Acceptable packet loss on a business/payment line

Psy-Blade · 30 Jul 2012 at 11:40

Hi guys,

Now I'm not a networks guy, though unfortunately due to some internal 'problems', I can't pass this on to the team that should do this, or more, I can't trust it to them...

I'm looking to monitor the reliability/performance of our external connection. Now I've set up a ping to google, 1000 pings 5msec apart every 60 seconds and I'm recieving a packet loss of about 4-5%. Simple question is, is this acceptable for a business line which handles payment information? Credit card transactions and such.

Thanks guys

PistolPete · 30 Jul 2012 at 11:56

There may or may not be performance guarantees on your line, you'd need to check, but I'd not be overly happy of that level of packet loss on a business line regardless of the what you are using it for.

Contact you provider and raise the issue with them and see what they say.

KIA · 30 Jul 2012 at 11:57

That's pretty poor. Who's the connection provided by?

You can use http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping & http://f8lure.mouselike.org to monitor packet loss.

stoofa · 30 Jul 2012 at 17:00

When you say business line, are you talking a leased line or a share of bandwidth at the local exchange along with all other local users?

On our leased line I do not expect to see 1% packet loss - if I was to send a string of pings for say 12 hours I'd expect to see a handful of dropped packets at most.

Would expect pretty good for more standard ADSL based connections too - 5% packet loss is rather high.

Locky · 30 Jul 2012 at 17:33

my f8lure graph had 0%pl of a 24h period, and that's with a normal BT FTTC line. business grade should see 0%

Duke · 30 Jul 2012 at 17:50

Don't see how any packet loss is acceptable? Need more info on the connection as said above.

Psy-Blade · 6 Aug 2012 at 15:41

Sorry for the delay guys, we're in the middle of an audit at the moment *dies.

The line is a virgin media leased line, 100mbit. The packetloss has dropped off over the last week, but I still get an average of 1% or so...

joeyjojo · 6 Aug 2012 at 17:17

As said I think any is unacceptable. Definitely complain.

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Aug 2012 at 20:49

Be careful, it may not be outside your network it could be inside.

stoofa · 7 Aug 2012 at 01:36

Run a "pathping" to a major server somewhere and see where the packet loss is. Actually run it to 2 or 3 major sites and see if it's at the same hop the problems occur.

michellez · 7 Aug 2012 at 17:01

What stoofa said. Do a pathping to make sure it is definitely happening out side your building's internal network first.

If it's a business leased line, then yes, I would not expect any packet loss! ADSL though depends who your ISP is but from experience BT will accept a good few % loss on business ADSL as normall

Azuse05 · 7 Aug 2012 at 17:42

Pingplotter (free) will produce a nice graph and logs for you, although any pl at all is wrong imo.