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Packet loss/jitter during gaming (pingplotter trace included)

lbevin95
Tuning in

I've posted here once before and since then I've had 2 engineer visits. Got another one planned for today but just wanted to see others opinions.

I have had a BQM running for the longest time

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/5d33eb0f198a4ca25fc5c0eb6d61a3067c...

 

I have also used a program called pingplotter to trace pings to google, here is a segment of time from last night where I experienced ghost bullets.

Screenshot_20210727-122256_TeamViewer.jpg

I've been told around 4 times now that there is no over utilisation issue in my area, the hub has been replaced, cable going into wall has been replaced twice too. I keep getting told its my network but as the pingplotter graph shows that my ping to 192.168.0.1 is always low and the lag starts at the 2nd hop?

 

Would be interesting to see your guys opinions?

Thanks

Luke

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

If VM are saying that the over-utilisation isn't big enough for them to class as a problem, you may find there's a refusal by telephone staff to allow you to cancel without penalty, or the not-infrequent obfuscation and delay tactics.  Potentially those staff will look for an over-utilisation fault, see none on their system, and then the process says "no release without paying the penalty".

If that's the case, then you need to go back to your oldest complaint which presumably is months ago, and use that as evidence of "eight weeks since complaint but problem not resolved" and escalate immediately to CISAS, asking to be released from contract without penalty, and effective from the day that you phoned and also for compensation for the poor connection, failed attempts to fix, and the hassle of having to escalate.  If you need to do this, the grounds of your complaint is the poor performance, and your request for release from contract without penalty is twofold: First the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that requires any consumer service to be provided with "reasonable skill and care", and second, the Ofcom Fairness Commitments that VM have signed up to, which state that "Customers’ services work as promised, reliably over time. If things go wrong providers give a prompt response to fix problems and take appropriate action to help their customers, which may include providing compensation where relevant. If providers can’t fix problems with core services they have promised to deliver within a reasonable period, customers can walk away from their contract with no penalty."

See where this Helpful Answer was posted

11 REPLIES 11

Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

BQM does look to me like over-utilisation but I suspect at what (for VM) is too low a threshold for them to recognise officially.  There are occaisionally faults that create a similar looking BQM and are not over-utilisation, but they are fairly rare.  For it to be classified officially as over-utilisation, the problem needs referring to the networks team, they then monitor the situation for a few weeks/couple of months, and decide whether there are any capacity problems, and whether they go over whatever threshold is in use internally.  The measures used and the threshold values are not disclosed. 

What this means is that there's always a lag of months between over-utilisation developing and being recognised, and then there's usually many months before it will be fixed (in some cases it seems they conclude it isn't economic to fix at all).

If the problem is not officially recognised, then staff will see no fault reference, and can only tell you that they see no over-utilisation report, and because over-utilisation doesn't usually affect power levels or SNR they'll probably telling you that all hub status data looks good, because it does.

Appreciate that's downbeat, but if the latest tech visit doesn't find a fix and the BQM remains the same, then your only options are to tolerate the service or leave.  If you're in a fixed term contract and wish to leave, then sometimes VM admit there's a problem without difficulty and let customers go without penalty.  In other cases it's necessary to use formal procedures to force their hand.  If it comes to needing to force their hand we can talk you through that.

Lee_R
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi lbevin95 thanks for posting and welcome back to our community.

I am sorry to hear of your packet loss during gaming.  I have located your account and I cannot find any issues that may be causing your experience.  Can you please advise if this is mainly/only impacting you when gaming?

Regards

 

Lee_R

Hi,

 

Yes it is, mainly during peak time.

 

Engineer visit went well, had a hub 4 installed and was advised to use my netgear xr500 router with the hub 4 in modem mode...

Engineer said by the look of the BQM it was over utilisation but because it wasn't more than 2% he couldn't raise it as an issue..

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/5705723642428a8d215949a293151521fc... 

Hi lbevin95, 

Thanks for coming back to us on this one. 

Taking a look at the congestion in your area, I can see a tiny spike but it's only 0.35% of the time which wouldn't be considered when raising I'm afraid as this is expected during peak times. 

Your downstream power levels are within range however they are on the higher end of the scale but not high enough to book another engineer. It may be worth keeping an eye on these via your router logs and if they go any higher, let us know. 

When you are not gaming, are you seeing the same issues or are these only when gaming? 

Thanks,

Kath_F
Forum Team

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Hi,

 

I am seeing the issue whether gaming or not, if not gaming I get slow load times on Web pages when the latency occurs, I bought my package for gaming as I play somewhat competitively and it just isn't good enough unfortunately...

The BQM graphs are something out of a horror movie, I've raised another complaint to see if I can be released from the contract without paying any early termination fee due to the ongoing issues and the fact that every avenue has been exhausted.

 

See updated BQM snapshot below...

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/b57881e63e23aed9a1e59281eca5254fcf... 

Sofia_B
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Thanks for your response @lbeviin95. 

 

I'm sorry to see the issue remains, the BQM doesn't look too healthy. 

 

I've checked both your account and the area for any issues that could be causing this and I cannot see anything that could be causing this on our end. 

 

How have things been since posting? 

 

Thanks, 

 

 

Sofia
Forum Team



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Hi Sofia,

 

Thanks for the response.. 

 

Internet has been OK today bit unresponsive in places but not bad... It is usually OK during the day up until around 4pm onwards where it starts struggling.

I have ran extensive traceroutes using a program called pingplotter and a lot of the latency occurs at hop 2 (the hop just after the router).

 

Here is a live graph of the BQM

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/5705723642428a8d215949a293151521fc... 

 

Thanks,

Luke

Sofia_B
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Apologies for the inconsistencies @lbevin95, I appreciate this is frustrating. 

 

When the service is being unresponsive, are both wired and wireless connections affected? 

 

Did you manage to raise a complaint regarding this? 

 

Thanks,

Sofia
Forum Team



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Hi,

 

Yes both wired and wireless are affected, I've raised now 4 complaints. The latest one was raised on the 2nd august...

After 3 engineer visits I dont think the problem can be rectified hence why I want to switch providers now.