Milton Keynes routed via Manchester, high latency - Gigafast Broadband 900

[gerhardlazu]

My Gigafast Broadband 900 connection that is based in Milton Keynes is getting routed through Manchester instead of London. This means that all data packets go 120 miles north, and then 160 miles south before they can start getting routed to the correct destination.

Latency to bbc.co.uk (London area) is no less than 14ms, instead of 2-3ms:

$ ping -c 10 bbc.co.uk
PING bbc.co.uk (151.101.192.81): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=14.999 ms
...

--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 14.359/14.643/15.033/0.213 ms

A service hosted in the Manchester area:

$ ping -c 10 ae5-100-xcr1.man.cw.net
PING ae5-100-xcr1.man.cw.net (195.89.96.113): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 195.89.96.113: icmp_seq=0 ttl=60 time=9.904 ms
...

--- ae5-100-xcr1.man.cw.net ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.194/9.976/10.692/0.382 ms

Did anyone else experience a similar behaviour? Did you manage to get it solved? How?

Thanks!

[gerhardlazu]

I'm not sure if this is related, but I've observed that when the gateway changes (usually after a disconnect), latency can easily increase by 2x. For example, in my case, mean ping latency to 84.65.192.1 is 7.7ms. When I disconnect & reconnect to 90.247.64.1, it stays 3.5ms. Of course, reconnecting doesn't guarantee a different gateway: the first one that responds wins.

When debugging these issues, I found that it's important to measure latency to all intermediary devices that can respond to ICMP. In my case, this is both the switch & the router. If my host connected wirelessly, I would definitely run ICMP to the wireless access point too. This allows me to confidently state that in the last 24h, the mean ICMP was as follows:

1. Wired host (192.168.88.22) -> Switch (192.168.88.2) 0.2ms
2. Wired host -> Switch -> Router (192.168.88.1) 0.2ms
3. Wired host -> Switch -> Router -> Vodafone CityFibre Gateway (90.247.64.1)  2.8ms
4. Wired host -> Switch -> Router -> Vodafone CityFibre Gateway -> Google DNS (8.8.8.8) 4.4ms
5. Wired host -> Switch -> Router -> Vodafone CityFibre Gateway -> Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) 4.4ms
6. Wired host -> Switch -> Router -> Vodafone CityFibre Gateway -> Fastly CDN POP (151.101.0.81) 3.7ms

And here is the graph that shows all the above (including my yesterday's manual failover):

In the absence of pinger, I would recommend sharing an mtr output which shows latency to most of the hops (e.g. my switch doesn't show in this one). This is especially useful to see hops which drop packets (like 63.130.172.41 in the following example).

The higher averages in the above mtr hint to network degradation. If I zoom in again into my own router, I can see higher than expected latency inside my network in the last hour:

Without the above, I would be quick to point the finger at Vodafone. But now I know that the above variation starts in my LAN, specifically my router (the switch latency - purple line - is stable).

Now that the load dropped, latency to Fastly CDN POP is stable again:

I hope that the above troubleshooting example helps you share yours. Without the right metrics, we can only guess, which is of limited help.

[quinindiola]

Hey sorry for the late update. 
MTR is incredibly consistent over time

                               My traceroute  [v0.95]
COMP (192.168.1.150) -> 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8)        2022-11-28T09:30:12+0000
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
                                            Packets               Pings
 Host                                     Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. 192.168.1.1                            0.0%   441    0.9   1.1   0.4   8.1   0.6
 2. 90.247.128.1                           0.0%   441   13.8  14.0  12.4  20.3   1.0
 3. 63.130.105.134                         0.0%   441   22.9  23.3  21.8  32.1   0.8
 4. (waiting for reply)
 5. 216.239.42.41                          0.0%   441   27.0  28.1  25.3 105.3   7.1
 6. 172.253.66.89                          0.0%   440   26.6  25.6  24.0  39.9   1.3
 7. dns.google                             0.0%   440   24.5  24.6  23.2  30.0   0.6

Funnily enough I have to increase the ICMP interval to 2s to not see a packet drop. With default values (which seems to be 1s) I start seeing very high consistent packet drop ( I guess that it is in my router )  after the 15th cycle. I guess there's a qos rule hidden somewhere in the routing telling it to start dropping ICMP traffic after a while if the traffic rate is too high. 

No matter how many times I retry connecting / disconnecting the router and ONT , I will always be routed over 90.247.128.1 . I have consistent behavior with both old (grey, wifi5) and new ultra (white, wifi6e) hubs .

I see other cases in the forum, I guess I'm not the only one affected by this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, about my experience with Vodafone. I delayed writing back in the forum because I opened a support ticket with VF.  The general experience talking to the Wifi Xperts has been so far disappointing.

The same day I posted here I tried to talk to tech support. It costed me nearly 1hr in the chat and the support person saying that "50ms to 100ms ping" is expected and within normal range and that "they couldn't do anything for me if there was no packet loss"  , they apparently opened a support ticket for this to be looked into. 

Next day I get a SMS, then a call right after which I answered to but there was no one on the other side of the line, followed by a second text ( all of this in 1m , so I guess it is standard practice ) saying Hello. We have attempted to contact you about the issue you are facing with your [Broadband] today however you were unable to answer. If you're still having issues, call us free on 191 within 3days. From any other mobile or landline please dial 03333040191to get in touch. thank you, Wi-fi xperts - Vodafone  . This immediately prompted my rage so I called back. 

This time, the guy that answered my call didn't seem to be aware of the previous record in my case. He kept me on the line for 30m+ while he was asking me to plug and unplug cables and "running tests" ... After those tests he concluded that he would send a router replacement ( for the Wifi6e I received two weeks ago )  the following day and also pass the ticket onto the network engineering team to "see if my IP address needed to be fixed" whatever that means. 

After three working days I am still waiting for the new replacement router to show up , or someone else getting in touch with me. 

@AmandaI appreciate the message, but I wonder why can't we communicate over DM within the forum? I don't understand the need of going onto Twitter or FB when there's a perfectly capable tool within Vodafone systems. I'll be happy to share my details and the fault number I was given nearly one week ago. 

[purrbox]

It's probably best to ignore my previous posts. I was a Vodafone newbie that was given loads of false and conflicting information by customer services. The bottom line is nobody knows what's happening.

All I can tell is that they are maybe upgrading the networks and the gateway you are put on is completely random.

I was stuck on the Edinburgh gateway, from Milton Keynes for 5 months, that was pings of 30ms plus. I tried everything to change it. One day, there was a power cut and it just switched over to Swindon.

I'm guessing that a BNG doesnt actually exist in MK?

I'm scared to switch off my router in case it puts me back on to Edinburgh.

[Ripshod]

It's a sorry state of affairs for sure. There's still only a few of us that are aware of what's happening under the surface. Joe Public is quite happy so long as the speed is above the minimum guaranteed, and doesn't care about the speed/latency issues.

I've been trying to pick holes in the advertising but vf are wording things very carefully. For example, in the broadband order pages they clearly state "Full fibre, the UK’s most reliable broadband technology" which is 100% correct. The technology is sound but the fact that vf can't deliver the most reliable broadband technology in the expected way does not make that statement a lie. It's all a legal minefield.

Ofcom, the government ministries, it doesn't matter who you talk to they're not interested. At the end of the day vf are delivering what they promise -- the fastest technology - the way vf want to and there's nowt we can do.

The media's no help either.

[Jayach]

---

@purrbox wrote:

I'm scared to switch off my router in case it puts me back on to Edinburgh.

---

I wouldn't worry, I was routed via Manchester for ages (I'm in S.E. Essex)

Then one day I was routed via London and it's been the same ever since, and I reboot/swap routers frequently.

[cr4zy]

So it has been 2 years almost with Vodafone, except for one 3 month period in the past where my ping was sensisibly routed to london the rest of the time my service from peterborough has been routed via the north of the country somewhere.

I've chosen to leave the network while majoprity of the time the service worked the fact my pings were and are still considerably higher than when I had a FTTC connection is kind of stupid. I could understand it early on, and then they improved, and then they just got worse and the past week coincidentally after I chose to change provider to see if someone else can do a better job my pings are just a mess.

My average ping time to google over a year is 13.5ms, my best pings were a year ago,until everything went back to being weirdly routed.

Im glad the service worked almost fawlessly for 2 years, but when you're on a FTTP line coming from a FTTC line it just doesnt make sense to be pinging double what you used to. Maybe one day Vodafone will consider it a concern (hah) but the fact is most people don't need or even care about ping unless its a result of bad internet.