Ping/Latency way higher Gigafast 900

[htyaH]

I used to get 5ms ping to London (from Coventry), now I am being auto connected to Edinburugh and I get 15 ping to there, when I try to speedtest to London or even right next to me in Leicester I am getting pings above 22...I called in and they just said "they added new servers and there's nothing much we can do"...

any help?

[Ripshod]

---

@purrbox wrote:

Enjoy those pings whilst you can. As more people subscribe to FTTP gigafast, most of you will be moved onto Edinburgh which is to become the main (backup) BNG.

 You're still believing the wrong things. I was routed via edinburgh for 3 months, but now my local bng has been upgraded I've moved back. But then, I'm on openreach so I don't count do I?? 😜

[purrbox]

@Anonymous I agree with everything you say. It's totally bizarre to route everyone via a BNG miles away and I'm totally gutted I have to leave.

However, I've been dealing with this issue for months and it's not improving. I've seen all these different posts reporting different excuses and stories about upgrades and it seems like the support teams are just told bs which is fed to the customers.

Upgrading network hardware doesn't take months. You can swap out switches, hubs and other such stuff in minutes. I worked for a bluechip back in the 90's. They built and pre configured whole networks in a factory and then boxed them up for the field engineers to deploy at the customer site. Although I'm not a network engineer (I was a lowly level 2 hardware support), I saw how quick the hardware guys and scripted build engineers did things. They would deploy automated installs of windows on benches full of networked desktop PC's using ghost images and they'd be setup ready with user accounts and software. If they can do that in the 90's, imagine how quick things are today.

As for why I believe the CEO's office. It's because these are the most senior people at VF and will be privy to Vodafones business plans for their network. It's all about money at the end of the day and it's cheaper to shunt everybody onto Edinburgh. Those 10gb upgrades you mentioned will fix the lag spikes and slow speed, but not routing so we won't be getting lower pings. That's what they said to me. They indirectly told me to just quit and leave, hence the reason I got a deadlock and a free pass to leave in contract.

The reason I'm saying go to the directors office is you'll get the free pass to leave. If you go through the normal support channels you'll only get the deadlock letter, which you'll then have to use to fight VF to get out of your contract.

[prs1000]

---

@purrbox wrote:

As for why I believe the CEO's office. It's because these are the most senior people at VF and will be privy to Vodafones business plans for their network. It's all about money at the end of the day and it's cheaper to shunt everybody onto Edinburgh.

---

The people in the CEO's office that respond to complaints are not experts. Far from it. It's not their job to be an expert on everything. They are there to deal with customer complaints.

The depth of their knowledge is only as good as the individual that they choose to ask for advice. That is even if they even bother to ask anyone. Often they get fed the same BS that the rest of us do. 

Their job is to pacify you, shut you up or facilitate you leaving. 

[Gerry_Atric]

Well, the chap I was dealing with in the CEO's office actually took time to speak to people in departments which we do not have a direct line to, he told me he spoke to colleagues in the network team for example and I believe him. A lot of what he told me made absolute sense. 

And what he told me would happen, did happen. That's why I'm still using this service. All good.

[prs1000]

---

@Gerry_Atric wrote:

Well, the chap I was dealing with in the CEO's office actually took time to speak to people in departments which we do not have a direct line to, he told me he spoke to colleagues in the network team for example and I believe him. A lot of what he told me made absolute sense. 

And what he told me would happen, did happen. That's why I'm still using this service. All good.

---

I have had several dealings with the Ceo office guys. They are usually helpful and I am still here after 20 years. It does depend on who you get. One recent guy clearly had not asked anyone for advice other than maybe a canteen chat. I was able to show that what he was telling me was wrong. In fact his knowledge was put to shame by a young guy who had been with the company a few weeks.

I'm just saying that you can't automatically assume that  info provided by them is correct. 

[Gerry_Atric]

---

@purrbox wrote:

@Anonymous I agree with everything you say. It's totally bizarre to route everyone via a BNG miles away and I'm totally gutted I have to leave.

However, I've been dealing with this issue for months and it's not improving. I've seen all these different posts reporting different excuses and stories about upgrades and it seems like the support teams are just told bs which is fed to the customers.

Upgrading network hardware doesn't take months. You can swap out switches, hubs and other such stuff in minutes. I worked for a bluechip back in the 90's. They built and pre configured whole networks in a factory and then boxed them up for the field engineers to deploy at the customer site. Although I'm not a network engineer (I was a lowly level 2 hardware support), I saw how quick the hardware guys and scripted build engineers did things. They would deploy automated installs of windows on benches full of networked desktop PC's using ghost images and they'd be setup ready with user accounts and software. If they can do that in the 90's, imagine how quick things are today.

As for why I believe the CEO's office. It's because these are the most senior people at VF and will be privy to Vodafones business plans for their network. It's all about money at the end of the day and it's cheaper to shunt everybody onto Edinburgh. Those 10gb upgrades you mentioned will fix the lag spikes and slow speed, but not routing so we won't be getting lower pings. That's what they said to me. They indirectly told me to just quit and leave, hence the reason I got a deadlock and a free pass to leave in contract.

The reason I'm saying go to the directors office is you'll get the free pass to leave. If you go through the normal support channels you'll only get the deadlock letter, which you'll then have to use to fight VF to get out of your contract.

---

To add further points, unfortunately things aren't so straightforward these days with IT upgrades. First of all, there are world wide supply chain issues. It can take months or even longer to get new kit in nowadays. Even getting hold of a Raspberry Pi 4 is challenging because of these issues. Many industries are affected by shortages of chips and other components, the car industry springs to mind. This has been well covered by the press ever since covid struck. 

There are also lead times associated with getting upgraded lines in from 3rd party suppliers. Often the kit at each end of the line needs to be upgraded, but in some cases roads need to be dug up and so on, which will further increase the lead time. 

Then there's configuration and testing work to do. And probably many other things I haven't thought of. 

So sadly, these things, even with the best will in the world, cannot happen particularly quickly in the way you describe your experience back in the 90s. 

Your other point is sadly incorrect about why the 10gb link upgrades will not make a difference to routing. Although you are correct that performance will improve, the reason why the routing wasn't optimal, was because they had to load balance customers due to bandwidth issues. So customers are being temporarily routed via less congested BNGs to reduce performance issues, however, at the expense of greater latency because quite often the secondary BNG is located very far away from the customer's location. 

Once the links are upgraded, the bandwidth issues are resolved and routing can then return back to normal. As happened in my case. 

[Anonymous]

@Gerry_Atric wrote, "Once the links are upgraded, the bandwidth issues are resolved and routing can then return back to normal. As happened in my case. "

Which ought to tell @purrbox  that he is leaving VF for no good reason, especially since he tells us that he has only had problems with one of his connections. All his others OK.  He said, 

"I have other properties with the exact same gigafast 900 package in the same area and they are all routed by our local BNG and work fine with low pings. " 

If I were purrbox I would have focussed on the one dodgy connection, forgot about the premises where the 900Mb package was OK and not blame his high ping on one property on the national network.  Maybe he should ask for a static ip again and specifically ask for it to be routed favourably. That worked for me after weeks of delays in setting me up.

[Dobs]

Well, it was nice while it lasted (1 or 2 days?)

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.64.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  vodafone.broadband [192.168.1.1]
  2    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  90.247.128.1
  3    22 ms    22 ms    22 ms  63.130.172.35
  4    25 ms    25 ms    25 ms  90.255.251.117
  5    21 ms    21 ms    21 ms  151.101.64.81

Trace complete.

Back to Edinburgh again 😒 Just in time for some high ping weekend gaming, cheers voda!

[purrbox]

@Anonymous 

I went to one of my other properties today and unfortunately that is now also on Edinburgh.

[Anonymous]

@purrbox "I went to one of my other properties today and unfortunately that is now also on Edinburgh."

On cue.