Latency Spikes & Packet Loss

[Jose3]

I recently switched to Virgin Media (3 Months ago) and I am on the M250 package. Openreach offer speeds of around 30 - 70 Mbps in my area so almost everyone here is inclined to using Virgin Media.

I've been using Virgin Media to mostly play games and talk to friends after I'm home from college (4 - 6PM) although it's almost impossible, especially on the weekend. I've set up BQM's previously to monitor my latency / packet loss and it was showing traits of an over subscribed area such as like high latency / dropped packets during the day but almost a flawless connection throughout the night.

I've been pinging servers using PingPlotter and I am seeing severe packet loss on hop 5, 6, 7, and 8 (Pinging Google.co.uk)

Any ideas what this could be would be helpful and hopefully I can resolve this issue ASAP without the need of technicians.

[Vinegar]

Although I can’t see the posted BQM as it hasn’t been approved, I do suspect that you have answered your own question re. oversubscription. Unfortunately, you are well outside of any cooling off period, so it will be almost impossible to leave VM without paying a fairly substantial early disconnection penalty. And to add to that, if it is oversubscription, then there really is absolutely nothing you can do, nor indeed any VM tech visit could do to fix this, it requires investment in infrastructure upgrades, which may or may not happen.

You mention that Openreach can only offer up to 70 Mb/s connection, but you would probably find that it has a much lower latency and a more stable connection - and this is far more important than headline speed for gamers and communications.

Honestly, I think you are stuck between a rock and a hard place here, VM are very, very unlikely to fix the underlaying issue, because it will cost a lot of money. Would you be prepared to pay for an additional OpenReach-type connection, just for gaming and maybe use the VM (faster) connection for downloads etc?

[Jose3]

Hi there, thanks for the quick response.

The virgin media service checker says there’s planned maintenance that will take 6 hours and it’ll be done overnight, not sure what it is but I could only imagine equipment upgrades?

Fortunately openreach have recently started deploying FTTP nearby me and I should be able to get FTTP on openreach before my contract is up, could be worth paying the exit FEE considering they can’t charge more than £288 if my contract was made after April 2023, which it was.

[IPFreely]

The loss to hops 5-8 doesn't matter.

Bit of jitter and touch of packet loss in the plot you took there, though. Not enough to be conclusive but if your BQM shows rising latency and loss during the day that clears at night upsream congestion seems the obvious bet. Hopefully the planned works are for either more channels or fewer people sharing them with you.