Gaming with other things almost impossible over past month

[#1]

A month or so ago (round about the time of that storm) I noticed that my connection has pretty much lost the ability to do any kind of online gaming while anything other than browsing is taking place.  Some line stats:

Modem Status
	
Connection Status 	  	Connected
Ds Rate (Kbps) 	  	4928
Us Rate (Kbps) 	  	448
DS Margin 	  	9
US Margin 	  	22
DS Line Attenuation 	  	45
US Line Attenuation 	  	26
Trained Modulation 	  	ADSL_G.dmt
LOS Errors 	  	0
Peak Cell Rate 	  	1056 cells per sec
CRC Rx Fast 	  	0
CRC Tx Fast 	  	0
CRC Rx Interleaved 	  	94
CRC Tx Interleaved 	  	24
Path Mode 	  	Interleaved
DSL Statistics
	
Near End F4 Loop Back Count 	  	0
Near End F5 Loop Back Count 	  	0

This readout is from a connection that has been running 30 hours since the last disconnect.  Currently (since 03/04/14) I am using a D-Link DSL-G604T with the Routertech firmware.  I normally use a BT Homehub 3 with one of the very few builds of OpenWRT that runs on it and has been for over a year without issue.  Will be trying a HomeHub 2 with a much newer OpenWRT build tomorrow to see if there is any difference.
Essentially one person can be playing a game wile running skype, sometimes two people playing different games and ping times are acceptable.  As soon as another person starts downloading something, Youtube, Steam etc. the game starts lagging like crazy.  This up until recently did not happen.  My brother could be on Dota andI could be watching Youtube or have Steam downloading without the DL limiter turned on and there wouldn't be a problem.  Now even Youtube SD videos can elicit shouts of 'My pings over 1000'.
Not that its all him.  I play MWO, or at least try to at the moment.  I have felt that MWO has tolerated my usual 128-250 ping but recently I have had terrible rubber-banding with the game on occasion reporting that my ping was over 5 seconds!
Its not just gaming suffering, on occasions just regular browsing suffers badly.  I guess I am getting some bad packet loss if these TBB graphs are saying what I think they are.  The bad moments of lag do seem to line up with the red spikes.
03/04/14

04/04/14

05/04/14

06/04/14 (ignore the big block of red, that was a scheduled power outage)

07/04/14

08/04/14 - Live

[#2]

As a first check can report the current line speed from https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer_speed and have you got the Pro addon

[#3]

Current line speed if 4Mb/s which is about normal for my line (its usually 4.5) and I have the Pro addon.  Like I mentioned before gaming, skype  and downloading did co-exist nicely before.  Most likely PN's traffic prioritisation working properly but ever since the last batch of storms, which was followed a day or so later by a couple of late night power-cuts I forgot to mention my connection is no longer able to keep up like it did before.  Before this started I could have Steam practically maxing out my download (reporting ~450KB/s) without any complaints concerning gaming lag.

[#4]

TBH i found the pro add on to be useless 
made no  difference to BF

[#5]

You've got interleaving on your line which has probably been turned on due to an unstable connection. This won't be helping gaming.
Which exchange are you connected to (you can find out here https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/)?
I'm surprised you had no issues when gaming/skyping/downloading at the same time looking at your upstream speed.

[#6]

I'm on the POOLEY BRIDGE exchange, pretty far out from it too.  I understand what you say about my upstream and interleaving.  I decided to leave interleaving on to squeeze the last drop of bandwidth I could from my line.  Again I say that before recently it hasn't been a problem.  My brother often had Steam running a download at full tilt while playing World of Tanks suffering only a extra ~20ms ping to the US servers.  When the ping goes bad I know because I usually hear from downstairs "I'M LAGGING!", "PINGS OVER 1000 GUYS" or "MY GAMES LOCKED UP".
What I am trying to say is that while not fast my connection was steady and intelligently handled what we demanded of it.  Now it feels like its barely making above dialup sometimes.  Does anybody have any insight about the TBB graphs I posted?  is that amount of packet loss and the subsequently high average latency normal?

[#7]

Usual questions: But are you plugged into the Master Socket? Do you hear any background noise like static on your telephone line (you can do 17070 and Option 2 to test this)?
I think one issue might be what the others are doing when you're gaming. It looks like at times your upstream is fully saturated. Have you tried setting up QoS on your routers?
Your exchange isn't 21CN, so PN cannot uncap your upload speed for free. But you are due to be upgraded to fibre before the end of 2015 as part of Superfast Cumbria's plans.

[#8]

Hi Hojo Norem,
I've just taken a look over your line and can't see anything obvious that's causing the issues you're experiencing. I've made a change to your speed profile as it was set a little lower than it should have been, that should take effect within the next 4 hours or so.
We could try and switch off Interleaving, this may alleviate the gaming pain you've been seeing. It'd be great if you could get a traceroute ( http://community.plus.net/library/networking/testing-network-faults/#tracert ) when this does happen so we can have a look.
Does the increase in ping happen randomly or at a particular time?

[#9]

Quote from: rongtw

TBH i found the pro add on to be useless  made no  difference to BF

I asked that question because it could make things worse for gaming and may have caused the symptoms reported

[#10]

The issues usually begin to manifest in the evening.  I think one good example of what happens would be when I play MWO.  In my experience when my ping in genuinely high it manifests itself as delayed reactions to commands, firing, targeting, etc.  Recently however it has manifested itself as various levels of rubberbanding.  Last night was a good example of this.  I was wailing on a enemy Victor when I see a shot fly from a friendly to my right scoring the kill, only to see on the screen that I got the kill and then a few seconds later somebody complaining at me about friendly fire.
While usually one would blame this on the trans-Atlantic link or dodgy netcode but when I glance at the TBB graph there is a minor to spike in packet loss.  As the MWO servers are in the US and as far as I know the TBB monitors live in the UK I am reluctant to blame it on the traffic going over the pond.
I don't have the ability to directly connect my router to the master socket at the moment as I have no way of getting electricity there at the moment, I'll try to borrow a extension from somewhere.  The master socket has nothing but a ADSL Nation style active face place connected to it.  There is a single hardwired CAT5 extension running about 5-10m to another socket with the same type of active faceplate where the router is plugged in.  I made sure to keep the extension as far away from any parallel mains wiring.  17007 option 2 gives me what I consider a normal low level hiss with no pops or crackles etc.
Interleaving hasn't really impacted gaming to any terribly noticeable degree and I can imagine my line speed taking a dive if I turn it off.
Out of curiosity, how could the pro addon make things worse?

[#11]

It shouldn't except it moves some other traffic into titanium so could impact gaming http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml Click on Traffic Prioritisation
Specifically any traffic which isn't identified so comes under "Other" would be Titanium instead of silver so the same priority as Gaming

[#12]

is this issue still ongoing i have exactly the same thing

[#13]

Yes it is.  Limiting Steam to 64KB/s caused lag in my Brother's LoL match tonight.  Last night however I did manage to get a good number of games of MWO.  It felt a little rough at times but it was still quite playable.