@eddiewawa wrote:
So...50% of the hops from my router to plusnet experience loss packets is pretty normal?
In this specific case I wouldn't really call it packet loss as the routers or links are not dropping packets to the final destination. What is happening is the router is limiting replies that it has to generate its self. It likely does this due to a setting that is designed to protect it from spending too much time responding to events rather than getting on with actually routing.
On the subject of routing, is there something on the router provided by Plusnet, like a gateaway/routing table of sorts, which lists the plusnet gateways it's meant to hit?
No, all you router does is gets a packet that it doesn't know what to do with and sends it to its default route - which is the ppp connection you have with Plusnet.
I'm trying to figure out why the 2nd hop where it fails, does this mean my router has 2 different gateways in the table and always fails on 1 and passes through to the other? Which then explains the 50% failure rate i.e. fails on the 1st, passes on the 2nd?
Your router only has one default route.
I don't know exactly what pingplotter does, but it's probably just repeated traceroutes. There is more than one way traceroute can work, I guess all it's doing is sending ICMP echo requests to the BBC, but there is a TTL (Time To Live) field in IP headers and it varies these so that the (visible) routers along the outbound route (it's possible that the return path is different) get packets where the TTL has run out. When this happens the router responds with a different ICMP packet that says that TTL has expired in transit - this response is how the hops are found - but as I said above not all routers respond or limit responses to protect them selves.
Going to run one of my laptops via direct ethernet to see if this is an issue, but looking at the fact the table gives me no loss when hitting the router implies it can't really be the homeplug or wifi?
It is a good sign that there is no loss to your router - but then pings are quite small and wireless/home plugs can be quite variable depending on local conditions like what other devices are doing, even what your neighbors are doing.
It would be good to see if the issues are better with eth. I don't have a hub one so can't say from experience, but making the wireless bands separate may be a start.
Your first post says disconnects (D/Cs) - I don't really know what you mean by that. It could be that your line is actually re-syncing, you should be able to see logs somewhere in the router that would show this.
It could just be that your router has been on for ages and a reboot will magically sort things, same for home plugs.
You said speed is good - I would test with the speed tester at thinkbroadband.com as it shows a single thread test and x6. If the single is low then that could indicate packet loss, and you could then compare with wired eth vs wireless vs home plug. Though as conditions vary don't draw any conclusions from a low number of tests.
