Virgin Media Community

[simonmanch84]

I've been having really inconsistant packet latency for the last 3 months or so that seems to be getting worse. I'm on M600 with the SH3 in modem mode. I'll disclose from the start that I'm a Cisco Engineer in my line of work, and probably have an above average network setup at home. I have an enterprise grade firewall connected to a Cisco Catalyst switch, and most of my equipment including the gaming PC is hard wired. Whats happening is that my ping is nice and low, between 15/30ms depending on the server. Then out of nowhere, latency to the servers will go above 150, for a second or two and then go back to normal.

I've since installed an OpenWRT running SQM Cake to combat the obvious bufferbloat that my connection suffers with, sitting betwen my firewall and t]he Super Hub - This has brought my score on the waveform bufferbloat test (https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat) from a D down to an A/A+ depending on the time of day, but it still has this random blip every few minutes which results in either a missed shot in CS:GO or a pause and shift/jump in Rocket League. I've tried deploying QoS on my Layer 3 switch, QoS on the Firewall, disconnected all but a single PC for testing, including disabling my wireless access points, nothing seems to prevent it. I've even tried rate limiting the connection down to as low at 100mbps by manually configuring my port to be 100mbps full duplex, but nothing seems to prevent it, so I don't believe its anthing to do with a congested connection from my side.

Is this likely the rumoured bug with the Intel Puma chipset in the Super Hub 3? 

BT have just ran FTTP past my house, and i'm seriously considering switching to them when my contract expires, as this is getting beyond a joke now - you can see from many in this forum that a lot of us are having these problems and are getting fobbed off by VM. I've only stayed with VM for all these years as the competition couldnt come close to the speeds that VM could, but now that they can I'm going to need a lot of persuasion not to switch. 

What do I need to do to get a SH5? and is this any better? or is it a case that my area is just oversubscribed and / or DOCSIS3 isn't suitable for these sort of speeds?

As I speak the issue is very bad today, so bad infact I'm only getting a B grade on the waveform bufferbloat test, with the odd latency during downloat in the 400's!!!!

https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=d10f7a79-382b-4422-a5f7-c9e8ca7f7cb9

Any ideas?

[Andrew-G]

Well, here's a representative day showing latency on my Openreach FTTP connection, to help your decision making.  Nice, isn't it?

You can setup your own BQM over at Thinkbroadband, and see how it looks as a comparison.

[simonmanch84]

Looks good - I've just set one up, lets see what happens.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/e54e3eb71e57d7243f15aae19562499ea7...

[legacy1]

The best speed for VM to be on is the lowest speed for downstream due how VM QoS/BWM the modems by like HFQ so if your on 350Mb and you get 290Mb no matter how you QoS/BWM (unless you limit well under that) your end you buffer at VM end due to lack of available bandwidth as a sinlge flow buffer for all your traffic. Same goes for upstream only much worse.

Try rate limiting by SFQ for download to 117760Kbps with no other rules and see how you go if BQM spikes then its a VM oversubscribed issue.

[Andrew-G]

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@simonmanch84 wrote:

Looks good - I've just set one up, lets see what happens.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/e54e3eb71e57d7243f15aae19562499ea7...

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Woooo....nasty.  A VM BQM is always worse than an Openreach one because VM's technology is a rather creaky, but even allowing that yours is dreadful.  Looks like a bad noise or power problem.  The good news is they're usually resolvable by actions on VM's part - I'll leave the diagnosis and fix to forum staff and others, but the BQM is evidence enough.

There is one exception and that is if the BQM magically clears up about half past midnight, but goes messy again tomorrow, then the likelihood is over-utilisation (congestion) and a fix may be years in coming, but provisionally I think it much more likely to be a noise fault.

Edit: Whilst legacy1 means well, all that stuff about "putting the spleem setting to QoF, so that the FBX can max out the bufferbloat avoider loop and engage warp factor 1 through a single inter-dimensional portal queue at register HX4216, and so reduce buffering by a sideload of open source gigabit code..." can be safely put to one side.

[legacy1]

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@Andrew-G wrote:

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Edit: Whilst legacy1 means well, all that stuff about "putting the spleem setting to QoF, so that the FBX can max out the bufferbloat avoider loop and engage warp factor 1 through a single inter-dimensional portal queue at register HX4216, and so reduce buffering by a sideload of open source gigabit code..." can be safely put to one side.

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If you would like I can disengage safeties and make my BQM look like simonmanch84.🙃

[IPFreely]

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@simonmanch84 wrote:

Looks good - I've just set one up, lets see what happens.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/e54e3eb71e57d7243f15aae19562499ea7...

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Unless you've a constant flow of traffic competing with the BQM or your kit has some kind of CoPP in place to make it take its time over responding that isn't great. 

[IPFreely]

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@Andrew-G wrote:that 

Edit: Whilst legacy1 means well, all that stuff about "putting the spleem setting to QoF, so that the FBX can max out the bufferbloat avoider loop and engage warp factor 1 through a single inter-dimensional portal queue at register HX4216, and so reduce buffering by a sideload of open source gigabit code..." can be safely put to one side.

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Legend. 

[IPFreely]

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  @legacy1 wrote:

  If you would like I can disengage safeties and make my BQM look like simonmanch84.🙃

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Your area is in bad shape if you've jitter like that when your connection is idle or nearly idle.

Saying that I have QoS now! 

I appreciate it's not a patch on the lab kit in your GIF but it seems to work pretty well so far.  

EDIT: For the moderators. There're a couple of IP addresses in the above. One of them is public. Let me be clear: I don't care. Most of the time having someone's public IP tells you nothing. At most a general geographical area.

[legacy1]

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@IPFreely wrote:

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  @legacy1 wrote:

  If you would like I can disengage safeties and make my BQM look like simonmanch84.🙃

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Your area is in bad shape if you've jitter like that when your connection is idle or nearly idle.

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No its fine VM seem to do this latency thing that BQM shows 12th 3pm and yes I'm idle not sure of the reason but you can game on it fine so...