Latency and my line

[WasteTimeChangingCars]

Latency cut outs
Every night at 10pm my line becomes very unstable due to the latency on my line and have to reboot the router 3-5 times between 10 and 12pm, I had fast path enabled on my line and that improved the sync speed to 5 to 6mbps with a download speed on around 3.8 to 4mbps which is grate until 10pm. I don’t download in the sense that I don’t do p2p or UseNet only the odd movie from iTunes the rest of the time it’s just normal web pages and youtube. I’ve phoned UK online countless times and I mean a lot! They don’t seem to be interested they just use the same old excuse of that it’s because I’m on the BT network. I understand that being on the BT network will have some bearing on my speeds at certain times of the day but I do pay them £20pm and I should get a fairly reliable level of service without having to think “oh it’s 10pm no more internet tonight”. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

[wonko]

When you say the line becomes unstable, do you mean your router loses sync with the exchange, or just that internet traffic slows or stops?

The slowdown at peak hours will be caused by one or both of:
- network congestion (or capping / throttling)
- unstable adsl connection

Not too much you can do about the first one without changing ISP. The second one is where there's increased noise on your line, which can drop the noise margin to a point where errors occur and the connection becomes unstable at that sync speed.

I suggest you try out the usual adsl troubleshooting steps (I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be a sticky covering these...) - have a look at the router stats (attenuation, sync speed, noise margin etc.), repeat with the router plugged directly into the test socket on the BT master socket (if you've got one), repeat when it's playing up, and compare the results. It might indicate a fixable problem with the line or house wiring.

Enabling fast path can improve sync speed marginally and reduce latency, but at the expense of losing the interleaved forward error control. If you've got an unstable adsl connection it can make things seem worse.

Latency is a characteristic of a network, not a cause of instability, BTW.

 

[marmalade]

Lines get worse at night with the interference. However have you tried connecting directly to you master sockets back plate - thus removing any internal wired sockets etc? What is your neighbors BB like? UK online is quite a good ISP but they can't change your line conditions dealing with BT is not easy or even possible

 

[WasteTimeChangingCars]

I’ve just had a ADSL filtered faceplate installed and I’m waiting for the telephone engineer to install the new junction box so I’ll see what that does the junction box is about 60 years old according to the telco engineer and you guys on the form. As for my neighbours BB threes is fine.