Intermittent issue for months - cant explain to Virgin

[Sheers]

Hello there,

                 I have had intermittent packet loss for sometime now and its really starting to annoy me. The times at which it starts vary from in the afternoon to late at night. (probably happens in the morning also).

Before I explain a little more I would just like to say that I am a Network Engineer and I have done some investigations to where the problem lies. But I want to stress that trying to explain this to Virgin Support has been impossible and I have been dissappointed in Virgin even though I have had years of good internet.

Now, I have ran continous pings to my router, both wired and wireless and I have no data loss whatsoever, however, when I run a continous ping at the same time to google and the bbc I have between 5%-36% packet loss!

Please can you try and resolve my issue:,

Below is a trace route - as you can see, 1 hop has comepletely timed out, but I'm not sure whether the problem is at that router or earlier on. I cannot run a continous ping to 10.93.176.1 by the way, probably been disabled.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Greg>tracert www.bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.246.93]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    13 ms    13 ms    25 ms  10.93.176.1
  2    16 ms     7 ms    61 ms  bagu-core-2a-ae3-2365.network.virginmedia.net [8
0.5.167.101]
  3    14 ms    31 ms    34 ms  manc-bb-1a-ae13-0.network.virginmedia.net [80.5.
161.241]
  4    22 ms    17 ms    36 ms  glfd-bb-1b-ae1-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.10
5.175.146]
  5    34 ms    16 ms    39 ms  glfd-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.10
5.159.46]
  6    30 ms    66 ms    17 ms  tcl5-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.78]
  7    18 ms    64 ms    17 ms  212.58.239.249
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9    44 ms    45 ms    77 ms  ae0.er01.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.93]
 10    21 ms   109 ms    44 ms  132.185.255.165
 11    39 ms    20 ms    34 ms  bbc-vip014.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [212.58.246.93]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Greg>

Here are some of my lovely ping tests :

C:\Users\Greg>ping -t 8.8.8.8

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=162ms TTL=52
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=66ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=53
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=88ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=52
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=106ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=53
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=221ms TTL=52
Request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=158ms TTL=52
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=53
Request timed out.
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=124ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=87ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:
    Packets: Sent = 22, Received = 14, Lost = 8 (36% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 27ms, Maximum = 221ms, Average = 99ms
Control-C
^C

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:
    Packets: Sent = 322, Received = 269, Lost = 53 (16% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 24ms, Maximum = 296ms, Average = 87ms
Control-C

[Darren_G]

Hi Sheers,

I have checked the network segment to which your equipment is connected and there do not appear to have been any problems over the last three days. If you are still having difficulties then please re-post including the power levels and SNR details as detailed here.

The traceroutes to the BBC which you included in your first post are fine. (You can ignore the intermediate times (and any apparent packet loss) if the times and packets to the final destination are acceptable - most routers are configured only to respond to ICMP ping requests when they have no data packets to handle.)

We have seen Kaspersky and Avast! interfering with speeds so, if you are using either, please disable it when speed testing. Please also check that the power supply is 12Vac, 1.5A.

If you are using speedtest.net to check your speeds then I suggest that you use the London (Namesco) or Paris server option as they are reputed to be more accurate/reliable than some of the other servers. You may also find that less heavily loaded sites (e.g. speedtest.magnet.ie or top10.com) give more accurate/reliable results.

Concurrently downloading multiple large files from multiple servers and adding the throughput will usually give a more accurate indication of actual download speeds than speed testing sites.