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?

[Anonymous]

@Mercurial said, "...is it worth getting involved with Vodafone support."

Many here will say, through bitter experience, that you would be wasting your time bringing up this  issue with Vodafone customer services. Unless you can demonstrate significant and frequent underperformance in terms of bandwidth they won't be interested. They regard pings in the 20s as acceptable, even if many of us don't. Most users won't notice the difference between the ideal 6ms and a disappointing 30ms. Gamers might. 

I'm not saying don't call CS, because it is very important that we all register our concerns, but don't expect any action. However, in due course, when VF has completed elements of its upgrade programme, you are likely to be placed on a BNG appropriate to your location. When you are moved to the nearest BNG it will occur automatically, but for your own satisfaction you might want to try a reboot every week or so. 

[Mercurial]

@Anonymous Thank you very much for your reply, it is enlightening as I didn't realise there was a concerted upgrade program occurring that may be causing this (though Vodafone being a large network I imagine it is always in some form of maintenance and upgrade cycle). 

I only came to notice being on the Edinburgh gateway as I've previously always been routed to Birmingham (c.30 miles away) and wondered why my weather widgets were all of a sudden giving me weather for Scotland! This has been the case for the last month or so.

Bandwidth appears unaffected (if improved in the evening if I'm being truthful) and when I use remote work systems the lag is manageable if noticable (hence why things clicked in my head when I noticed my geolocation had changed). I've also only one online gamer in the house and he hasn't complained so I'll keep quiet.

Regarding contacting support; I shall contact them (not expecting any action), just to add my voice to any other complaints and at least demonstrate these things are noticed by customers.

[Anonymous]

@Mercurial Thanks. You take a sensible balanced view. My nearest BNG is Birmingham too. I was on Manchester with 13ms, but am now back on Birmingham on 6ms. This should give you hope that you won't be stuck on Edinburgh for much longer.

Well-done for logging your case with CS. Your reasons are good ones. Given that you suffer lag between home and work, you do have a tangible grouse. I would be tempted to milk it.  😁

[purrbox]

@Anonymous My nearest BNG is Birmingham too. I was on Manchester with 13ms, but am now back on Birmingham on 6ms. This should give you hope that you won't be stuck on Edinburgh for much longer.

My next door neighbour is on the local BNG, I'm on Swindon and the neighbours opposite are on Edinburgh. Redstream is Vodafone's load balancing network solution. Congestion is prevented by shunting people around onto different BNG's. 

It's important to note that moving people is preventative as opposed to reactionary. The "upgrades" you see will be shunting people off as well as installing physical upgrades. It's far more efficient (and a whole lot cheaper) to add 10 - 20ms ping to users than to build out mountains of additional infrastructure just to keep people local. 

Again, the end result of any upgrades is never to have you on a local BNG. It is instead to move you away to reduce congestion so that everybody gets the download speeds they advertise. Broadband products are rated by consumers on speed, not latency.

The bottom line is high pings will be the norm as the majority of users aren't affected by them. The infrastructure team stated that they will only intervene if an area receives complaints from a clear majority of all customers within that area. 

This was the advise that was passed to support from the infrastructure team. It's hard to accept I know but it's about as close to the truth as you're going to get with Vodafone. I spent many many hours getting this information as well. It wasn't easy.

The positive to take away from this would be it can't ever get any worse than being on Edingburgh. If you don't game or use video conferencing, you'll be ok. 

For those new reading this, gigafast performance is more comparable to a coax cable operator as opposed to fibre to the premises. If you're ok with that, grab it when they do a black Friday deal. However, the idea that pings are going to improve is false and people should not post that they will improve. Level 2 tech support have no knowledge on how redstream works or why people are being moved away from their local BNG's. Tech support (of all levels) will always say, "things should improve". It's just a generic canned response to what they perceive as "network upgrades".

It's also worth noting that the Vodafone Three merger (if it goes ahead) will bring millions of data hungry mobile users onto the redstream network. This will have an immediate effect on local users who will have to be shunted off their BNG's to make way for the extra traffic.

The bottom line is this is how Vodafones network operates and there's nothing we can do to change that. The only option is to choose a different ISP.

[Cynric]

@purrbox 

BNGs are assigned dynamically with a given algorithm for routing (best path analysis) so there isn't an "evil wizard" saying "let's annoy Fred by making him go via Lerwick when he lives in Southampton".

You said, "It's also worth noting that the Vodafone Three merger (if it goes ahead) will bring millions of data hungry mobile users onto the redstream network. This will have an immediate effect on local users who will have to be shunted off their BNG's to make way for the extra traffic." - but Three have been expanding their capacity with Vodafone and O2 since 2020 (if not earlier) and continues to do so. Had there been a deluge of new demand I think it would have already noticed. By the way, Three has 3 other companies on their network as well.

Change ISP by all means, but unless you purchase an really expensive solution, you will still be in a pooled resource. Today's situation may have problems, but it's a lot better than having to buy bundles of kilostream from BT.

[prs1000]

Everyone and their dog seems to have been on Birmingham at some stage. When's it MY turn??

[Ripshod]

Point of interest. 

Three are part of the Hutchinson Telecom group. Orange used to be part of Hutchinson Telecom. Hutchinson Telecom is a Hong Kong company. Hong Kong is now in Chinese hands. 

What happens next? Draw your own conclusions.

Did someone say "Huawei away!!"? 

[purrbox]

@CynricI'm aware it's an algorithm. It's designed to alleviate congestion and you will end up on different BNG's. 

[purrbox]

@RipshodI've been on multiple BNG's and posted enough trace routes. I'm just glad I did my own research. As for the trolling. it's your time to waste. 

[purrbox]

"The upgrade"

For new posters to the thread, it may be helpful to read the following article from the Vodafone. 

It mentions pathfinder, which is the technology behind the routing / load balancing. No one knows the exact date this was deployed, but the article was written in June 2022, which was the same month users started experiencing these issues.

https://www.vodafone.com/news/technology/software-upgrade-transport-network-boost-capacity-security

What does this mean moving forward? We can't always expect to be on local BNG's.  

One thing I have noticed is that my ping time to Edinburgh has gradually  reduced. It's levelled out at13ms. In real world terms this means you can expect a ping of around 20ms - 25ms. There's been a lot of blips, but the incidents are becoming less frequent. 

(Troll warning. There are some posters relaying mis-information in this thread. Always confirm what you read through official Vodafone channels)