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

[#1]

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@iZian wrote:

@MisterW  it's definitely fibre; I saw him stripping the black "outdoors" protection off it when installing. 

Outside it has its black coat on. Inside it's this white cable that runs to the ONT and has a green end to it plugged in next to the power and the cat5e cable that runs to the hub 2.

Outside it runs down to the grey box at the front of the house and that's it. I'm 100% sure it's the fibre, when installing he wanted me to check it was not "kinking" as it was being pulled through.

I only have a tape measure but the cable looks to be about 4mm thick... I zoomed in a lot...

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If that's internal optical fibre in the photographs then, particularly the first one, definitely doesn't look right to me!

I have only a very short (couple of inches) run of internal fibre to the ONT. Using a ruler it is 3mm thick and here is a photo of it entering via a hole very much larger than the cable: 

[#2]

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@MisterW wrote:

@iZian well to me, from that 1st photo showing the cable entering the hole, I would say that bend radius is considerably less than 30mm! .

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I agree @MisterW , in fact I'd say the cable almost has a kink in it as the plastic looks bent/distorted rather than being smoothly curved.

[#3]

@bmc mine looks like that except where it goes through walls it seems to be pulled very very tight against those metal hooks, and very tight against the edge of the hole in the wall, like it's squashing the plastic in both cases.

@MisterW @Dan_the_Van  Also; I've enabled the firewall now. 

I've set up a new broadband quality monitor. I realised late I should have kept the old one since I can't "resume" it. rookie move by me. it's here https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/682e35d655f43e4468781e9e53574931c7...

I've also enabled that firewall. So now I have a new trace route to cloud flare. New mtr route attached
I also can't speed test against BT as a result. Perhaps normal. it just errors. So I pick a new host.

I'll leave it running with firewall set to low. I've never had this switched on before. my ping seems to have risen a tiny bit. 

I'll keep an eye out...

Let's say the firewall solves the issue; does that mean I need to keep it on forever?

[#4]

@pvmb @RobPN just saw your replies; that's 100% my fibre cable.

But now I've turned on firewall I have a new "gateway" and new first hop so I'm going to have to see if that helps.

But yeah; I'd say it was ... squashed or pulled tight at a 85% angle... but ... the guy tested it and green lit it.

I wonder do I now wait a week to see if this firewall solved my issue or should I be concerned about these kinks anyway.

There are 4 to 5 of those. There's 2 walls and each one has 2 90º bends and there's one metal hook where the optical cable is very tight against to the point where I'd say it was digging in almost to the plastic

[#5]

@iZian 

Need to monitor now to see if anything has improved. Be interesting to see if there are any dropped packets and how mtr is doing. Problem with BQM is needs to be running a couple of hours to see how the connection is performing.

I will follow your BQM graph this afternoon

If it resolves the issue I would carry on using the account based firewall at Low.

[#6]

@Dan_the_Van Thank you sir. I don't like these things on if they don't have to be, the latency was a concern... but if this is life for me now I'll just accept that.

It seems like my tight corners on the fibre cable are... tight... but there's absolutely no slack in the line. I can't really do anything to change that. The cable is tight tight against each hook.

Judging by the comments so far I wonder if they're a disaster in waiting.

I'll leave the firewall on until at least Tuesday if it stays "good". Because then turning it back off would prove it worked if turning it off returns the issue. Unless turning it off means the option disappears for me; I was confused on that topic a little bit. First I guess is seeing if it stays good.
Last Friday afternoon was good anyway.

As always a big thank you to you and all... I think this is the only thing kept me from going mad.

[#7]

@iZian 

Now were on the same network I can compare an mtr for my connection

It also includes the IP Address owner (AS Number)

AS6871 - plusnet

AS2856 - BT 

AS13335 - cloudflare

Hopefully you are now using you broadband as you usually would.

[#8]

@Dan_the_Van thanks for the compare. our first and second hops seem to be neighbours.

Do I understand your wording that you are usually or permanently on the low firewall setting yourself?

And yes; I have the mtr running and I'm about to run a google meet; although being Friday our meetings end by 3 so business as usual is really Monday again at this rate.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure I understand the networking enough to know really what's happened. My physical connection to the world is the same. But now my first real internet hop, not networking, is now Plusnet not bt or something else it seems. 
The net affect seems to be about +5ms on average added to my latency to cloud flare I think. which is an acceptable trade off if it does remain stable.

I was worried about online gaming but I guess if the gaming works at the weekend then its better to have +5 than 80% loss in bursts... 

I just don't understand if this does fix things... how bad must it be out there... what was I connected to that was so bad and how many other people must that affect? It seems... unreal to me. Only because I write software and services and we have metrics and if we had stats showing loss of requests like that we would have alarms ringing in my company and I'd be woken at 3am to solve it.

As always thank you again... I'm going to hop on that meet now and keep one eye on the stats  

[#9]

@Dan_the_Van it looks like I spoke too soon. my meeting dropped out

This is like before. little red tick on the BQM also. 

So now I wonder about my ONT and my fibre cable that's got a lot of sharp bends in it. But Plusnet man said they don't send out engineers for packet loss

[#10]

It appears as bad as it ever was. This bit happened during a key part of the meeting where someone was explaining something to the group and I had to wait so long before they could hear me properly to say I missed that whole section.

So; new hub 2, new ethernet, ethernet connection, power cycled, firewall on, new first hop, other devices turned off or idle.

What's left Is the ONT, the fibre with those tight bends, and whatever that's physically going to and aggregating? Oh, and I guess I still need to run that 15m extension cable to see if electricity from another ring circuit is cleaner or something... But whatever it is seems to leave me alone about 5pm and only bother me again near midnight and then the next working day.
I can't make sense of it.😞

[#11]

@iZian 

Somewhere in my grey matter is a thought that you can complain to OR about the workmanship of a fibre install. If it's not been mention before in this thread it mught be worth a look though the OR website to see what it says.

Brian

[#12]

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@bmc wrote:

@iZian 

Somewhere in my grey matter is a thought that you can complain to OR about the workmanship of a fibre install.

Maybe this page (?)  https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/when-to-get-in-touch-with-openreach/complaints-policy 

.

[#13]

@bmc  @Penny  That looks like the one. I’m just not sure because as someone suggested wiggling things doesn’t make anything worse or make the packet loss happen. I’ve prodded and wiggled and nothing. It looks sharp corners but I don’t know. 
it says on that site too something about the ISP if it’s Internet related. 

It could just as easily be a firmware bug in the hub 2 that only affects people who use Ethernet Wan and also name their WiFi a certain way. Or the ONT being sensitive to the meows of my cats. Or whatever my fibre is connected to and the route it takes. 

I suppose I could try buy another replacement router.  

I have no neighbours on OpenReach fibre at all. I’m the first one on it and everyone else is on VM or still FTTC. Otherwise I’d ask a neighbour if theirs drops also

I might have to leave it to Monday afternoon. I was going to call Plusnet support again but I think they’re probably fed up of me now. And I could show the broadband monitor now but that’s just proof what I was saying it was nothing to do with WiFi. 

Thank you all again, you’re kind with your time. 

[#14]

@iZian 

If you don't ask, you don't get.

You lose nothing by submitting the form. OR might say sorry, we're happy with the work or they might say it doesn't look right and arrange a visit.

Brian

[#15]

I woke up this morning wondering how many people use the Hub 2? I was entertaining the idea that it was no good for high speed WAN port.
I see my latest BQM link showed red spikes in the night. I guess the connection could have been in use as I put more devices back on.
But I can’t explain 6pm being fine when we were using everything and 2am being bad.

It feels like only 3 options now? 3rd new router that is known good, complain to OR and see if that does anything, or just live with this new terrible PN connection / move house.

Unless PN would honestly investigate the packet loss and I’ve just not been connected with someone yet who recognises how bad it is for me. Aren’t they ultimately supposed to get me a connection that works well enough I can work?

Sorry I didn’t reply back yesterday. I hit a downward spiral after that work meeting that went so bad. Feels silly how much this is affecting me now