decreased download speed / new router TP link VR900 V2

[#1]

hello,

Reaching out in the hope that someone might have some advice or similar experiences to mine.

I have been with Plusnet on the Unlimited Fibre Extra plan for c4/5 years - I'm very close to the exchange (I can see the box from my window) and used to have a rock solid 74.5 download and c18.5 upload.

after having issues with gaming and poor quality 4k streaming - I put my woes down to the 10 year old BT white box Modem and decided to move from my Asus N66U to a new all in 1 box solution the TP Link VR900 V2 - set up was smooth and my DL speed increased to c76.5 and a slight bump to 19 on the upload.

about 3 weeks in my speed dropped down to c66/.68 download whilst the upload remained unchanged. I contacted Plusnet who said they could see an intermittent fault on my line and have since (a couple of times) said that they can see no problems and by sync speed is 79,999 and 19,999.

with the speed decreased BT have been out twice - the first time they ran some tests and said that everything was fine and the second time they changed the face plate or a new master socket type connection and recommended changing the DLS cable J11 to a twisted shielded one (swapping out the one that came with the router).

after this 2nd visit the DL speed increased (when the line stabalised) to 71,5 - I have found the 4k streaming is improved but am still having problems with online gaming and find it really weird that by 5 year ish rock steady speed dropped in mid October 2018.

The faults team in Plusnet have basically told me to go away (I wasn't impressed) with the lack of phone calls back and computer says everything is OK responses.

I've read through loads of forums on here with similar circumstances and nearly all of those were down to problems with the exchange, interleaving / changing ports in the green box - which I am being told by both Plus Net and Open Reach - isn't a problem.

I've tried the auto sync DSL options in the router for both VDSL (annex A only) and auto Sync Up (Annex A L M) - I've read that it is advised to keep bit swap on and turn off SRA.

I've amended the DNS from the alternative numbers that the router defaults to, to the standard ones.

I paid for a static IP and then turned it off when the problems started (once again some of the forums pointed to a static IP improving online gaming) - I use UPnP and have an Open Nat on games.

I'm in minimum contract with Plusnet till November 2019 but based on this experience am really considering moving to Zen (who offer G fast 330mb connection in my area).

This is a bit of a last ditch attempt to try to resolve my speeds / connection quality with Plusnet.

thanks in advance to anyone reading this / providing advice.

Cheers

Chris 

[#2]

Hi Chris. Thanks for posting on our community forums.

I'm sorry for the issues you're experiencing with your speeds and latency while gaming, and to see how the fault has been handled in trying to diagnose where the problem lies.

I've been looking into this with one of my colleagues, and physically the line itself seems to be performing perfectly with almost no errors on some days and other days with no errors at all.

Doesn't look like interleaving is switched on, and error protection is also showing as off, though retranmission which is another form of interleaving is set to low, but due to the length of time, we can't see if this was the case before you had issues.

There's not much we can do about that as we don't have any control over this for fibre lines. It may be just be a waiting game for the DLM to make the change.

Checking for any signs of congestion at the exchange, there's no reported capacity issues there.

As you've already tried a dynamic IP as well as a static IP, you've ruled out the issue to be an issue we had a few months ago as static IP would take a different route across our network as opposed to those assigned dynamic IPs.

Have you tried moving back to the router you had before to see if that improves things? Could you also run a traceroute for us to pingbox1.thinkbroadband.com via a direct ethernet connection?

It may also be worth setting up a ThinkBroadband Quality Monitor Here and posting up a graph.

Let us know how it goes.

[#3]

hi Gandalf 

Thanks for getting back to me really appreciate it

I've run a few speed test on Think Broadband 

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1544034461277115255 

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1544034780810623855

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1544034872512164355

Traceroute using CMD attached 

I've set up a monitor on TBB and have created a live graph - is this what you need?

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/60cf4a6c0ac9c534a4960b21d28fbccf50...

When I switched back to the N66U + OR modem speeds drop by a couple of MB on DL and 1 ish on upload - so it is pushing me to believe that the VR 900 is making an improvement.

[#4]

I seem to be getting a big red line for dropped packets on The Think Broadband monitor - I've checked my MTU which is 1492 by looking at a value of 1464 and am getting all 4 packets recieved with 0% loss and a ping of 9ms.

please let me know if you need any more information,

cheers 

[#5]

No problem.

I've checked the speedtests and traceroute you've done, and they don't really show any issues.

The latency is amazing, and while your throughput may be lower than what you had before, as they're still within expectations, we'd struggle to ask to our suppliers to investigate further.

It's possible that something happened in October that triggered DLM to switch on retransmission, which may be causing the issues you're seeing.

There are a fair amount of frequent drops in your connection over the past 30 days, so we could try progressing the fault as an intermittent connection, which might be causing the slower throughput.

Do any of the drops below line up with when you've done troubleshooting like unplugging your router? Trying to determine if the line is dropping by itself.

[#6]

@coxie1984 You need your router to accept pings to get the TBB Graph to work. Scroll down and look at the FAQ's The very first one is:

"Why does my graph show 100% packet loss?

This may be due to firewall settings or because your IP address has changed. If you have a firewall, ensure that it allows ICMP ping. You will also see 100% packet loss if the address we are monitoring is disconnected from the Internet. You can find out how to configure your router or firewall using our router setup guides."

[#7]

Hi, 

with the extremely poor quality gaming there have been a few modem resets and initially with the new router to switch between auto sync and VDSL connections and testing both the 1480 MTU the router defaults to and then checking at the usual 1492 I used to get on the N66U.

There would also have been more significant drops while the BT engineers where here - as part of the second visit he forced a reset where the line was going through the initial stabilisation for the 10 day period - since then there may have been the odd router reset but certainly no long outages or extremely frequent resets.

I have no problem with keeping the router on and not resetting for the next few days if this would help to establish if it is an intermittent line fault 

[#8]

thanks for the tip - new link 

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/0262ed4bb6e3a8f485e73424d8c362e3a9...

[#9]

Thanks for getting back to us.

Looks like the drops may have just been as a result of troubleshooting as your connection seems to be stabilising:

I've noticed that at the time of your posts last night there was a reasonably high amount of usage on your connection. Are you running the tests with no open programs in the background and no other devices using the bandwidth?

It may also be worth trying a different laptop or desktop if you can too, sorry if you've tried that already.

[#10]

Hi
I can confirm that mobiles etc where disconnected - no programs other than edge were running on the connect pc during the test. There would have been some mobile web browsing around the tests before and shortly after ps4 use.
Since the issue I test my speed reasonably reguarlly to see if things have improved, and bar the first test results, all results are indicative. I only have 1 laptop (other than a work one which is seldom used at home but needs to be on vpn), the laptop is new and is a 1060gtx i7 - androids and ipad reports the same on Wi-Fi.
One other odd thing with the connection is geo location - games seem to think I'm miles away on Manchester or other locations 100's of miles away and I've also had the odd BT America's overspill. Would this have an impact on gaming quality?
Perhaps the speeds are some DLM from the old router set up (I'm pretty sure the 10+ year old OR modem was on the way out). What would be the expectation with uninterupted connection for any DLM to sort itself out?

[#11]

Hi @coxie1884,

Thank you for confirming the devices connected at the time of testing.

Could you run a speed test via Ethernet with every device powered off and ensure no VPN is connected at the time. If the speed is lower than your estimates, please raise a fault and let us know when you have completed it.

The IP address you had would not effect latency when connecting to gaming servers. This is due to the game / speed test server you are accessing not updating their records. To ensure this does not cause any complications, I have added a static IP address that has a UK location.

DLM trigger events are usually over a 24 hour period and these include errored seconds and uptime however, I cannot give a definitive answer on a time frame for changes to take effect as it can vary.

Thank you.

[#12]

Speed test from BT and further results.

something is definitely going on - my speed was always c75/76mb down and since October this has changed - BT is still advertising speeds of 79-80mb for my line on the website.

the last time BT where here they said my profile is running at full with a max of 110mb and 34mb and you are saying the line is synced at 79999 and 19999  

[#13]

Thought this would be handy - attachment showing BT's minimum speed expected for my line - shows 78mb - however the BT wholesale test shows an IP profile of 73.7 and I'm currently getting real world throughput of c69mb.

I seem to be in Northern Ireland on a few services reporting geo rather than London - but the static IP has stopped the BT America's thing.

Please can you confirm why the IP profile doesn't match what BT reports I could get from them? as mentioned countless times everything was running at acceptable mid 70's levels until the middle of October.

[#14]

Hi @coxie1984,

I'm sorry that your IP profile is showing as 73.7mbps. I've checked your account and can see that this is currently set at 73.7mbps from here, but it's unclear as to why it is set at this as your line is currently syncing at 79.9mbps.

I've adjusted the IP profile to 80mbps now, please reboot your router and let us know if this is still showing lower on your side afterwards.

[#15]

HI Emily 

Thank you for your feedback - I've performed a reset on the router and have seen a slight improvement in speeds - getting c71mb / 72mb - this is still below the speeds I used to receive.

I have re-run the diagnostics on the BT wholesale checker and my IP profile is still showing as being set at 73.7mb - please find the screen shot from the run just now.

when would you expect to see the IP profile on the BT wholesale site reflect the change?

Many thanks in advance,
Chris