High Ping Spikes

[drix56]

Hi,

Wondering if anyone can help me with a latency issue ive been having for weeks now. Tried contacting virgin numerous times about high ping spikes / packet loss but not got any help they just seem to ask the usual is the broadband speed ok and basically just do a router reset. I decided to do a broadband quality monitor over the last day and see what it showed. As you can see it seems to be perfectly fine through the night and then be terrible from 10am onwards. Im guessing its over congestion in the area but other than that i have no idea. I have a 500mb/s connection which I use to game and obviously when im getting these ping spikes makes alot of games unplayable.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/3ecb98e8fba911d2bf44bac9e386e1533b... 

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks,

Dean 

[Anonymous]

Congestion. Too many customers, too much usage, not enough capacity. 

[drix56]

From their side apprently they cant see any issues at all which i find hard to believe. Is this something im just going to have to deal with? When I call virgin im just constantly talking to people who have no idea what they are talking about and sound like they are just reading off a script.

[Tom_F]

@drix56 Hi Dean, thanks for posting.
 

Sorry about the issues you've had with your connection. I've taken a look into this today and can see there's currently a known SNR issue in the area (ref.# F009467404) currently estimated to be resolved by tomorrow.

If you're still having issues by Wednesday please let us know, so we can check for another update & take further action if needed. 

Tom

[Andrew-G]

@drix56 From their side apprently they cant see any issues at all which i find hard to believe.

VM staff have access to some remote diagnostics that check power and noise levels.  Sometimes they aren't representative of the connection, but the important thing is that they don't cover congestion problems (over-utilisation in VM speak), and they don't cover intermittent faults.  Staff are not allowed to diagnose over-utilisation faults, that's done by the VM Networks team, and if they haven't got round to examining the problem, and then agreeing there's a capacity problem, then officially it is the case that there is no problem. 

Is this something im just going to have to deal with?

You have some options.  But the one option you want, of VM sorting out an over-utilisation problem is the least likely to happen either quickly or at all, and your (perhaps) second best option of clear, honest accurate information on when they might fix it..... well neither of those are on the table.

When I call virgin im just constantly talking to people who have no idea what they are talking about and sound like they are just reading off a script.

That's exactly the case.  In VM, field operations and customer service play second and third fiddle - the only thing VM are really interested in sales & marketing.  VM's outsourced and offshored customer service is from a real bargain basement provider, so there's all the issues you'd expect of disinterested staff, high staff turnover, inadequate training and low skills, sometimes poor language skills.  And because this is all provided from third world locations, the staff have never used and have no knowledge or experience of a cable internet connection.   VM senior management know this full well, but don't care enough to seek improvement.

[drix56]

Hey @Tom_F,

Apprently the network issue has been fixed but still having the exact same issues.

I have called and again said they cant find anything their side but see pictures below.

And this is also showing within games using the ingame connection monitoring.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dean

[Zoie_P]

Hi Drix56, 

Thank you for your post 🙂 

I have managed to locate your account and checked power levels and they look okay. I have seen you had a recent tech visit has this helped at all? 

Zoie

[drix56]

Hey Zoie,

No not at all basically he came round and said everything internally looked perfect but he said he noticed a problem at the box so called out the network engineers to fix it. Apprently they fixed whatever problem they found but dont think it was anything to do with my issue as i havent had any change, still getting very high ping spikes all the time as shown in the graph on my previous post.

Thanks,

Dean

[John_GS]

Hi drix56

Thanks for coming back to us. Sorry for the delayed reply.

I've checked today and can see you were affected by an SNR (signal to noise ratio) issue. That's all been sorted now.

There's no issues or outages showing, all levels are in spec, certainly no congestion and same with SNR. 

How's the service been since posting?

Best

[drix56]

Hey John, 

No problem, still exact same issues as you can see from the graph yesterday all day it was ping spiking. In games I'm getting spikes up to 300ms. 

 

When the technician came round the other week he said he could see the latency issues but said that everything internally looked good.

Thanks,

Dean