Packet loss sky fttc

Associate
Joined
20 Feb 2007
Posts
212
Hi people
Generally it is not noticed when streaming or browsing the internet but when gaming this is a different story.
I have one day left until my cooling period ends with sky, which I am going to phone them tomorrow and ask them to put a flag on the account so I don’t pay early cancellation charges due to the issues I have, if they don’t go for that I will leave in my cooling off period which will cause a cease on my line which means I cannot order any service until 14 days have passed which is when the cease date is. Obviously this will cause me without service until the new provider is in place, thus why I am trying to get them not to cease the line and then I put a migration through to another provider (considering Zen) and then hopefully not pay any early cancellation fees (if they agree)

to summarise.
I have swapped out two different sky hubs,
I have disconnected the rest of the network
I have put in a modem, and linked that to an asus rt66n with Merlin firmware

I have setup ping plotter which was setup to ping multiple sources such as bbc, google, local network devices
All local network devices responded fine
Some of the external addresses would have request time out every so often but they all didn’t coincide with each other, which tells me it is not local to my network and more of a router issue on the sky network
More so that the trace route would show that it was losing packets on the sky network further upstream from me.

obviously discussing with sky I am told there is limited things they can do.

What I am trying to figure out....
Could I experience the same issue with another provider such a zen, would they have better control over dealing with such issues that sky as they were limited and as long as the speed was there and service up there was nothing they can do where I think it was a routing or network congestion issue.

with the tracerts showing packet loss on the sky network, I am hoping that moving provider will avoid that.

anyone experience something similar?
I can’t handle this for another 18 months...
 
Soldato
Joined
3 May 2012
Posts
8,520
Location
Wetherspoons
I have FTTC with Zen, we only got upgraded to fibre 5 years ago from ADSL, which, considering a I live in a rural area I'm not complaining about, we jumped from about 6mbps to 70ish, the connection is really good, stable works as fast as it does on a Sunday evening as 4am on a Tuesday morning.

I originally switched to Zen in 2008 from beunlimited, and then prior demon internet. Prior to that BT and I have never payed BT (directly anyway) another penny since and that was 56k modem days.

We used the internet a lot, so got a second phone line in, and then connection went one day, I called them and they did disconnected it for "unattended use" even though we had an unlimited package, was paying them line rental (not to mention installation) for a whole second phone line.

BT are ******* tossers.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
20 Feb 2007
Posts
212
Do you have FTTP in your area? I've been more than pleased with FTTP from Zen.
Not available here without going lease line route.
I have lease lines through work at multiple sites with Zen.

I have FTTC with Zen, we only got upgraded to fibre 5 years ago from ADSL, which, considering a I live in a rural area I'm not complaining about, we jumped from about 6mbps to 70ish, the connection is really good, stable works as fast as it does on a Sunday evening as 4am on a Tuesday morning.

I originally switched to Zen in 2008 from beunlimited, and then prior demon internet. Prior to that BT and I have never payed BT (directly anyway) another penny since and that was 56k modem days.

We used the internet a lot, so got a second phone line in, and then connection went one day, I called them and they did disconnected it for "unattended use" even though we had an unlimited package, was paying them line rental (not to mention installation) for a whole second phone line.

BT are ******* tossers.

unfortunately I only get about 30mbits, but really need reliable latency and jitter which is what I am not getting with sky
Of course my line may also be getting saturated by the kids streaming and what not, so have applied a bit of QOS to see if that helps
But at best my ping with sky is 27ms but generally it’s low 30s with the odd spike and at times packet loss
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Feb 2006
Posts
5,649
Location
Home
Not available here without going lease line route.
I have lease lines through work at multiple sites with Zen.



unfortunately I only get about 30mbits, but really need reliable latency and jitter which is what I am not getting with sky
Of course my line may also be getting saturated by the kids streaming and what not, so have applied a bit of QOS to see if that helps
But at best my ping with sky is 27ms but generally it’s low 30s with the odd spike and at times packet loss

Post your router stats and ping paths/tracert.
 
Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2014
Posts
5,758
Location
Midlands
Could I experience the same issue with another provider such a zen, would they have better control over dealing with such issues that sky as they were limited and as long as the speed was there and service up there was nothing they can do where I think it was a routing or network congestion issue.
.

Unlikely to be Sky, they have one of the best IP networks in the country, as far as ISPs go.

It's far, far more likely to be an Openreach issue with the line, or something with the line itself - if Millions of people use Sky, if their network was congested - they'd know about and probably fix it.

Could a pain in the butt to solve though, unfortunately.

Post your line stats, and your traceroutes, and the times when it's bad.
 
Associate
Joined
15 Feb 2020
Posts
9
Location
Hampshire, UK
It is completely possible that this issue is with the BT phone line. Around 1.5 years ago I was having major issues with my Vodafone fttc broadband in terms of dropping out and unstable speeds, and the phone line was "noisy" during phone calls too. I had a look at the master socket and the wires were all mangled. I ended up calling Vodafone about the issue, and the next day someone from Openreach came round and replaced the outisde cable to the junction box and master socket, and I've not had an issue with unstable internet since.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
20 Feb 2007
Posts
212
Hi guys
Apologies for a delay in any response to anyone who was kind enough to spend their time commenting.

a bit of an update for you.
I migrated to Zen, and was able to investigate the issue, as changing provider didn’t improve anything.
Well I tell a lie. My pings went to approx 20ms in the first 10 days when the Dslam wasn’t controlling it.

then there was a wobbler, more errors on the line, Instability with the connection where it would drop out or mostly lose packets.
Ping would increase to average 40ms.

high interleave was applied to try and stabilise

anyways, I was able to discuss with Zen the history about my experience with this line. The support was better than sky’s and was not getting robbed off.
We did some technical testing either side

I effectively swapped out the router, rj11 and got a new filter into the test socket
This helped stabilise the line and I was having a consistent connection; it went from 27mb high interleave to 32mb low interleave
Pings were now 28ms and that was the best I could achieve

I closed the case with zen.....
I have since ordered a business line and have this at the address and I have been pleasantly surprised on how this has performed and also reassured me that my suspicions are correct that the issue appeared on my line a couple of years after having moved in. I think the sync rate and statistics of my line have been gathered by BT and the records updated with acceptable line rate.

previously I was advertised to get 40 to 50mb when I moved in and experience that.....

fast forward to now.
i have put a business line in with Zen, this is a completely separate cable from the pole to a separate NTE - i was adamant with BT not use any spare pair in the existing cable.

so i now have two connections at this property with Zen
both are obviously following the same route back to the nearest cabinet

now the interesting bit
tests carried out from the same PC.

1) home connection which has its own NTE, cable back to the pole - this has a Draytek 2860 connected to the filter that is on the test socket


Home connection (the one i have this case logged against)
Interleave mode with an average ping of 29ms
Download speed 32mbps
Upload speed 6.2mbps
SNR down = 6
SNR up = 5

2) New business internet connection , faceplate filter and Technicolor tg582 router
Fast mode average ping 13ms
Download of 47.53mbps (it has been rising daily, as SNR is holding out)
Upload of 7.34mbps
SNR down = 3.3

to summarise, i feel there is a physical issue along the way, which wasn't there when i had the line installed many years ago. BT records are automated due to the results my line has been giving. which isnt a fair reflection of what it can achieve hence the results on my separate connection

both connections following the same infrastructure but obviously different pairs of cable along the way.
Connection one due to being stable due to the constraints, is within acceptable threshold according to BT
A dslam reset has been requested but I feel due to the physical issue, it will present the same outcome over time.
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
26,053
You could have a dodgy joint somewhere along your line, or the cable has gotten damaged somehow, but it's within limits so there's no real incentive for anybody to spend hours trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of the line for the margins involved with broadband services.

Just cease the old service and don't use that line again.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
20 Feb 2007
Posts
212
You could have a dodgy joint somewhere along your line, or the cable has gotten damaged somehow, but it's within limits so there's no real incentive for anybody to spend hours trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of the line for the margins involved with broadband services.

Just cease the old service and don't use that line again.
Pretty much summed it up there.

if I was to deactivate that service and line;
And took out a new line install, I assume I am likely to find the same problematic joint along the way, as I would expect BT to connect me to spare pair which is likely to be my ceased one?
 
Associate
Joined
4 Oct 2005
Posts
2,062
Location
Herefordshire
Hi guys
Apologies for a delay in any response to anyone who was kind enough to spend their time commenting.

a bit of an update for you.
I migrated to Zen, and was able to investigate the issue, as changing provider didn’t improve anything.
Well I tell a lie. My pings went to approx 20ms in the first 10 days when the Dslam wasn’t controlling it.

then there was a wobbler, more errors on the line, Instability with the connection where it would drop out or mostly lose packets.
Ping would increase to average 40ms.

high interleave was applied to try and stabilise

anyways, I was able to discuss with Zen the history about my experience with this line. The support was better than sky’s and was not getting robbed off.
We did some technical testing either side

I effectively swapped out the router, rj11 and got a new filter into the test socket
This helped stabilise the line and I was having a consistent connection; it went from 27mb high interleave to 32mb low interleave
Pings were now 28ms and that was the best I could achieve

I closed the case with zen.....
I have since ordered a business line and have this at the address and I have been pleasantly surprised on how this has performed and also reassured me that my suspicions are correct that the issue appeared on my line a couple of years after having moved in. I think the sync rate and statistics of my line have been gathered by BT and the records updated with acceptable line rate.

previously I was advertised to get 40 to 50mb when I moved in and experience that.....

fast forward to now.
i have put a business line in with Zen, this is a completely separate cable from the pole to a separate NTE - i was adamant with BT not use any spare pair in the existing cable.

so i now have two connections at this property with Zen
both are obviously following the same route back to the nearest cabinet

now the interesting bit
tests carried out from the same PC.

1) home connection which has its own NTE, cable back to the pole - this has a Draytek 2860 connected to the filter that is on the test socket


Home connection (the one i have this case logged against)
Interleave mode with an average ping of 29ms
Download speed 32mbps
Upload speed 6.2mbps
SNR down = 6
SNR up = 5

2) New business internet connection , faceplate filter and Technicolor tg582 router
Fast mode average ping 13ms
Download of 47.53mbps (it has been rising daily, as SNR is holding out)
Upload of 7.34mbps
SNR down = 3.3

to summarise, i feel there is a physical issue along the way, which wasn't there when i had the line installed many years ago. BT records are automated due to the results my line has been giving. which isnt a fair reflection of what it can achieve hence the results on my separate connection

both connections following the same infrastructure but obviously different pairs of cable along the way.
Connection one due to being stable due to the constraints, is within acceptable threshold according to BT
A dslam reset has been requested but I feel due to the physical issue, it will present the same outcome over time.

I Actually had a very similar problem. i had a bt business line had various problems involving syncing and dropouts but i had around 70/mb down 15 mb up. i was speaking to a bt opereach guy the one day who was installing someone elses new line and we got to talking ect it turned out there was actually 2 ways to get to my exchange the second way not many engineers knew about and it was shorter. This guy was very helpful he even told me the route number i think it was called for the other shorter distance to the exchange. A;lso turned out he also played online games and understood about pings in online games ect. any fast forward a month i explained all this to my then bt account manager back and fourth they didnt know what i was on about apparently and the engineer who told me this was lying apparently.
Anyhow i decided to get a second line installed. i was fed up of the line dropping ect it was always at the most pain in the ass time. so anyhow booked the line to be done. what would happen is on the day of the second line to be installed the guy came out i then made him a coffee sat him down explained the problems i had been having. also explained i had spoken to a engineer. i then explained what he had told me. he had no idea either about this second way to our exchange. he asked me what this guys name was i told him i explained when i saw it, he then made a phone call. 20 mins later he then came back and said i have manged to speak to the guy you talked to he is coming to sort you out later on this afternoon if that was ok.

True to his word later on he arrived made him coffee lol after that he noticed i was playing an online game he then said "now i know why you ask asking me about your problems" he then said leave it to him. he then said he had to go to the exchange first to do some stuff there, he then came back around 40 mins or so then went outside put a new line in to the pole i think he said came back put a box in. then he had hell of a trouble getting it going. he had to make several calls. another 2 hours had passed. he rang me up and apologised and said there was a problem he had found it and sorted it. he said you will not have any problems with that line with internet on "as i told you not many know about that route" i then said thx and he left. i then rang up sky got fiber installed 80 down 20 on what i am currently on now/ what a difference this line is to the other one. on my bt business line i had a ping of 30-40 in games on my current sky one i have 14 ping max. i then promptly ended my bt business line .
Sometimes jsut sometimes it is not always better to have a business line.
A long read i know lol
 
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