Chronic reduction of BB quality

[jmac862]

Hi
Over the past three months our BB service has been becoming increasingly effected by connection problems with frequent instances of many different sites or pages not loading or timing out. This condition has been borne out by data from a Broadband Quality Monitor on my Hub 4 IP address which shows multiple bouts of high latency (60 – 100 ms) and dropped packets (40 – 60%) on a daily basis with recurrent spikes, (600 – 160 ms) (60 – 100%) respectively, every couple of days. I have gone through a number of Service Status checks connection security checks and hub resets which have no effect. The ‘Chat to us online’ goes unanswered so I’m hoping a team member might read this message… Our TV is also liable to frequent short periods of pixilation if that is relevant to the problem.

Regards

John McKenna

[jbrennand]

Firstly, check for any “known network faults - Try in 2 places

1) Try the “check service,”Area status webpage (https://www.virginmedia.com/help/service-status)

2) Then also Try the “free & automated” Service Status number - 0800 561 0061 - which usually gives the most up to date info. and tells you of more local issues and fix estimates, down to street cab/ postcode level.

What is being reported on those two?

[jmac862]

Hi John

Thanks for responding so quickly. No BB issues are reported on either source. The website did have something on one of my recent queries (yesterday) but it did it's thing, found nothing and told me to go away for 24 hours and check again. At which time (today) nothing was found. Classic intermittant fault I think.

John

[jbrennand]

OK - … are the issues only evident on wifi connections or do you see them at the same times on devices connected on ethernet cables? If you don't know, can you check to help diagnose whether it is just a wifi issue or it could be network connection/Hub related?

Report back.. different routes to a solution apply to the 2 scenarios

[Client62]

Take a look at the Hub's Upstream and Downstream stats.   Often a line issue results in many errors being logged or issues with out of spec power levels /  low SNR / of use of 16/32 QAM on upstream channels.

[jmac862]

The issues are on both wifi and Ethernet. The Broadband Quality Monitor (https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality) pings the hub’s router IP address once a second for 100 seconds to generate a data point. These produce a 24 hour performance graph. It’s these I looked at to see the latency and packet drop stats. This is a link to today’s graph

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/728450c996a2d8a317a828a2b126bcd042...

[jmac862]

I’m not knowledgeable nearly enough to interpret the Up and Downstream stats. However they are…

3.0 Upstream powers hover around 48 dBmV
3.0 Downstream power ranges between +2.7 to -2.3 dBmV.
The SNR is 38 +/- 1 dB on all channels.
The QAM on Upstream is QAM64 on channels 1-5 and QAM128 on 6.

[jpeg1]

Your router stats seem OK. 

Looking at your current BQM, the latency spikes are not unusual depending on what you and your neighbours on the same cabinet are doing at the time. The packet loss at relatively quiet times shouldn't happen, but seem to be quite common recently.

It's hard to see what you can do to improve things. Others might have some ideas. 

[jbrennand]

Somethings not right.. can you post up the data.

Just copy/paste the normal “Formatted Text” (not images) 3 FULL sets of data onto here – 2 tables from the Downstream, 2 from the Upstream, & the Network Logs pages. Don't worry too much about the formatting it can be easily read & DON’T include personal data or MAC addresses - blank them out - if you copy/paste the data, the board software will do this for you (you may need to click the "submit" button again). If character limits are “exceeded” - just do two posts

[jmac862]

Upstream
3.0 Upstream channels
Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID
1 49600000 49 5120 KSym/sec QAM64 1
2 23600000 47.5 5120 KSym/sec QAM64 5
3 30100000 47.3 5120 KSym/sec QAM64 4
4 36600000 47.5 5120 KSym/sec QAM64 3
5 43100000 48 5120 KSym/sec QAM64 2

3.0 Upstream channels
Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts
1 ATDMA 0 0 0 0
2 ATDMA 0 0 0 0
3 ATDMA 0 0 0 0
4 ATDMA 0 0 0 0
5 ATDMA 0 0 0 0

3.1 Upstream channels
Channel Channel Width (MHz) Power (dBmV) FFT Type Modulation
6 10.0 43.5 2K QAM128

3.1 Upstream channels
Channel Channel Type Number of Active Subcarriers First Active Subcarrier (Hz) T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts
6 OFDMA 200 53.9 0 0

3.0 Downstream channels
Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) SNR (dB) Modulation Channel ID
22 306750000 -0.8 38.6 QAM256 22
1 138750000 2.7 38.6 QAM256 1
2 146750000 2.6 38.6 QAM256 2
3 154750000 2.5 39 QAM256 3
4 162750000 2.1 39 QAM256 4
5 170750000 1.6 38.6 QAM256 5
6 178750000 1.5 38.6 QAM256 6
7 186750000 1.3 38.6 QAM256 7
8 194750000 0.8 38.6 QAM256 8
9 202750000 0.7 38.6 QAM256 9
10 210750000 0.5 39 QAM256 10
11 218750000 0 38.6 QAM256 11
12 226750000 -1.8 37.6 QAM256 12
13 234750000 -2.3 37.6 QAM256 13
14 242750000 -1.6 38.6 QAM256 14
15 250750000 -1.4 38.6 QAM256 15
16 258750000 -1.3 38.6 QAM256 16
17 266750000 -1.8 38.6 QAM256 17
18 274750000 -0.5 39 QAM256 18
19 282750000 -0.3 38.6 QAM256 19
20 290750000 -0.7 38.6 QAM256 20
21 298750000 -0.5 38.6 QAM256 21
23 314750000 -0.7 38.6 QAM256 23
24 322750000 -0.3 38.6 QAM256 24
25 330750000 -0.1 39 QAM256 25
26 338750000 0.8 39 QAM256 26
27 346750000 -0.7 38.6 QAM256 27
28 354750000 -1.9 38.6 QAM256 28
29 362750000 -1.7 39 QAM256 29
30 370750000 -2 39 QAM256 30
31 378750000 -1.7 39 QAM256 31

3.0 Downstream channels
Channel Lock Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors
22 Locked 38.605377 0 0
1 Locked 38.605377 0 0
2 Locked 38.605377 0 0
3 Locked 38.983261 0 0
4 Locked 38.983261 0 0
5 Locked 38.605377 0 0
6 Locked 38.605377 0 0
7 Locked 38.605377 0 0
8 Locked 38.605377 0 0
9 Locked 38.605377 0 0
10 Locked 38.983261 0 0
11 Locked 38.605377 0 0
12 Locked 37.636276 0 0
13 Locked 37.636276 0 0
14 Locked 38.605377 0 0
15 Locked 38.605377 0 0
16 Locked 38.605377 0 0
17 Locked 38.605377 0 0
18 Locked 38.983261 0 0
19 Locked 38.605377 0 0
20 Locked 38.605377 0 0
21 Locked 38.605377 0 0
23 Locked 38.605377 0 0
24 Locked 38.605377 0 0
25 Locked 38.983261 0 0
26 Locked 38.983261 0 0
27 Locked 38.605377 0 0
28 Locked 38.605377 0 0
29 Locked 38.983261 0 0
30 Locked 38.983261 0 0
31 Locked 38.983261 0 0

3.1 Downstream channels
Channel Channel Width (MHz) FFT Type Number of Active Subcarriers Modulation (Active Profile) First Active Subcarrier (Hz)
159 96 4K 1840 QAM4096 759

3.1 Downstream channels
Channel ID Lock Status RxMER Data (dB) PLC Power (dBmV) Correcteds (Active Profile) Uncorrectables (Active Profile)
159 Locked 39 -7.7 1007262957 26909