Awful packet loss, sometimes complete drop requiring hub reboot

[pmd_clock]

I have been having intermittent (well, more bad than good) packet loss since early December with my VM service.

On Gig1 with a SH4, and fibre to the house.

Reported the issue repeatedly, as when it gets really bad the SH4 disconnects and won't reconnect without a physical power cycle, which is a pain if we're not at home. Was promised it was a local area problem and would be fixed on 18th Jan. Which it was... but only for a week. It's back and as bad as ever.

Here is a typical day at the moment (today):

Here is a bad day, including an outage that required a physical reboot:

Here's the day it was "fixed" (17th Jan):

Here's a "good" day (note, it's still a lot spikier than most BQMs I see on here):

I'm getting nowhere with customer services, they treat each call like I have a wifi issue or ask me to do silly things... I guess I'm at the stage where I'd like to know if it's a problem with my SH or physical fibre, or if there really is a 2+ month local issue that's making my service unreliable... and if so, what will be done to resolve it and when?!

I suspect it's an upstream problem as I am not getting anywhere near full speed with speed tests on upstream but downstream is generally ok.

Here are my power levels etc - from what I can see everything seems to be within spec...

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) SNR (dB) Modulation Channel ID

26	338750000	1.000000	38.983261	QAM256	26
1	138750000	1.000000	38.983261	QAM256	1
2	146750000	1.099998	38.983261	QAM256	2
3	154750000	1.400002	40.366287	QAM256	3
4	162750000	1.700001	40.366287	QAM256	4
5	170750000	1.900002	38.983261	QAM256	5
6	178750000	2.299999	38.983261	QAM256	6
7	186750000	2.400002	38.983261	QAM256	7
8	194750000	2.400002	38.983261	QAM256	8
9	202750000	2.400002	38.983261	QAM256	9
10	210750000	2.200001	38.983261	QAM256	10
11	218750000	2.400002	40.366287	QAM256	11
12	226750000	2.099998	38.983261	QAM256	12
13	234750000	1.500000	38.983261	QAM256	13
14	242750000	0.900002	40.366287	QAM256	14
15	250750000	0.700001	38.983261	QAM256	15
16	258750000	0.299999	38.983261	QAM256	16
17	266750000	0.000000	38.983261	QAM256	17
18	274750000	-0.500000	38.983261	QAM256	18
19	282750000	-0.900002	38.983261	QAM256	19
20	290750000	-1.099998	38.983261	QAM256	20
21	298750000	-0.700001	38.983261	QAM256	21
22	306750000	-0.200001	38.983261	QAM256	22
23	314750000	0.000000	38.983261	QAM256	23
24	322750000	0.400002	38.983261	QAM256	24
25	330750000	0.299999	38.605377	QAM256	25
27	346750000	1.299999	38.605377	QAM256	27
28	354750000	1.000000	38.605377	QAM256	28
29	362750000	1.299999	38.605377	QAM256	29
30	370750000	1.400002	38.605377	QAM256	30
31	378750000	1.299999	38.605377	QAM256	31

Channel Channel Width (MHz) FFT Type Number of Active Subcarriers Modulation (Active Profile) First Active Subcarrier (Hz)

159

94

4K

1800

QAM4096

424

Channel ID Lock Status RxMER Data (dB) PLC Power (dBmV) Correcteds (Active Profile) Uncorrectables (Active Profile)

159

Locked

42

1.1

840387923

0

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID

1	46200000	42.770599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	3
2	23600000	42.270599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	6
3	32600000	42.270599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	5
4	39400000	42.770599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	4

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

1	US_TYPE_ATDMA	0	0	0	0
2	US_TYPE_ATDMA	0	0	0	0
3	US_TYPE_ATDMA	0	0	0	0
4	US_TYPE_ATDMA	0	0	0	0

[pmd_clock]

Oh, also, some more info - I'm in EN5, High Barnet, (finc22), if that's useful. We were part of the "brand new network for project lightning" in 2019/20.

[pmd_clock]

Live BQM here: 

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/2e5a7d0802cc20f02f3091e13d7970fa13baef78

[David_Bn]

Thanks for your post on our Community Forums @pmd_clock, and welcome back to our Community Forums!

I've been able to look in your local area and can see that an outage is present and is estimated to be resolved on 27/02/23 at 15:00.

We certainly hope this doesn't cause too much frustration or inconvenience and we'll all we do to make this a long term fix.

Kindest regards,

David_Bn

[pmd_clock]

Thanks for replying David.

Unfortunately, it's now the 28th and the issues persist. This was yesterday. As you can see, another total dropout that required manual restart of modem. And ongoing packet loss and severe degradation of service:

Do you have an update on when this will be resolved? I'm surprised that the new infrastructure you installed in 2019 seems unable to cope with the customers you've acquired in my area. Anyone able to shed some light on what's actually happening behind the scenes here?

This level of service is unacceptable for me - it's been like this on-and-off (mostly on) for three months. What are my options in terms of compensation or some kind of recognition that this is unacceptable? I know there is compensation for complete service loss, but what about something like this which is an ongoing and continuing issue when I'm paying for a reliable 1Gb service...

[pmd_clock]

@David_Bn - still the same today, can you review my question above when you get the chance please?

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @pmd_clock,

Thanks for coming back to us about this ongoing issue. I've taken a look at our systems, and I can see that the previous issue that was impacting your services was resolved. However, I can see that a different local issue was identified by our Network team and is currently being worked on.

The local outage is a SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) Outage which could be impacting your landline, TV, and broadband services. The Fault number is F010283548 the current estimated fix time is showing as Monday 06/03/23 at 3pm.

We understand that this is not ideal and can be very frustrating for you. Our team is aware of this issue and will be working hard to have this issue resolved as soon as possible for you.

Please keep us updated on how you're getting on after this date and time so that we can help further if you're still having any service issues.

Thank you! 🙂

[pmd_clock]

Still not fixed - slightly lower packet loss but clearly still an issue:

And still getting total drop-outs that require a modem restart:

This is now ongoing for nearly 4 months. I raised a complaint (C-2003231455) which got resolved because apparently it's a technical issue that you were going to fix. I seem to be going round in circles here - it's not being fixed, I keep getting told it will be, I complain it's been going for too long, and get told it's going to get fixed, but it doesn't, etc. etc. This isn't really an acceptable way of dealing with customers who are paying for a high quality service, in my opinion?

If this is an ongoing issue in my area then is it affecting other customers the same way? Would an engineer visit help to rule out anything specific for me?

[Kath_F]

Hi pmd_clock, 

Thanks for coming back to us on this one. We're sorry to hear these issues are still continuing for you. 

Taking a look at things this end, there is no longer an area fault affecting you. When running some checks on the hub, I can see a long term performance issue is being indicted however the uptime of the hub is also over 7 days at present. As the area fault has closed since then, can you please give your hub a full reboot by turning it off at the mains for a few minutes?

This will refresh everything and allow us to getting a clearer picture of what's going on. 

Can you also share the live URL link for your BQM graph so we can monitor this live as with screenshot pictures, we are unable to determine when these are from. 

Many thanks,

[pmd_clock]

And so, it starts again:

Live BQM here: 

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/2e5a7d0802cc20f02f3091e13d7970fa13baef78

FYI - It DID get better after a reboot (not perfect though), but today has just kicked in again 😞