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Slow broadband and DNS issues

prosser99
Grafter
Posts: 66
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎07-02-2010

Slow broadband and DNS issues

Hi,

I'm going round in circles with a PlusNet support ticket so thought I would try here - please help me!

The summary is:

* Slow broadband (fiber to the cabinet) - sometimes in the region of 1Mbps (or nothing) for long periods.
* Issues with webpages not rendering correctly or the browser reporting DNS issues. 

As requested I have done tests using the master socket and connected to the router with an ethernet cable and issues still experienced, so that rules out WiFi.

I have run nslookup when having the 'DNS issue' and timeouts are reported (this is very common).

This is all intermittent, sometimes all is good and sometime practically nothing works.

Despite all this I have been told that tests have been done returning 40Mbps etc on my line implying all is well and I keep on explaining that I too see 35Mbps etc and I also see the very poor performance mentioned above. It seems to be getting worse too.

I use a standard PlusNet router and have not changed any of the DNS settings on the router (I was accused of this by one engineer).

I am perfectly happy to receive a degraded service in terms of speed due to everyone being at home at the moment and network being heavily loaded but I need some service and some DNS.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I'm based in Abingdon Oxon - is anyone else experiencing issues in this area?

I am also getting annoyed that I am being told that I will be charged £65 if an engineer visits and cannot find anything, I would not be too surprised if a visiting engineer didn't find anything as 1. issues are not always evident and 2. I suspect that the issues are at the exchange or further into the network.

Chris

8 REPLIES 8
Strat
Community Veteran
Posts: 31,320
Thanks: 1,609
Fixes: 565
Registered: ‎14-04-2007

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

Moderators Note
This topic has been moved from ADSL Broadband to Fibre Broadband.
Windows 10 Firefox 109.0 (64-bit)
To argue with someone who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead - Thomas Paine
dws1900
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 407
Thanks: 51
Fixes: 2
Registered: ‎17-09-2018

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

@prosser99 

 

Request a GEA test for your line via the community or a ticket, then publish it on here so members can see if there is an issue.

This may take a while so be patient.

In addition, try and log the times when the service is slow, ensure that any speed tests are not performed using wifi.

 

prosser99
Grafter
Posts: 66
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎07-02-2010

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

Thanks for moving my post to the right section @Strat.
And thanks to others for the recommendations.

An update from me; after posting here and putting many updates in my ticket I noticed in the small hours of Friday 29th May, my router was offline for 3h (I noticed as I couldn't get any internet access just before I went to bed and checked the router event logs when I got up). This struck me as a little odd. I called PN on Friday and had a good chat to Callum who also spotted the 3h outage. We agreed an engineer visit on the coming Monday anyway.

Since the Friday early hours outage the service seems to have got a lot better, I wonder if something has been done at the exchange maybe?

I don't want to cancel the booking as this might be a temporary improvement but also a little worried about the Openreach (I assume) engineer wasting time. However I would like to think if there have been works locally they should have communicated this with BT/PN who could tie up the issue and possible fix.

It would also be nice to have some feedback to the customer too please, after spending ages on the phone, responding to ticket and testing WiFi if a fault was found and fixed.

prosser99
Grafter
Posts: 66
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎07-02-2010

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

The Openreach engineer arrived around 08:00 and did some line tests, no issues seen and a good rate reported (this is what I expected would happen).
I did some tests of my own which also showed good results.

During the day I had a couple of Zoom meetings which seemed to indicate an unstable connection, with colleagues unable to hear me without turning my video off. My Son may have been using face-time at the time but there would have been nothing more bandwidth consuming than that (no streaming video etc).

Into the evening speed continued to drop - 14.34Mbps/7.32Mbps at 18:18

Router disconnected on its own 1/6/2020 @ 20:00 (suspicious time)
From the event logs (I assume 1h behind as UTC) >>>

19:00:05, 01 Jun. (6233004.400000) PPPoE is down after 690 minutes uptime [Waiting for Underlying Connection (WAN Ethernet 7 -​ Down)]


Once router returned (I have a report):
From BT test>>>
Download speed achieved during the test was 1.32 Mbps For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 20 - 38.67
Upload speed achieved during the test was 0 Mbps IP Profile for your line is 10 Mbps

I also did a nslookup which failed, shown here:

C:Userschris>nslookup www.autotrader.co.uk
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.1.254

DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to UnKnown timed-out

And some quick tests from later on yesterday 1/6/2020 ...

20:29 - It seems to have returned to normal now
21:26 - slow for the line but stable (11.7 / 7.27 Mbps)
21:34 - 20.15 / 7.24 Mbps

So as you can see I still have issues.

Tibzor
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 282
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎08-04-2020

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

Hi @prosser99

 

Sorry to hear about this ongoing problem. I have checked history of tests and sync speed to router is correct at all times.

What I've found is that looks like you are using switch/AP, and quite few devices are connected to this device. No PC/Laptop is plugged directly to router, can you confirm if this is correct?

It wouldn't be first time I've seen that DNS requests are failing on devices connected behind Switch with DHCP or some other settings.

 

Is there any chance that you can test if you will have exactly same issues with speed once laptop/PC will be plugged directly into router and if DNS requests will fail after removing this switch/AP from your network or after connecting directly to router?

prosser99
Grafter
Posts: 66
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎07-02-2010

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

Hi @Tibzor,

Thanks for taking the time to look at my issues.

Just to let you know, I have demonstrated slow a slow connection when attaching a laptop to the router via ethernet cable too and it was inline with what was seen via WiFi at the time. The issue is intermittent and can see a drop to ~1Mbps download for a few mins and back to >20Mbps within a few minutes as experienced today and likewise the DNS issues seem to come and go.

Re what is attached to the router, yes you are correct I currently have:

* A BT Mini WiFi home hotspot (powerline solution) plugged into port 2, this provides a better WiFi signal for my son while home schooling on his chromebook, a phone is also probably attached on that most of the time. This was added at the beginning of lockdown, but I have turned if off while having the issues so fairly sure its not involved.

* I also have a access point that connects via WiFi and provides a ethernet connection for an xbox - this has been plugged in for several years.   

Having said all that the DNS tests I am doing are mostly from my desktop PC that is connected via WiFi directly to the router.

 

prosser99
Grafter
Posts: 66
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎07-02-2010

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

I was told via my ticket that the issue had been resolved following work in the line .... my reply

 

Hi,

In the previous update it says work was done on the line, can you confirm what was done and when please OR is this just a response to the comments I made re router being disconnected (e.g. PPPoE is down after 690 minutes uptime) during a couple of periods?

Anyhow, it appears that the issue is not resolved. I was on a large Zoom meeting this morning and the application reported ‘unstable internet connection’ again accompanied with lots of breakup in audio and video (intermittent). I could see via windows Task Manager that the zoom session was trying to consuming approx. 1 Mbps down.

During a (tea) break I checked the line using the BT speedtest site on wifi (right next to the router) using an iPad and saw a single digit download figure, I think it was as low as 1 or 2 Mbps. There were no heavy bandwidth consuming activities going on at the time. As usual this was intermittent, I could see a good figure for a few runs of the test followed by a few bad results.

 

prosser99
Grafter
Posts: 66
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎07-02-2010

Re: Slow broadband and DNS issues

And i'm still having the DNS issue too, webpage would not load so I tried on command line ...

C:\Users\chris>nslookup www.autotrader.co.uk
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.1.254

DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to UnKnown timed-out

Then worked a few moments later ...