100% proof that Vodafone is doing something with the services.

[GreatBritian]

Hello.

Unforunately after speaking to multiple departments within Vodafone it appears no-one is able to take my concerns seriously in regards to the Unlimited Max Plan, and I have found no real way of sending proof of what is actually happening to your agents so I have had to as a last resort record a video of what is happening in my area and uploaded it to YouTube in hope that the Social Media Team members will look at this and liaise with the Technical Department to investigate this.

Please see the below YouTube video URL for proof that something is 100% going on with the connection.

https://youtu.be/Oy6zoV5_HlU

(The device in question is a Note 10 Plus 5G)

In this video you will see me performing a speedtest made using the SpeedTest App available on the PlayStore showing what appears to be throttled speed without the use of a VPN (Speeds of usually up to 10Mb/s although this test got slightly more) and then performing the test again using a VPN (ExpressVPN) which will significantly increase the speeds.

Please understand that this is taken in the exact same place and the only difference is the fact that i'm connected to a VPN.

I appreciate that I have been dealing with the Vodafone's Directors Office (They themselves admitted they are not technically trained) and I appreciate the steps which my complaint handler has performed to my account in a attempt to resolve the issue and the discount provided to me, however I do feel that Vodafone hasn't properly taken into account my concerns and raised a full investigation to figure out what is actually going on and made no attempt at actually investigating the issues raised with them. I do feel like I have been brushed off with a Discount which I admit is appreciated everyone loves a discount but I think someone from the Technical Team would be more ideal to conduct a full investigation into what is actually happening.

I have no idea what is going on with the service and why this is the way it is. I have had a browse through the Vodafone Forum and have noticed multiple people posting near enough the same issue on Vodafone's Broadband Package users, whilst I don't see this mentioned much for Mobile Devices or Mobile Plans. I appear to of read a potential Routing Issue with Vodafone or something along those lines not that long ago.

I will say that I am located within the Kingston Upon Hull area which I am believing that CityFibre have something to do with it, but the same happened in Manchester which is confusing. I have used every major Mobile Network in this area such as O2, Three and EE and I have never experienced this kind of issue with them.

It's also worth noting that I do like Vodafone, I've been on Voxi before and loved them. All I ask is that Vodafone takes my concerns seriously and notice there's a major issue rather than just dismissing them with a Discount or a Account refresh (Disabling Sim and Re-enabling) which has been performed twice now. I want Vodafone to take this message seriously and conduct a full investigation into the concerns raised and speak to the people who deal with the Masts and figure out what is actually going on.

Tried and tested activies in a attempt to resolve the issues include.

- Connecting to a VPN - Worked and made a massive difference as shown in the Video above

- Changing the device - This made no difference

- Changing the Sim Card - This made no difference

- Changing the DNS to 1.1.1.1/8.8.4.4 - This made no difference

- Manually selecting another network and then back to Vodafone - This made no difference

- Refreshing the APN settings - This made no difference

- Having my account Refreshed - This made no difference

I have done a Traceroute test to try and help Vodafone locate the issues with which server address's my requests are going through.

(On all the Traceroute tests I have completed numbers 2, 5 and 6 have timed out regardless of where it's going to).

Tracing route to google.co.uk [216.58.213.3]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.42.129

  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  3    71 ms     *        *     192.168.213.21

  4    39 ms    40 ms    38 ms  192.168.213.22

  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  7    41 ms    38 ms    41 ms  63.130.127.221

  8    60 ms    40 ms    37 ms  90.255.251.18

  9    38 ms    39 ms    40 ms  108.170.246.161

 10    46 ms    40 ms    40 ms  172.253.65.211

 11    57 ms    42 ms    38 ms  ber01s14-in-f3.1e100.net [216.58.213.3]

I would love other people to share their input on this forum post if they have had the same kind of issue and if Vodafone was able to resolve the issue how and what actions where taken to the account to resolve the issue.

I would appreciate it if the Social Media Team members could forward this to someone in the Technical Team within Vodafone who can take a look at this video and information presented through the Traceroute and figure out what is going on and investigate to come up with a solution for this issue.

[Lynxthecat]

Thank you for your thoughtful post BilboBaggins. The throttling affects at least all https port 443 connections. It may affect others, but this is the one that I have reliably identified. Port 443 is the standard port for all https traffic, so throttling connections on that is hugely damaging. 

Google's internet speed test is reliable. The results are identical when downloading any file over port 443, e.g.:

- downloading a test file from: https://ams-nl-ping.vultr.com/ is throttled at 10Mbit/s.

[this uses https port 443]; 

- downloading a test file from: https://kb.leaseweb.com/network/link-speeds is unthrottled.

[this uses http port 80].

As you may surmise from this thread, getting Vodafone to even acknowledge this issue has been a significant challenge. I have been through all sorts of discussions about congestion, Wi-Fi, signal strength, etc., none of which are related to this 10Mbit/s https port 443 throttling that is circumventable using a VPN. It is the same issue that the original poster on this thread identified.

I think now the problem has been acknowledged and technicians have been apparently tasked with looking into it, but over a month has passed since I first raised the issue and the issue remains. 

I shall be looking for back-dated compensation to address the mismatch between service I have been paying for and service received since the time I took out the contract, and furthermore a good will gesture to address the lost time and energy in trying to get this issue investigated and resolved. I think Vodafone is in breach of contract. The Ofcom route may still be necessary. 

Not exactly brilliant customer service (and these are business contracts). Customer service is a fairly hot topic for Vodafone at the moment, and I can see why.

[Evie]

I understand how important it is to get this sorted @Lynxthecat, especially at a time like this. With network cases the investigation can be extensive and take longer than hoped but rest assured it is being looked into by the network team. We'll keep you updated via Facebook and if we require anymore info (I appreciate you have already given us a lot) we'll let you know. Thank you for your ongoing patience with us.

[Lynxthecat]

So a Vodafone technician just asked for the same test to be conducted directly on a phone handset (as opposed to indirectly through our 4G router). 

So we did and here is further evidence of the 10Mbit/s throttling as seen directly over the Vodafone 4G mobile network using a Google Pixel 3a with 'unlimited MAX' SIM:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/XTnY68UoPBwHUEAKA

As you can see: without VPN, speed is 10Mbit/s; and with VPN, speed exceeds 60Mbit/s.

[BilboBaggins]

Hey Lynxthecat,

My point about Google's speedtest was that it uses only a single tcp thread, so can give misleading results (search for M-Labs which provides the speedtest for google/stadia and you'll see it gives results at odds with most other speedtests). Pretty much every other internet speed test opens multiple tcp streams to get the most efficent use of bandwidth. Those file downloads you're using are also only going to be single threaded as well. Maybe you're hitting a single thread restriction on port 443 somewhere and the VPN is managing to bypass that by encapsulating it. Still very much an issue but would probably go undetected for a long time

What happens to your download speeds when you're restricted to 10 meg and set two file downloads off at once? Do you then only get 5 meg from each, or do you then get 20meg in total?

[Lynxthecat]

You are correct the issue does seem to be 10Mbit/s throttling per thread. Nevertheless this is still very noticeable and undesirable. I presume it is a technical issue at the mast as for the original poster on this thread. Also, if I keep reconnecting to the mast I can circumvent it. Once connected and on a throttled or unthrottled state, that state remains until reconnection. I think it's about 70/30 as to whether the connection will be subjected to the throttling.

All the necessary information about this issue is on this thread, but getting the right information across to the network technician(s) seems to have been a challenge. 

Vodafone if you are reading this then please just point any technicians to this thread. Since everything they need is here. 

[Lynxthecat]

Dear Vodafone, 

Any update on this?

I raised this issue over a month ago now, and yet the 10Mbit/s throttling remains.

Update: 'Davo' of Vodafone just asked for information already provided, i.e. demonstration that VPN circumvents throttling on handset without connection through Wi-Fi. This was already provided though, just see the posts above. https://photos.app.goo.gl/XTnY68UoPBwHUEAKA

Further update: 'Simon' of Vodafone just asked for a test on speedtest.net. 

Vodafone has enough information now - I am tired of jumping through hoops and we are going round in circles.

Vodafone - please can you assign someone to actually properly look into this and get it sorted? You have everything you need to address this issue now. So please address it.

To re-cap:

- connection over an 'unlimited MAX' contact is throttled at the thread level on port 443; VPN circumvents it, see: https://photos.app.goo.gl/XTnY68UoPBwHUEAKA

- downloading a test file from: https://ams-nl-ping.vultr.com/ is throttled at 10Mbit/s;

[this uses https port 443]; 

- downloading a test file from: https://kb.leaseweb.com/network/link-speeds is unthrottled.

[this uses http port 80].

This is the exact same issue that affected 'GreatBritian' above - it was ultimately resolved once he went through Ofcom to complain, as follows:

"Vodafone contacted Ofcom yesterday to let us know that they were able to get to the bottom of the issue you had identified. They said that:

 Vodafone does not apply traffic management to customers on the Max Unlimited plan and so there should have been no reason for Mr XXXXX (Covered to protect Privacy) to experience better speeds via a VPN than he did when connecting directly to the Vodafone network.  The testing we conducted revealed a faulty security gateway board that was resulting in slower speeds for customers’ services.  This has been replaced and customers will now be experiencing faster speeds in the area."

---

[Lynxthecat]

Further update: I have been asked for the second or third time on VodafoneUK for the video or screenshots showing phone with 'unlimited MAX' sim directly connected to mast (not Wi-Fi) to be provided. I have uploaded these once again on the VodafoneUK messenger service. Please see the post above with link to video and further evidence of the throttling on port 443.

And the latest update: asked to provide screenshots of video because some show Wi-Fi because it is difficult to provide screenshots of video on my phone. Sigh.

Please can a Vodafone moderator confirm that these new screenshots and video has been forwarded to the Vodafone technicians? We are just going round in circles and I am being asked to provide information already provided, and not just once, but multiple times. 

Quite honestly all of this is getting ridiculous, and is hardly good publicity for Vodafone, mindful that throttling and Vodafone customer service are hot topics in the media at the moment. As for the original poster, I imagine the only way to get this resolved is to involve the regulators Ofcom, etc.

I really need someone who actually cares to get the necessary information to one or more Vodafone technicians who are sufficiently technically astute to recognise and resolve the issue (10Mbit/s throttling on port 443). So far the issue is just being ping ponged back and forth by individuals who have only looked at this issue for a few seconds, and so we are getting nowhere. I am utterly fed up with jumping through more and more pointless hoops.

[Farai]

Hey @Lynxthecat I can confirm that the screenshots you sent to us on Social Media have been received. We'll keep you update on how things are going over there once we have more information. I really appreciate your patience with us so far.  

[Lynxthecat]

(please delete)

[Lynxthecat]

Can we have an update please? We were promised a resolve by today (May 28) after being asked to wait yet another five working days. But we are still seeing 10Mbit/s throttling on https port 443.

When can we expect this throttling issue to be resolved?