New to Fibre, first in my area, small bursts of packet loss weekday mornings only

[#1]

@Dan_the_Van The packet loss spikes are so short and sudden; I'd have to try get something set up to see if I can run it as I notice one happening.

I ruled out buffer bloat, I thought, because this can happen wether the connection is busy or wether it's seemingly idle, and the same hardware for FTTC had none of these issues. No hardware or settings changed apart from getting the ONT involved. The packets don't appear to be delayed, I think I tried a ping on macOS with a really long `-t 30` and they seemingly just never arrived back. I think it was 30 seconds. At that point they're gone to me, that's how long a time wait is for usually.

Regarding MTR; I have one set up for cloud flare; but it reports 99% loss at the 2nd hop 133.hiper04.sheff.dial.plus.net.uk which I think doesn't help much because that's when my pings to cloud flare are going through fine... so that sounds like that hop just doesn't like responding to pings. But I get a different route on traceroute to mtr. in fact I get a different route every single time I traceroute or mtr

Edit: I will keep the MTR going and look to see if any other hops also go red if I have a packet loss burst

@pvmb I guess it could be electrical but I don't know why it would start now or how I would find out. I would have thought I'd have seen some other evidence in my house than packet loss on the internet though.

[#2]

@Dan_the_Van it didn't take long; the first packet loss burst with mtr running showed every hop was lost from the first one to the last.

And like always it's about 10 seconds each time. I think sometimes it's as low as 6 or as high as 14 or so... but I don't think I've see less. I don't think I've seen more. Enough to knock out the video meet. Or the phone call because I have wifi calling

[#3]

Today has actually been the worst day of connectivity so far since getting the connection. Not only with how many drop outs I've had, but also just now for the most prolonged packet loss burst I've experienced... 

I had to wait for a long time until my team could hear me, and I hear them, again. 127.16.17.217 seems to be my default gateway auto assigned in the Hub 2 on the connection. I lose most packets even to that. 

This is really difficult to work through and I'm open to any ideas. 

[#4]

@iZian 

To recap, is it now definitely still the case that, as per the thread title, "bursts of packet loss weekday mornings only". Do you know if this does not occur over weekends? Or is it that you are just not affected over the weekends as not using the network in that same way then?

If it is only during weekdays then, to me, it doesn't look like a persisting technical fault in your fibre connection, as it would surely be present all the time. Rather, something is happening during the working week that isn't there at weekends. And I wouldn't dismiss something new that is entirely separate from the coincidence of your changing from FTTC to FTTP.

What is in the area surrounding you? Businesses, industries, factories, railways? Or just domestic premises? Anything new?

[#5]

@pvmb I was guessing it wasn't affecting me at weekends, but then again I wasn't using the internet for video calls these weekends and so actually it could have been happening and I just didn't notice it.

Now I have the Think Broadband monitor set up; this will be the first weekend coming up where I will know what is or isn't happening, and can see for sure.

The area is totally residential. The only new thing is me switching to this fibre from the FTTC. I guess the FTTC was to a cabinet in the opposite direction to the exchange from my house, it was a reasonable distance away that speed estimates were low but in fact it was fine. And FTTP I don't know if that's following the route from the cabinet anymore because if it's not then it will be the totally other direction through a newer build area. I guess they could be doing something there if that's where my cable goes. Like putting new road surfaces in. They're not building houses anymore.
No railways in the direction of the cabinet. No railways in the direction of the exchange. Nearest line is miles away. All factories / warehouses close to me were demolished for housing years back. 

I thought it was mornings only... and just the odd time in the afternoon I'd get a blip. But today it's been absolutely terrible all day since about 6:20 on the graph. And I've noticed it since just gone 8am where my video calls (European company) started up. 

In the afternoons I was used to things working or just one blip. But it's been hellish today.
I will keep monitoring it. I'll swap out electric cables or run an extension from a whole other AC socket as well... but I am running out of things to rule out. 

I've considered leaving a car dash cam running pointed at the ONT to see if it shows anything when these happen but I'll need to get that set up somehow.

I'm not technical enough to know if I can select a "different default gateway" and have some different first hop to rule out some kit I'm connected to TCP wise. If that was the same result then I'm guessing the issue is down to something between my ethernet and Plusnet. ONT, fibre, aggregators?, some futuristic kit somewhere. 

Thank you again, you and all, for the attention on this. It's driving me to despair right now.

[#6]

I'm not technical enough to know if I can select a "different default gateway" 

You can't!. The gateway is allocated when your router makes the PPPoE connection, you have no control over it. If you're on a static IP (I dont think you are?) then its allocated to one the Plusnet BNGs (broadband network gateway) . If you have a dynamic IP then its allocated at the BTwholesale BRAS from a pool supplied by the ISP. In effect a dynamic IP goes nowhere near the Plusnet network. 

[#7]

@iZian 

The default gateway in your case 172.16.17.217 is assigned when your broadband username connects using PPPoE. It may be possible to change is by disconnecting the Hub from the ONT, but there is no guarantee if will for a short disconnection. You could try leaving the Hub turned off overnight which might help. This would hopefully assign new IP Addresses.

A thought, how long have you been a plusnet customer? If you check the members centre under the Broadband tab does Broadband firewall exist? https://www.plus.net/member-centre/broadband/firewall 

If it does try setting it to 'Low' a Hub reboot will be required. Take a note of the Broadband and Gateway address on the Hub before and after. 

[#8]

@MisterW  Thanks; that was my only remaining idea. Albeit a silly one I guess. I’ll see what overnight and weekend brings. 
I don’t know what else can be done. If this stays like this; I can’t go back to FTTC, that ship has sailed. The only other option is VMO2 and I think I’d rather move house at that point. PN position at the moment is the connection isn’t dropping and engineers don’t look at packet loss. 

[#9]

@Dan_the_Van  PlusNet customer since it was metronet since I don’t even know. Feels like 25 years. 
but at this address since 12 years ish. 

is setting that to “low” recommended? It’s been off since forever. Didn’t even realise it was there. 

[#10]

@iZian 

personally I would use Low, the Hub two firewall is still inplace.

[#11]

@iZian 

It’s been off since forever. Didn’t even realise it was there

In which case, you may well find it isnt there anymore! Access to the firewall settings hasnt been available to new customers for a few years now and recently I'm fairly sure that access was removed on accounts that hadnt used it (i.e set to other than 'off') for a while.

If it IS still there, then setting it to 'low' will radically change your network routing and gateway. Instead of your connection terminating at the BTw BRAS, it will make an L2TP tunnel to the Plusnet BNGs and be allocated an IP in a totally different subnet

[#12]

@MisterW 

If it IS still there, then setting it to 'low' will radically change your network routing and gateway. Instead of your connection terminating at the BTw BRAS, it will make an L2TP tunnel to the Plusnet BNGs and be allocated an IP in a totally different subnet

That was my thinking behind my post.

[#13]

@iZian 

There are a couple of things I would try.

1) Assuming you still have the "spare" Plusnet router connect that (and configure it with your credentials if needed) with only your work laptop connected.

Leave everything else on "the other" Plusnet router and try that for a while. Nothing else will work but it can easily be fixed by connecting the "main" Plusnet router back to the ONT. I'm wondering if some device is capable of doing sufficient uploads to either saturate the uplink or overwhelm the router with traffic. It shouldn't be possible to overwhelm the router with traffic but it's a possibility and routers can sometimes fail to respond to "pings" on the Internet connection.

2) On the same lines, see if you can get a router that handles Bufferbloat well. Get it from somewhere that is good with returns. See if that (and some Quality of Service settings) helps.

I can get little specs of red on my Think Broadband graph with repeated speedtests (not using a Plusnet router) so I do think the problem is with overloading the uplink capacity.

[#14]

@markhawkin I can try that again. When I set up the new Hub 2 replacement I got, I didn't move most of the devices over to that right away.

I know what you mean about upload. If I do a massive upload I see the latency spike up to 300-400 and yeah; sometimes a dropped ping.
2 spikes of yellow this afternoon and the midnight one on my monitor were backup / upload I had to do in work, chunky ones.
And when I see on the download from the monitor that it was 1 or 2 or 3 loss I write that off. When I do a massive upload the MTR command shows purples like 200+ms if I have latency up, but not red. When my drops happen it's green on red, some pings are lost and the ones which are not lost are like 10ms... If there was a spike in latency like even 40 or 50 I'd be inclined to look at saturation. 

And I see @Dan_the_Van reply about firewall; I can see the setting is there and off I can turn it to low I think...

But; it's now "evening" and if it's anything like yesterday... things will now be calm. My mtr to cloud flare I've turned down to 2 second intervals so the graph doesn't scrolls so fast... but it's been clear (I know as soon as I press post I'm going to sabotage that by saying it) for time now.

I don't think I can test anything else tonight because I don't think I'm going to get the dropouts. We are using the connection like normal; I left a video meet running; we're streaming some 4k stuff on the TV... but the connection has gone back to being stable again.

I do want to say thank you all again again though. I'll look at these firewall things tomorrow perhaps. I have poor mental health and I think today's been such a day I'm not sure how much I have left in me tonight. But I appreciate everything everyone has said and done and the time on this so far.

I'll put a fresh link to my think broadband monitor but I think it's the same one still. Showing me just after 5pm the person paid to hit my cable repeatedly with a shovel has gone home perhaps.

I jest, but if it is... I guess or hope... or pray... that is something that will stop.

[#15]

@iZian just to note, after a change to the firewall setting, you need to disconnect & reconnect the PPPoE session ( or just reboot the router ) for the change to take effect