Gigafast 900 - Unusable in the evenings

[James3793]

I am wondering if anyone can help me or give me any advice on how to approach VF with my issue.

I have had Gigafast 900 since December last year and its been amazing until recently. I usually get 900 up and down and its been pretty flawless for gaming. 

Last week I noticed something was not right while I was gaming so ran a ping test and found an issue. I am getting around 15ms but every 3 seconds or so, huge spikes of 300-500ms and lots of jitter on the line. I am not getting this issue at all during the day when I am working from home.

Yesterday I noticed I was being routed to Edinburgh which is obviously a little strange, I reset my router and now I am being routed to Birmingham which I thought would fix the issue but tonight, the ping spikes are still going on.

Last night the internet was pretty much unusable.

I ran tracer route and got the following results.

tart: 2023-08-25T01:14:08+0500

HOST: DNSChecker.org                                               Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev

  1.|-- ???                                                          100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

  2.|-- 10.74.194.222                                                 0.0%     3    0.9   7.2   0.9  19.6  10.7

  3.|-- 138.197.248.242                                               0.0%     3    1.2   1.4   1.2   1.7   0.3

  4.|-- 138.197.248.14                                                0.0%     3    0.7   0.9   0.7   1.0   0.2

  5.|-- nyk-b11-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.45.5)                    0.0%     3    1.7   1.6   1.5   1.7   0.1

  6.|-- nyk-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.112.68)                  0.0%     3    1.9   1.9   1.7   2.1   0.2

  7.|-- ewr-b3-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.140.191)                  0.0%     3    1.9   2.2   1.9   2.5   0.3

  8.|-- cablewireless-ic-379002.ip.twelve99-cust.net (62.115.149.41)  0.0%     3    2.3   2.8   2.3   3.4   0.6

  9.|-- ae3-xcr1.slo.cw.net (195.2.28.170)                            0.0%     3   73.4  73.5  73.4  73.5   0.1

 10.|-- cust-gw-ae15-100-xcr1.slo.cw.net (195.2.2.218)                0.0%     3   74.4  74.5  74.3  74.7   0.2

 11.|-- ???                                                          100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

[CrimsonLiar]

You'll probably have to wait for @Ripshod to help on this as they're the most sensible user on here with experience of this particular issue.  I have to say though, those are incredibly low pings for most of your route.

An equivalent here (on BT 900) would is:

gtax6000:/tmp/home/root# mtr -r -4 dnschecker.org
Start: 2023-08-25T08:32:40+0100
HOST: gtax6000                                       Loss%     Snt  Last   Avg  Best Wrst StDev
1.|-- 172.16.18.229 0.0%                                             10     1.4     1.7    1.4    1.9    0.2
2.|-- ???                                                        100.0       10     0.0     0.0    0.0     0.0   0.0
3.|-- 31.55.187.184 0.0%                                             10   10.8   10.9  10.6   11.3   0.2
4.|-- host213-121-192-100.ukcor 0.0%                      10   10.5   10.5    9.8   10.9   0.3
5.|-- peer8-et-3-1-5.telehouse. 0.0%                          10   11.3   12.3  10.8   18.2   2.4
6.|-- 195.99.126.233 0.0%                                           10   10.7  13.4   10.2   32.9  7.0
7.|-- 141.101.71.47 0.0%                                             10   11.9  11.6   10.7   12.0   0.4
8.|-- 104.26.7.89 0.0%                                                 10   11.0  11.1   10.9   11.3   0.1

I don't think this is related, but we use MS Xbox Cloud (coz I got a year of this free) gaming here, and can maintain a constant good connection to the internet, but their servers sometimes "stutter".

Good luck, I hope you can get this sorted

*Mods:  My ISP common gateway is showing not my WAN IP

[James3793]

Thanks so much for the response.

I actually just spoke to VF, they were as helpful as they could be but they can't run any tests because I am using a Netgear RAX70 router. They are sending me a new VF router next week so I can set that up (temporarily) and run some tests.

It's a really strange issue I am seeing to be honest. I ran a test just now and the average ping is 14ms with 882 down and 889 up. This has been the case all week. Around 19.30/20.00 tonight it will be a completely different story I am sure. Last night it the spikes were hitting 500ms every 3 seconds give or take with 40ms Jitter. This was still happening around 10pm when I went to bed. This morning I get up and it's back to normal.

My next-door neighbor is on the same Vodafone service and his cable runs from the same pole. He is away right now but I would be curious to see if he is getting the same issue.

[Ripshod]

A traceroute from your end to bbc.com would be a lot more useful for this. 

Apart from being inconvenient using the vf router makes sense, in that they can actually connect to the router and read off the hidden logs and fiddle with the settings - however your problem is clearly on their network. 

Play their game, hopefully your problem will be resolved.

[James3793]

Thanks, I appreciate the support.

I will ping a traceroute across this weekend when the issue is in full swing  

[Jayach]

It might be useful to post 2 tracert's one when the problem is happening and one when it isn't. It may show just where the bottleneck is. 

[James3793]

Thanks so much. I will do exactly that and report back. 

[James3793]

Hey everyone.

I am experiencing the issue this evening. I ran a ping test and I am getting huge ping spikes again.

I ran a tracer route to bbc.com. Firstly, these are the results when things are behaving as expected.

Start: 2023-08-25T19:40:34+0500

HOST: DNSChecker.org        Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev

  1.|-- ???                                 100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

  2.|-- 10.74.132.77                0.0%     3    0.4   0.8   0.4   1.5   0.6

  3.|-- 138.197.248.252          0.0%     3    0.9   1.0   0.9   1.2   0.2

  4.|-- 138.197.248.58            0.0%     3    0.5   0.7   0.5   0.9   0.2

  5.|-- 138.197.244.36            0.0%     3    1.1   1.2   1.1   1.3   0.1

  6.|-- ???                                 100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

  7.|-- 151.101.64.81              0.0%     3   15.9   6.0   0.9  15.9   8.6

These are the results this evening when I am seeing the spikes. Weirdly I noticed that the ping spikes were raising to exactly 230ms, 232ms or 233ms each time. There were a few around 400.

Start: 2023-08-27T01:44:14+0500

HOST: DNSChecker.org        Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev

  1.|-- ???                                 100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

  2.|-- 10.74.132.77                0.0%     3    0.5   0.7   0.4   1.0   0.3

  3.|-- 138.197.248.252          0.0%     3    0.9   1.0   0.9   1.1   0.1

  4.|-- 138.197.248.58            0.0%     3    0.5   0.8   0.5   1.0   0.2

  5.|-- 138.197.244.36            0.0%     3    1.1   1.1   1.0   1.1   0.1

  6.|-- ???                                 100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

  7.|-- 151.101.64.81              0.0%     3    1.3   1.1   0.8   1.3   0.3

I am not really familiar with tracer routes so not sure if the above is helpful or not.

[Ripshod]

If you're on windows use the search function on your taskbar to search for "cmd" (without the quotes) and run the reulting Command Prompt as admin. Type "tracert bbc.com" (without the quotes) and post the results here.

[James3793]

Here are the results.

1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  READYSHARE [192.168.1.1]
  2     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  84.65.0.1
  3     5 ms     5 ms     5 ms  63.130.172.27
  4     6 ms     6 ms     5 ms  90.255.251.103
  5     5 ms     5 ms     5 ms  151.101.128.81