Flaky connection?

[#1]

Is it me, or is PN broadband just a bit pants at times?

Sites/services just randomly become unreachable for short spells, sites spend an hour or two going super-sluggish.  Whilst other sites work fine, and my speedtest shows reasonable speeds/pings.

It's all very site specific - and could easily be the sites in question...  Were it not for the fact I can switch of my Wifi and browse them on 4/5G totally normally.

It comes and goes, and I have read about issues with PN DNS servers on these forums in the past - are these persistent issues?  Just wondering if it's a feature of my new(ish) supplier?  i.e. The reason they are cheap!

[#2]

@whitling2k 

It’s unlikely to be connected with DNS.

Are you connecting with an Ethernet cable or over wireless?

Are you on ADSL or fibre? Which hub have you got?

We need more information for forum members to advise.

[#3]

It’s unlikely to be connected with DNS. < OK - keen to explore!  The problem seems to be with the signal my router is receiving rather than on my LAN - I have tried two configurations and it happens with both, at the same frequency - maybe every other day.

• When a site goes down on one device, it goes down on all other devices using the broadband.  If I switch my phone to 4/5G, the site functions normally.
  • As an example, earlier today, I couldn't access tesco.com via broadband - on PC (ethernet) or iPad/iPhone (Wifi) - but I could access it on my phone via 4G.
• I occasionally lose my entire work's soft-VPN connection too for the same sorts of duration
• It can be for seconds, up to 5 minutes. 
• Domain-specific go-slows can persist for 20 minutes - but this is harder to gauge
• It's as though traffic to specific domain/adresses stops working/struggles for short bursts, but other address work fine.  Which seems very odd behaviour - and is what let me to believe it may be a DNS routing issue from PN.
• It has been happening for months - since I joined around April.
• It is only a minor annoyance - but enough to make me reconsider staying when my term expires.

Are you connecting with an Ethernet cable or over wireless? Both!  It's not a straightforward network - but I tried simplifying it for troubleshooting when I first joined)

Config 1: (day-to-day)

Hub 2 - bridge mode <> TP-Link AC750 Router

    (Ethernet)

        1: Windows 10 PC

        2: Synology NAS

        3: Google Chromecast        

        4: 8 port gigabit switch:

            1. Raspberry Pi 0 (webserver and weather station)

            2. Philips Hue

            n. Misc. smart things around the house

    (Wifi)

        Win 10 laptop

        iPads & iPhones

        Win 10 laptops (Soft VPN/work)

        Printer

        Sonos

        EV charger

        Misc. smart things around the house

Config 2: (Troubleshooting - still occurs, same frequency)

Hub 2 - Out-The-Box mode (ethernet)

    1. Windows 10 PC

    2. Synology NAS

    3. 8 port gigabit switch:

            1. Raspberry Pi 0 (webserver and weather station)

            2. Philips Hue

            3. Google Chromecast

            n. Misc. smart things around the house

Hub 2 - Out-The-Box mode (Wifi)

        Win 10 laptop

        iPads & iPhones

        Win 10 laptops (Soft VPN/work)

        Printer

        Sonos

        EV charger

        Misc. smart things around the house

Are you on ADSL or fibre? Which hub have you got?

Fibre to Cabinet

Hub 2 ( I think - illuminated circle on the front)

We need more information for forum members to advise. < where to start!  Hopefully this helps - but In my experience, posts starting with complex details get ignored! Simple hooks followed by details tend to be more widely discussed 🙂

[#4]

Anyone?

[#5]

Hey @whitling2k,

I'm sorry to hear that you're running into this issue. Is this only happening on certain sites/services, or across all sites? Is there any sort of discernable pattern to the slow-down? This could be the time it occurs for example.

[#6]

Thanks @TheMightyAJ 

Not much I can add to the above really.  I came on here this morning to check for replies because Facebook.com couldn't be found (Request timed out - Chrome suggested checking DNS).

At the same time, I checked my general internet connection and other sites were working, speed test showed 38mb/s down and 6mb/s up (and a normal ping which I can't remember now).  All very normal for this time of day.  3 minutes later, I refreshed the error page and it was back up and normal. 

Last night I tried to watch something on prime video on my phone, and the internet was all working fine, the app loaded, logged in, it displayed the video thumbnails - but couldn't connect to the streams.  I switched Wifi off and all of a sudden the video streamed over 4g.  5 minutes later (scared of burning through my 4g!) I switched back to WiFi and the streams loaded.

It happens to sites all over the internet  but it only ever (appears to be) one site at a time.  There could be more, but it just so happens I'm not looking at those sites at that time - unknown unknowns!

There are no obvious patterns - times, other devices online etc.  

[#7]

Thanks for confirming that Is it happening across multiple devices, or only seeming to affect one device?

[#8]

Multiple devices, connected via both wireless and Ethernet.

[#9]

You mentioned a work VPN earlier in the thread - has this been in use when the problem occurs?

[#10]

Yes and no, it happens whether or not the VPN is connected. It’s a software VPN that only routes certain traffic via my works servers.

It just happened again, I was unable to browse to Wickes.co.uk for about 4 minutes over WiFi this time, but was able to browse to it fine it fine on 4G, and on my work laptop by forcing it to load the page via my works ISP over vpn.

[#11]

You mentioned you're using the Hub 2 in Bridge Mode along with a TP Link router - have you been able to setup the TP Link router by itself, or would that not be possible? Also, I know it was touched on earlier in the thread, but did you get a chance to try changing the DNS to see if that would make any difference? Google DNS is good for testing if you'd like to give it a try.

[#12]

I don't know if this is related to your problem, but ever since I upgraded to FTTC - Unlimited Fibre Extra - in May 2022 and installed a new Plusnet Hub Two router, I have been experiencing a consistent problem every few days that I never experienced with my previous DrayTek Vigor 2820n router.

The problem initially manifests itself as some images failing to appear on web pages. As it becomes worse, no images appear, then only simple text is displayed. Eventually, any new web page opened is just blank.

Restarting the router makes no difference. The only way I have found to fix this problem is to restart the computer (Windows 7 Professional) then everything works fine again for a few days.

The reason why I think this is happening to me is due to the way I use my computer, which is likely to be different from the vast majority of people. I typically have 10 Firefox browser windows open at the same time, with many tabs open in each of those windows. For example, I might have 40 tabs open in a single window.

Whilst not all of those tabs and windows will be active on any given day, the more that are the faster this problem seems to manifest itself. I am guessing it is caused by the number of concurrent connections.

As most people shut down their PCs at least once a day, they are unlikely to encounter this problem. In my case, due to my working practices, the computer could be on (or in sleep mode) for several weeks at a time without being restarted, so I've had to modify the way I work to accommodate restarts every few days.

[#13]

I’ve not tried changing the DNS - I’m not convinced of the security of doing that?

Not sure what you mean about the TP LINK as a router without the Hub 2 - do you mean use it as a modem as well as routing?

[#14]

@R1chard How  much RAM do you have on that machine, and how often do you 'clean it up? Just curious, as that is a lot of Firefox to have open, and one of the issues regularly reported with that browser (in the past) was its reluctance to release unused memory - whether that is still the case, I don't know.

[#15]

@jab1 32 GB of RAM, so memory use is not often an issue for me. Task Manager shows 12.5 GB in use with 11 Firefox windows open, too many tabs to count, 59 firefox.exe processes running and Up Time of 32 hours.

I certainly noticed in the past that Firefox had trouble cleaning up after itself, because memory usage would slowly creep up over time. If I needed to launch a memory intensive application, I would sometimes need to exit Firefox and also manually end the processes in Task Manager. It seems to be better these days.