Aberdeen - dreadful speeds tonight - line congestion?

[jellyman]

On CityFibre 900 and speeds are near unusable. Switched to the mobile dongle and they were even worse.

What is going on?

[dfunky]

No packet loss noticeable, not even a ping spike in-game when my server runs a speed test.
Speeds have been perfect too. In a whole week of 6 per hour there have been 6 results (upload OR download) returned at below 900, but above 800 still.
Entirely possible that those were caused by my server doing something else at the same time.

[Philips]

That's really good that even during peak hours it doesn't drop below 800mbps or any packet loss issues. I think zen will possibly be the one I go for, currently both Zen and IDNet are £40 for 900mbps so I'm trying to decide which would be more reliable and provide the best ping but it seems like they'd be mostly on par with each other. Did you get a static IP when you joined and if you got the PPPoE info from support, how did that go, I've seen some reviews that say the customer service is really bad. 

[RebelRose]

The primary reason I went with IDNet is the fact they offer 1 month rolling contracts, so if it's not good, I can just quit and try someone else pain-free. I will certainly share my results here when I'm connected.

I don't think the fact they're in England is going to make a meaningful difference to latency. Sure, it might be 20ms to my gateway instead of 4ms if it was in Edinburgh, but the traffic will still have to travel to game servers anyway, which will likely be closer to London than anywhere else, so I think it will all come out in the wash. Besides, that much latency is absolutely nothing -- there are other bottlenecks in your gaming setup that will matter 100x more than 10-20ms of network latency. 

I lived in another country for 3 years recently, and I lived in a capital city and had <1ms ping to my gateway (it actually had to go into decimal places!). Between there and playing in Aberdeen, I promise it made no difference to gaming whatsoever, and I play twitch shooters, fighting games where every frame counts, etc. A stable, reliable connection without much jitter is way more important.

[AverageJoe58243]

When you jumped ship on ISP, did IDnet use the existing fibre equipment that VF installed to your home or do they replace the box on the outside of your house along with the ONT internal box with their own fibre branded/supported kit?

[RebelRose]

I just switched to IDNet today, I'm up and running! Nothing needs changed whatsoever, it just happens at 1am seemlessly. I use my own Asus router, so at 1am, I just put the IDNet username+password into my router and I was in action!

[marthepar]

Update: Last two evenings have been better (above my minimum guaranteed speed). Graph below of last 7 days with a test taken every hour

My support ticket open on the 6 October is still open and this morning received an automated email

Interesting how they say "line problem and may experience with other providers"

Now waiting to see what happens before upgrading speed or moving provider. Hopefully others on the thread who have moved will keep us all informed.

[user99]

OK, thought I'd give an update.

Metrics used:
(1) speedtest.net for Upload/Download speed and latency check.
(2) packetlosstest.com for an instant snapshot of packet loss and latency.
(3) thinkbroadband.com for long term charting of packet loss (Broadband Quality Monitor - BQM).

Summary: No problems with Zen. All three metrics give similar results with Zen as Vodafone gave on a good day.

It's been 2 weeks now since I dumped Vodafone and moved over to Zen; early cancellation fee (2 months early) is around £50, but worth it.
I've not had any problem with Up/Down speed, always around the 900Mb mark, and latency around 15ms idle is slightly better than Vodafone which was around 22ms. These results can vary on speedtest.net depending on which server is used for the test, so I try a few for comparison - some better, some worse.
Packetlosstest.com shows the same 'Average Latency' for both Vodafone and Zen at 88ms with average jitter at 0.30ms.

Thinkbroadband's BQM did show a couple of times (with Zen) occasional spikes in packet loss on Monday 30th September between 10pm and Midnight maxing at 4% and again on Monday 7th October between 10pm and Midnight, again with around 4% packet loss. On both these occasions I did a speed test and packet loss test and both tests showed no problems, and my online gaming/browsing was not affected; let's see if this is a Monday thing ?
One thing I read somewhere about the Fritz!Box router that Zen provides is that showing intermittent little spikes (1%) of packet loss in Thinkbroadband is a know issue, whatever that 'issue' is. When I feel that I'm settled in with Zen I'll try another router and see if this intermittent packet loss issue is a Fritz!Box thing or not - the Vodafone router did not show this intermittent spiking, it just went belly-up every evening.

Oh! and my routing to the interweb goes through Manchester, or there abouts. Zen provide a static IP as standard.

[dfunky]

Wrote a reply describing how to use command prompt to find your gateway with "tracert some-url" and how to "ping -t some-IP" it non-stop to assess packetloss over shortest hop but forum rejected it. If you're not sure how then I'm sure google will help.

[Philips]

That's great to know, bit strange there was packet loss between 10pm-12am on Mondays. Is it possible they do maintenance around those times on Mondays and that's why? Ideally I'd want no packet loss for the provider I go to, but Zen do seem like the best option all round. 

I've had good news though. Just got off the phone with vodafone after i submitted that complaint, and they have cancelled my broadband contract with no exit fees, so I'm finally free to go to whatever provider I choose. 

[Philips]

How soon was it after the vodafone contract was first cancelled, did you place an order with Zen? It keeps giving me a message saying "We're having trouble matching the details you provided with your current provider." and to call them. Will try calling Zen tomorrow but it's a bit weird it keeps saying that. But tbf it's not been a full 24 hours since the contract without Vodafone was cancelled so that might be why. I just want to move to a different isp ASAP. Also when you placed an order with zen, how long was it till the activation date? I'm trying to get moved over to Zen and fully up and running before Oct 25th, ideally a couple days before.