Broadband Issue...... losing packets...huge ping/jitter

jimbling

I've always had problems with the internet in my place. It would brilliant sometimes, poor other times. But since I upgraded to the 8mb line I've had nothing but trouble. It started with my download / upload dropping to dial up speeds. That seems to be sorted now, but I still have problems with dropping or losing packets etc. A big use of broadband in my house is gaming so this proves to be a serious annoyance.

Vodafone are no help to be honest, just get you to do the same stuff every time.
I'm hoping that some clever guys here might be able to help me figure out what's going wrong in order to get vodafone to do something about it.

So, here's what I know.
I did some testing of the line last night. Continuously pinging different servers etc using both speedtest and pingtest.

Speedtest didnt have any problems in general. I was getting 50-60ms, 5 up and .4 down. Pretty good. But gaming was unplayable so obviously speedtest not picking something up.

Pingtest was a different matter. I would get an A result one minute and a D result the next.

The first bit of the test would go fine... i.e. no packet loss.
Then when the ping tested one of two things would happen:

1) smoothly move across the screen and finish, revealing a ping of somewhere between 40-70ms and a jitter of between 0-5.
OR
2) smoothly move across to about 3/4 (displaying approx same ping/jitter as above), then it would suddenly stop...wait a few seconds and continue. The ping and jitter would leap up to 150+ on both.... sometimes over 200. This was happening at least 70% of the time, and it was always in the second half of the test. Not sure of the importance, but it seems like it could narrow the problem down a bit. Is it only a problem on the return journey of the pingtest? How can that be caused?

I then went to command prompt and pinged the google.ie server. The result is below. As can be seen here I am getting great ping times, but every few runs I get a time out, resulting in lost packages.



I can't figure out why Pingtest is not showing me any lost packets. Every time I was getting 0% lost packets... 250 sent, 250 received.

But something is definitely happening.
I don't think it is a hardware problem. I have tried numerous different setups. I have tried reducing all wires and units. Switched to the provided vodafone router/modem directly plugged into main phone socket with provided cable (this is what vodafone told me the problem was). No difference.

Could vodafone be doing something to the connection? Is it just unfortunate interference that I can do nothing about? Is it possibly settings on the router that are blocking some packets? etc etc etc.....

I'd really appreciate some help with this, it's been bugging me for a long time. If anyone needs further info to help let me know. If I'm just fecked and can do nothing, let me know that too
Cheers....

jor el

Line stats would be important in this case. My guess is poor SNR.

jimbling

jor el wrote: »

Line stats would be important in this case. My guess is poor SNR.

Is there a way I can test that myself? If it was SNR, is there anything I can do about it? Would changing providers do any good?*

The Vodafone guys have tested (whatever that means) the line on numerous occasions and found no problems. Even when I was getting crap download speeds they couldnt figure out why. Told me everything was fine. Suddenly it just went back to normal speeds.




*Note: I think most providers will be sharing the same lines anyway. I cant get upc and I dont think line of sight providers are supposed to be any use in my area either.

jimbling

hmmm, I take it not many people know much about this? Or basically, if your internet sucks your fcked and nothing can be done?

jor el

You get the line stats by logging onto the modem. Where and how you find them will vary depending on the modem. Usually it'll be found under diagnostics. SNR Margain and Attenuation of the downstream is what you're interested in.

There's SFA you can do about it yourself though. A noisy line is generally due to the line itself. Only eircom can do anything about that, and they pretty much won't. It could be internal wiring, or a dodgy modem, but you'd need to check those stats first.

_Whimsical_

I've had lots of trouble with Eircom recently however I have to say they've made an effort to help and sent an engineer to my house twice in one week. They changed the main phone socket in my house last week and that alone doubled my snr margin. I'm nit sure if this is something that you can do yourself but if it is it may be worth a try. Also worth a try to pester Eircom a bit and hope they help you out with it if it's an issue.

jor el

Line rental covers right up to the main socket, so if there is a problem with that then eircom will replace it for free. The user is not supposed to go near that, since it remains eircom's property.