Intermittent Service

[BENGR33N]

Good Morning All,

Hoping I can find some help which I have thus far failed to do from VM Customer Services over the phone.  

Last Friday my internet went down for around 6-7h for "planned maintenance" I have been told by a number of sources within VM that this was to upgrade the lines in preparation for Gigabit connections to be available to all in my are by the end of the year.  Since last Friday I have had regular drop outs (typically 16:30-18:00), slow speeds, high ping etc.  I have had an engineer come to the property who re-wired the house side of my connection and found no problem (there was no issue at the time the connection was running as expected at 220mb), however just a few hours after he left the line went dead again, VM CS claim there is no problem outside "temporary line problems" and advise resetting the router.

On the advise of someone at VM who called me I have installed a broadband quality monitor in an attempt to prove that I am actually having issues.  As you can see this morning (Fri 1st) there was considerable packet loss and high latency on the network for around an hour before it cleared, VM CS claim to see no issue and tell me to call when there is an issue (which I've been doing for around a week to no success).

Can anyone identify where/what may be going wrong with the connection?  I have successfully used VM for around 4.5 years with no issues, until last Fridays down time and line upgrade.  

For clarity, I am running an my Hub 3 in Modem mode (have been since June 2021) with an Asus RT-AC86U providing the routing. 

Downstream bonded channels

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

1	226750000	-3.2	34	256 qam	12
2	218750000	-2.7	38	256 qam	11
3	234750000	-3.5	38	256 qam	13
4	242750000	-3.4	38	256 qam	14
5	250750000	-4	38	256 qam	15
6	258750000	-3.2	38	256 qam	16
7	266750000	-4	37	256 qam	17
8	274750000	-3.2	38	256 qam	18
9	282750000	-3.5	37	256 qam	19
10	290750000	-4	37	256 qam	20
11	298750000	-3.2	37	256 qam	21
12	306750000	-3.5	37	256 qam	22
13	314750000	-3.7	37	256 qam	23
14	322750000	-3.5	37	256 qam	24
15	330750000	-3.7	37	256 qam	25
16	338750000	-4	37	256 qam	26
17	346750000	-3.4	37	256 qam	27
18	354750000	-4	37	256 qam	28
19	362750000	-4	37	256 qam	29
20	370750000	-3.2	37	256 qam	30
21	378750000	-4.9	37	256 qam	31
22	386750000	-3.5	37	256 qam	32
23	394750000	-3.7	36	256 qam	33
24	402750000	-4.2	37	256 qam	34

Downstream bonded channels

Channel Locked Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors

1	Locked	34.4	682164	94180
2	Locked	38.6	138252	227
3	Locked	38.6	59607	7359
4	Locked	38.9	3465	187
5	Locked	38.6	573	306
6	Locked	38.6	583	157
7	Locked	37.6	1050	398
8	Locked	38.6	675	265
9	Locked	37.6	379	144
10	Locked	37.6	527	0
11	Locked	37.6	549	1
12	Locked	37.6	533	0
13	Locked	37.6	446	7
14	Locked	37.6	428	42
15	Locked	37.6	401	0
16	Locked	37.3	256	0
17	Locked	37.6	426	14
18	Locked	37.3	460	324
19	Locked	37.3	504	93
20	Locked	37.6	134	0
21	Locked	37.3	332	78
22	Locked	37.3	1820	16894
23	Locked	36.6	432	2106
24	Locked	37.3	215	0

Upstream bonded channels

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

1	46200000	41	5120	64 qam	2
2	39399961	41.3	5120	64 qam	3
3	53700000	42.3	5120	64 qam	1
4	32599985	41	5120	64 qam	4

Upstream bonded channels

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

1	ATDMA	0	0	1	0
2	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
3	ATDMA	0	0	0	0
4	ATDMA	0	0	0	0

[Lee_R]

You're welcome Ben,

I can see a copy of the email Beth has sent on your behalf.  She will most definitely be in touch when she receives the response.

Regards

Lee

[BENGR33N]

Hey,

Is there any update on this? Generally the latency has been pretty good with only 1-2 extremely high spikes per day recently, however I still see increased latency during peak times, is this typical behaviour exhibited by the BQM?

Regards,

Ben

[Paul_DN]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for reaching back out to us, I have had a quick look at things your end and there are potential issues showing, I can also see you haven't rebooted for 13 Days, please can you try unplugging our Router out from the power for 2 Minutes then plug back in, once done I will have another look and run more checks?

Regards

Paul.

[BENGR33N]

More than happy to do so this should be done by the time you read this message, but the router must have reset more than a dozen time in the last month, this is clearly not resolving the issues long term.  

Why is it taking so long to find the issue and resolve it? This is frankly not acceptable from a customer perspective, I have had a complaint open for weeks now and there seems to be no action outside of me asking for updates and then being fobbed off with a short term fix or come back soon.

[Martin_N]

Our apologies for any frustration with this BENGR33N.

I have taken another look over our side and I am unable to see anything that could be affecting this. 

How has the service been since your reboot?

^Martin

[BENGR33N]

So what was the potential issue mentioned previously? As I keep asking from my BQM, are these high spikes of latency normal?

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/8ef5a3c0194a74cae3afd62d8d0cf51ff7fe56b0

Frankly, at this point based on the (lack of) customer service from all involved I am looking to find a new provider.  I do not see how regularly spikes of latency up to 150ms as acceptable?

[legacy1]

---

@BENGR33N wrote:

I do not see how regularly spikes of latency up to 150ms as acceptable?

---

The upstream is not good for QoS so spikes can happen and is not  acceptable when spikes happen when you QoS your own connection to the hub and your idle or low bandwidth use. But you can do spikes in your BQM without your own QoS with a upload. 

[Lee_R]

Hi @BENGR33N thanks for posting and welcome back to our community.

Sorry to hear of your intermittent internet service.  I have had a look at your account from here and cannot find anything that explains the faults you're experiencing.  Can I ask how it has been since you posted?

Regards

Lee_R

[BENGR33N]

@Lee_R as I have mentioned many times, it seems fine, bar the odd spike of latency which is confirmed in the BQM, but no one appears to be able to confirm if this is normal behaviour?

[John_GS]

Thanks for coming back to us.

The area is down for maintenance today under reference C01253336. The estimated fix date is today at 3pm.

Do monitor it and let us know things are after this concludes. 

Best,