replacement router to try.

Can you let us know how it goes once you've received it please?