What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark Topic as New
- Mark Topic as Read
- Float this Topic for Current User
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Plusnet Community
- :
- Forum
- :
- Help with my Plusnet services
- :
- Full Fibre
- :
- Re: What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
20-04-2017 5:27 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Hi all,
Could I quickly ask around what the standard packet loss percentage should be? Been having issues with my Fibre for a while now and after been fobbed off saying the lines absolutely fine (which from their POV it is from a connectivity stand point). I was looking at the report from my support ticket and noticed that it doesnt contain any packet loss stats. So I decided to do some of my own and something doesnt sit right, is 50% packet loss standard? Been looking online and they mentioned somewhere between 2%-5% is acceptable?
attached is a 10min sample right now, any help would be awesome
Re: What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
20-04-2017 5:53 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
If you are not doing anything else when measuring with ICMP then 0% is what you should hope for.
2-5% random loss on a line would really hurt tcp single thread download speed.
You have to be a bit careful when testing as you may just be measuring loss caused by the box that's answering not doing so = nothing to do with your line.
This is what your ping plotter is showing, a couple of hops never respond and one only does so sometimes, that hop always does that. As the bbc always responded that's all that matters really, the hop that doesn't always respond is still forwarding traffic on OK or you would see loss everywhere after it.
Re: What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
20-04-2017 6:11 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Omg thanks for the quick response there! Just sort of at a loss really, trying to narrow down what could be the issue. I'm assuming this can't be any of the connections to the router since there's no loss during that test. Tbh I did another 10 min stint via a WiFi connection and I'm getting roughly the same sort of stats vs the homeplug I was using for that first traceroute test.
Speed seems fine, connectivity seems fine but I'm still getting loads of D/Cs when streaming or gaming. And this is across several services like iPlayer, Amazon prime, Netflix and gaming,across multiple tablet, pc and laptop devices I brought in to test out.
The fact theres was only notable packet loss when when hitting and hopping via that plusnet address and not the BBC website should mean something surely? Sorry for the illogical non network understanding here lol
Just trying to figure out if it's an issue at my end of the line or is this something plusnet could be looking at further.
Again thanks in advance for the time looking at this thread all as I continue to scratch my head...
Eddie
Re: What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
20-04-2017 7:18 PM - edited 20-04-2017 7:19 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
That hop always behaves like that, I guess it gives a very low priority to replies vs high priority to actually routing - which it seems to do OK.
Wireless and home plugs can be quite variable, testing with ethernet would be better.
If you have a hub one then I've read that they can be better if you give the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands different names.
Re: What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
21-04-2017 11:03 AM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
So...50% of the hops from my router to plusnet experience loss packets is pretty normal?
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?
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?
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?
Re: What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?
22-04-2017 11:38 AM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
@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.
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark Topic as New
- Mark Topic as Read
- Float this Topic for Current User
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Plusnet Community
- :
- Forum
- :
- Help with my Plusnet services
- :
- Full Fibre
- :
- Re: What is the "standard" packet loss percentage?