Is 1% packet loss acceptable?

Trifid

Trifid

Trifid

Soldato
Joined
18 Feb 2006
Posts
9,837
Hello.

Following from a minor outage on Sunday I have been noticing that I am getting around 1% packet loss when idle and increases with load and am getting the impression that Be are not really that interested in this? Is there anything I can do to prove my case apart from sending across the below information? I'm inclined to let the weather improve a bit before escalating this further.

ping 93.96.169.1 -n 300
Ping statistics for 93.96.169.1:
Packets: Sent = 300, Received = 289, Lost = 11 (3% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 59ms, Average = 23ms

ping yahoo.co.uk -n 300
Ping statistics for 87.248.121.75:
Packets: Sent = 300, Received = 297, Lost = 3 (1% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 58ms, Maximum = 118ms, Average = 66ms

ping bbc.co.uk -n 300
Ping statistics for 212.58.224.138:
Packets: Sent = 300, Received = 297, Lost = 3 (1% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 89ms, Average = 26ms


ping google.com -n 300
Ping statistics for 173.194.36.104:
Packets: Sent = 300, Received = 299, Lost = 1 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 84ms, Average = 24ms


Ping statistics for 212.58.224.138:
Packets: Sent = 2467, Received = 2424, Lost = 43 (1% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 2004ms, Average = 24ms

(connection under 50% load)
Ping statistics for 212.58.224.138:
Packets: Sent = 266, Received = 253, Lost = 13 (4% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 73ms, Average = 31ms

Thanks.
 
Ping's an arkward one. Many networks rate limit icmp, so they are likely to show packet loss when using ping, which does not actually exist for normal traffic. Are you experiencing any other issues?
 
Have you given www.pingtest.net a try? Not sure if they also use ICMP, but it could shed some more light.

How are you connecting to your router? Does the problem affect all of the machines in your home or just one?

Could you dig the connection stats out from your router? If your phone line is struggling that might cause the packet loss; it might not be to do with Be*'s network.
 
Not for 2467 ping's sent no, unfortunately you will get the odd packet dropping from time to time, although it could be some network issue somewhere over the WAN that could be causing a temporary issue.

Hopefully the network issue is cleared up, its more worrying if you are getting packets dropping 4-5 pings in a row.
 
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I think a busy router may well drop ping packets or at least give them low priority so they time out... unless you have an issue I would not worry about it
 
In a modern network I consider it unacceptable personally, you shouldn't consistently see loss pinging another host. A router is maybe acceptable as responding requires CPU time but a host the traffic is easy to forward and should only be dropped if a link is oversubscribed (which I consider unacceptable, plenty of consumer ISPs seem to disagree with me there though). If it's consistently like that it's a fault in my view. However you may struggle to convince your ISP of that depending on their attitude...
 
1% ICMP packet loss is unacceptable

bigredshark is right. There are hundreds of monitoring utilities that use ICMP packets for testing networks including packet loss. Thousands of network professionals use ICMP packets and the ISPs use them as well.

1% packet loss is unacceptable. Good quality internet circuits should have 0.1% packet loss or less. If you are getting 1% packet loss with ICMP packets, you will have problems with any realtime applications such as VoIP, video and gaming.

The problem with pinging another IP address is you got to make sure that IP address is on a quality Internet connection and when you loose packets, you don't know where they are being lost i.e. your modem, somewhere in your ISP or in the Internet. This packet loss tool may help. It does use ICMP packets, but it helps you interpret the results.
 
Indeed, I had similar loss statistics to you with my old ISP and it heavily impacted the playability of many games.
 
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