Ping latency...

[#1]

I used to get good speeds with my Plusnet fibre but they have suddenly taken a dive - from ~37 Mbps to ~27 Mbps - sometimes even below 20 Mbps... At the same time my ping latency has gone up to ~148 ms, is that too high, one of Plusnet's support staff says to disregard it but it used to be much lower.  According to Plusnet I'm ~ 477 meters from the cabinet.

I have a ticket issued relating to this speed issue which if I understand correctly is on on-going, this question is really just for my information.

[#2]

Incidentally the above figures, download/upload speed and ping, are from the BT Wholesale Broadband Performance Test, not some obscure server on the other side of the world...!

[#3]

I'm having the same problems as you. Speeds have dropped to as low as 2mbs upload sometimes. It's very erratic.  I have a ticket logged and been advised there is a fault. I am waiting for them to fix this. I hope it improves and returns to the 38 Mbps I had when I first came to Plusnet. If it keeps dropping, then I will! Have no choice but to leave. 

[#4]

@PNnewbie ignore ping values from the BT speedtester they are not accurate if servers are busy.
Open a command prompt and enter ping ntp.plus.net
if you want accurate assessment of pings. But remember that congestion can lengthen times.

[#5]

Thanks Anotherone,

I pinged the address you gave and got 13 ms which sounds better, see enc.

Can't understand why they just changed - or apparently changed recently, and by such a large amount...

[#6]

@PNnewbie I can see you've got a open fault at the moment.

Our tests aren't showing any physical issues but our Faults team will pick this up for you.

[#7]

"our Faults team will pick this up for you"

Thanks Mathew, appreciate that...

[#8 · Accepted solution]

Further to my earlier posting about a rather sudden – and considerable drop in my fibre broadband speed. After spending some time doing various checks Customer Services had concluded that it did not appear that my computer was at fault.  They said they would look further into this but in the meantime I decided I’d do some more checks.

Running an old Toshiba laptop which doesn’t usually see the light of day very often I realized that the laptop’s Ethernet speed was about right - ~37 Mbps.  This was with the laptop connected directly to the router and was about the same as what I used to get with my main desk top computer but which was suddenly giving me considerably less.  I then ran the laptop using the same Ethernet cable that was normally connected to my main machine and got ~37 Mbps…  Plugging the Ethernet cable back into the main machine and speeds were down to ~30 Mbps or less.

SO, it appeared that it was my machine.

After much running around and trying various things I found my Local Area Connections had an entry I’d never seen before - Network Activity Hook Server Driver. This was a new one on me.  Incidentally I’m running XP Pro and accessing Local Area Connections is via start – settings – control panel – network connections - right click on Local Area Connections and select properties.

Googling Network Activity Hook Server Driver bought up some interesting information.  This relates to the Panda firewall.  Now I am running the free version of Panda and was not aware that it ‘had’ a firewall.  Disabling Network Activity Hook Server Driver returned my speeds to normal.  However be aware, if your machine is turned off then re-booted the Network Activity Hook Server Driver will re-activate itself.  I deleted it and the problem appears to have gone away.  Panda then told me that the firewall was no longer operative – maybe the free version has one after all… Least of my worries anyway as it was costing me ~10 Mbps.  If you ‘are’ running Panda and have this problem and disable the firewall do check to see that your Windows built in firewall is turned on.  I’ve also configured Plusnet’s own firewall for extra cover.

I only recently installed Panda to replace another problemmatical anti virus which was causing problems with my back-up software.  I do wish that I could find an anti-virus that is just that – no bells and whistles – and which does not cause problems.

I’ve spoken to Plusnet and asked them to keep my Ticket open for a couple more days but I’m pretty sure Panda was the cause.

Thought I’d post the above in case it helps someone…

[#9]

I forgot to mention that my ping figures are back down to ~ 40 ms according to the BTW Performance Tester.  However pinging ntp.plus.net as suggested by Anotherone I get 13ms which I’m much happier with.

So it all looks good

[#10]

Hi PNnewbie, thanks for posting back about that and well done for your investigation - mark your reply 8 a FIX

If I'd had a bit more time previously, I might have asked whether you'd changed anything around the time that your speed dropped. There's always a tendency with those sort of occurrences to assume it has something to do with the line or congestion etc.

Running the BTw Speedtest Further Diagnostics is always a good start to check if your IP Profile has changed. It's not uncommon for AV and Firewalls to cause problems, and when people suddenly find a drop in speed when all else seems OK, it can often be due to an update to the AV or Firewall Software. So one of the recommendations to try is temporary Disable the AV and/or Firewall. We really should mention it more in speed cases without an obvious cause.
Enabling the Plusnet Firewall is always a good idea, especially if you don't need any of the incoming ports that the Low setting blocks.

BTW which was the previous troublesome AV?

[#11]

Anotherone – thanks for the mail.

I had run the BTW Further Diagnostics but it showed my IP Profile at 38.7 so nothing had changed there.

I did in fact wonder if any software I’d recently installed might have been causing the speed problem and uninstalled Spybot which I’d installed a few days earlier.  This made no diference, unfortunately I forgot I’d also installed Panda Free Antivirus recently as well.  As you say any recent installs should be the first thing to look at whenever any computer problem arises.  I'll remember that next time!

Over a long period of time I’ve had two hard drives crashes so now I run MalwareBytes, Panda anti-virus and Casper automatically every morning.  Casper clones my C drive to my D drive so I always have an up-to-date self-booting clone.  My previous anti virus was AVG free and there was a problem with cloning restore points, exactly what it was escapes me but its well documented on the ‘net.  Hence my swopping over to Panda – which bought another problem to the table!

I’ve spoken to Plusnet and asked them to put my ticket on hold for a couple of days but I’m pretty sure it’s sorted.

Now to move on to my other problem – uploading images to eBay:-

https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Can-t-upload-a-picture-to-Ebay/td-p/1331301

All helps to keep me off the streets I suppose!

Thanks again for your support, have a nice weekend.