Packet Loss Issue

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30 Apr 2009
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I'm on Virgin Media 10mb package and I pretty much get from anywhere between 20-70% packet loss through out the day. I thought It might have been on their side of things since it's been happening roughly for about a year or 2 now. Phoned up VM and they've said everything is fine on their side, although they were surprised at how old my modem was (NTL one from 2004). They decided to send us a new one which I was quite pleased about.

What I've noticed recently though, is that whenever my flatmate goes onto her computer, that's when the problems start to occur. It doesn't matter what time of day it is 12pm or 3am I'm getting terrible packet loss as long as she's on her computer. She isn't using torrents or anything like that, the only thing I've noticed her do is stream some foreign series on foreign websites. As soon as the computer goes off or maybe 5-10mins after she leaves the computer everything is back to normal, 0% packet loss and everything else working perfectly. This does not affect my general internet speeds though, I can download things just fine. She is on wireless while I'm on cable. Wondering what could be causing this issue.
 
Just to throw a wildcard into the arena, do you think she might be trying to snoop your traffic? ARP poisoning can cause PL if the traffic volume is high.
 
Just to throw a wildcard into the arena, do you think she might be trying to snoop your traffic? ARP poisoning can cause PL if the traffic volume is high.

She's not exactly tech savvy, I doubt she's doing anything like that.
Speaking of high traffic volume. Maybe streaming from foreign sites could cause that? For example at this very moment she's streaming like 4-5 different things from some russian site.
 
She's not exactly tech savvy, I doubt she's doing anything like that.
Speaking of high traffic volume. Maybe streaming from foreign sites could cause that? For example at this very moment she's streaming like 4-5 different things from some russian site.

Maybe shes a russian spy and more clever than you think :eek:
 
It seems that streaming is the issue here. I'm not sure if it's those websites in particular but after all of them have loaded I had 0% packet loss. I told her to start loading a new one and as soon as the page loaded I was back at 72% packet loss. The number of things streamed doesn't seem to matter.
 
Try the same streaming sites she uses on your machine, when shes not on hers, see if the issue is the same. If so, its the sites, if not, its her machine.
 
Is it an actual streaming site, or is it a system using P2P like (I think) 4OD used to do.
I'd have a look at how much upload traffic the other system is generating when it's "streaming"
 
Just to throw a wildcard into the arena, do you think she might be trying to snoop your traffic? ARP poisoning can cause PL if the traffic volume is high.

How many girls do you know that even know what ARP is? :p

OP: She's almost certainly whoring the upstream, simple as that.
 
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