Newish to O2 but getting 2-300ms ping rates

[Earlstreetblue]

Hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction as to what to do next.

I have been with o2 now for a couple of months (O2 Home Broadband Access). Up to about a couple of weeks ago, everything was pretty good, getting pings in the region of 30-60, but gradually over the last couple of weeks, its been getting progressivly worse, 250 -350ms. To the point now that I find I have to switch the router off 5 or 6 times a day. Sometimes the box will restart all by its self.

What I would like to know is, is it a problem with the router or the line or both?

I have a filtered faceplate attached to the BT master socket and have just the one phone line and cable to the router, both using quality cable.

The phone line is crystal clear, with no problems.

The router is o2's newer Thompson TG585v7 which is well ventilated.

These are my stats at the mo

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]:448 / 8,128
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]:0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]:12.0 / 19.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]:11.0 / 19.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]:24.0 / 16.5
At the moment all I am getting is around 2 -3mb whereas a couple of weeks ago it was nearly always up to and the mid 7's.

I am approx 900m away from my local exchange, atcf.

People have said that the o2 box isn't too bad, but having come from cable using a D-Link DGL 4300 gigabit router this one is too basic for my liking. Is there such an alternative to the o2?

 

[Lonewolf]

I cannot give you any advice regarding your stats but O2 are supposed to be the dogs danglies when it comes to CS. Contact support and see if they can advise.

I assume you have checked for spyware, ran an AV etc?

 

[tolien]

You should be able to use any ADSL router you like with O2 Access - it doesn't even need to ADSL2+, or the abnormal VPI/VCI options they use on their LLU product.

 

[Earlstreetblue]

I assume you have checked for spyware, ran an AV etc?

Yes I have Steganos Internet Security running all the time, and thats not showing anything untoward.

Speed is now fluctuating from 3mb to 6.8mb according to speedtest and 6.9 from dslzone. But the ping rates are still 224ms at the mo.

Also one thing thats puzzling me at the mo is that for some reason one of the security settings from the o2 box had changed. From wpa to wep, could it be that the box is faulty, or something more sinister?

Having looked around there doesn't seem to be many adsl gigabit routers available, why is that?

 

[tolien]

The speedtests are worthless unless you run one that's reliable (something like this, for starters) and keep an eye on what speed the router's connected at.

Having looked around there doesn't seem to be many adsl gigabit routers available, why is that?

Probably because no ADSL connection will max out 100Mbps, let alone GigE, and gigabit switches are pretty cheap.

 

[Senture]

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]:11.0 / 19.0

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]:24.0 / 16.5

That SN margin just isn't right. Looks like there is a fair ammount of noise on the line. What sort of volumes of errors do you get?

 

[FrenchTart]

That SN margin just isn't right. Looks like there is a fair ammount of noise on the line. What sort of volumes of errors do you get?

That SNR margin doesn't look wrong to me. He's on Home Access so he's on ADSL1 and with that attenuation and sync rate, the SNR looks about right.

I would guess that's the problem is probably more to do with overcrowding on an o2 BT Central Pipe or something.

@OP: Does the slow down happen at peak times at all? What sites are you pinging to get those results?

 

[Earlstreetblue]

Right been in touch with o2 and their looking into it, although they said they couldn't see much wrong.

What sort of volumes of errors do you get?

The short answer is I don't know, as the box is just giving loads of zero's, but according to o2 they can see figures, so guess the box is failing to record them.

Does the slow down happen at peak times at all?

No it can happen at any time of the day, plus its very erratic, one day it will be in the morning, another day like yesterday for example it was most of the day. Today though, it seems to be back to some sort of normaility, in that just downloading those test files from Zen show average speeds to be 840kb/s.

Was hoping that our local exchange might get unbundled in the not too distant future, but that doesn't seem to be the case, as o2 don't know, Bt won't say, and looking on Samknows, its now changed from:

BT Wholesale has set an enablement date of 19/05/2009 for their 21CN Wholesale Broadband Connect product at the Grimsby exchange
​

To

BT Wholesale are no longer reporting a Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) enablement date for the Grimsby exchange (Was previously 19/05/2009)

​

 

[tolien]

Neither of those have anything to do with LLU though.