VM Hub 5 Latency Spikes every Hour - 1Gb

[Hamster1962]

Hi There. I've been a VM Customer for a long time. I've been a 1GB Customer for about 18 months now but recently my speeds were down so I investigated this and it turned out to be my third party TP Link Router. The Third party TP LInk Router was removed and I now use the Hub 5 in Router Mode and it works well, good WiFi coverage in my small house and full speed on Ethernet.

My connection is stable & strong with no disconnects or drop outs and always at full speed. That is really good but according to the TB BQM, every hour, on the hour i have a latency spike. I don't notice this there is no packet loss and it is not detrimental. Apparently the Hub5 has a built in Speed Checker which uses internal SamKnows software which monitors the speed and reports them back to VM but I would like this turning off or disabling if that is possible. It doesn't look good visually.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/447a9b5394bd15e1bdbbe170affe26eda2...

 I have contacted VM Tech Support many times and on the one occasion I spoke to someone who I thought knows what he is doing he denied I was having latency spikes and wouldn't accept an emailed picture proving this.

If this is how it is then so be it, but it would be better tuned off or at least an acknowledgement and explanation as to why it occurs.

Thanks for any responses.

[jbrennand]

Best way is to use your own router with the Hub in modem mode.

What model of TP-Link router were you using and what were the speeds dropping to?  Were these drops happening on ethernet cable connected devices as well as wifi ones ?

[Hamster1962]

Well... it wasn't very good for me. I tried several tests. All of which dropped my 1Gb 'in' speed down to around 500mpbs Ethernet after the TP Link AC4000. Removing the router and going back to just the hub upped my speeds to a solid 1.1 Gig connection and the WiFi is just as good.

Do you have any comment on the hourly spikes?

[legacy1]

VM like there Statistics as “we are the fastest ISP” even if it causes us problems this needs to be stopped!

[Hamster1962]

But there are no problems as such.

[legacy1]

You have not been gaming when it happens

[Hamster1962]

No, it happens regularly, every hour on the hour.

[Steven_L]

Hey Hamster1962,

Welcome back to the community and thanks for taking the time to post. I’m sorry to hear of the issues that you’re having with your connection at the moment, that sounds incredibly frustrating, I have tried to locate you on our system but haven't been able to do so but I would take a further look into this for you, so I would need to confirm a few details via private message, please look out for my message and we can get started.
Kind Regards,
Steven_L

[thinkpad]

As has been mentioned, the spikes are VM doing speedtests to check if there are any issues, and possibly so they can brag about their speeds!

I noticed on my Hub 5 they always did this test a couple of times a day. Once at night (3am) and once around 3pm. Although they do sometimes only do 1 test. I'm on the M250 package, so perhaps they do more tests on the fastest package.

If it's not affecting your activities online then I would just ignore it. Personally I would only want my connection to be tested when I report a fault or they notice an issue rather than having it tested every day.