S10 Sheffield - Severe packet loss on 4G

[kocz]

I live in S104LD, and have been receiving extremely poor packet loss over the last few days. It seems to occur around 4PM every day, lasting until the next morning, though it's still not perfect before then. I dont believe this is local as others have been complaining about the same experience on another mobile broadband forum.

Download speeds are a constant 130 Mb/s down and 30 Mb/s up, so no problem there... Yet websites hang for 5-10 seconds, videos continually buffer, and Teams/VOIP calls are impossible.

Here's a ping test to BBC's servers:

Ping statistics for 151.101.192.81:
    Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 33, Lost = 17 (34% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 27ms, Maximum = 42ms, Average = 30ms

Here's a ping test to one of the nearby hops (outside of my network, but before leaving vodafone's exchange). Notice how there's no packet loss:

Ping statistics for 192.168.213.21:
    Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 50, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 25ms, Maximum = 32ms, Average = 27ms

Here's a tracert to bbc:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1             <-- My router
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.      <-- Presumably the mast
  3    27 ms    27 ms    23 ms  192.168.213.21          <-- Pings fine without packet loss
  4    26 ms    29 ms    28 ms  192.168.213.22
  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7    29 ms     *        *     63.130.172.41
  8    28 ms     *       30 ms  90.255.251.107
  9    31 ms    31 ms    29 ms  151.101.0.81

[Gnomesenpai]

+1 I am also seeing this router to be at fault and I am on Vodafone. Support please do something. @Andy  @Mark @Gemma  I have been dealing with support for weeks and gotten nowhere with getting this issue solved.

@kocz Get WinMTR, it allows you to do a Ping and Traceroute at the same time,

[kocz]

Thanks mate, will use that tool in the future, though I've already moved over to Three for the time being.

Lebara don't seem to care or acknowledge any problems (most reps don't even know what "packet loss" is and blame my usage habits), yet it's still happening when I test it on my phone's SIM. Hopefully you can get somewhere with this, Three's network is abysmal around here — though at least it's actually usable.

[bpr]

The pinging 192.168.213.21 is very interesting- I get consistent pings on this yet every day between 12pm and 11pm I get loads of packet loss (but great speed tests results) meaning video streaming, gaming etc are near enough impossible. Crazy how Voda can allow this to go on for so long and seemingly have no interest when people bring up the issue.

BTW this isn't a Sheffield thing, I'm down south and am having the same issue

[Gemma]

@bpr - We don't want you to feel like we're not interested in investigating this further. So that we can take some details from you, please get in touch with my team through Social Media. We can then take some examples and go through some further checks. 

Please include a link to this post when you message us. 

[adamjey]

@kocz - I gave up as the packet loss got to 60%. Ordered Three, delivered next day and now have 30ms latency with 0% packet loss at less £/m. 

Good luck! 

[kocz]

Unfortunately I'm getting quite a good deal with VF at the minute (via Lebara), and Three's network is almost as bad over here - but at least it's consistent. That being said, I think I'll be switching elsewhere for the time being, as it's become shockingly bad to the point that it feels as though I'm using dial-up.