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[Gnomeface]

I'm amazed that there are no posts here about the atrocious state of PlusNet's internet access recently.  I cannot get access at all around 4:00pm (school kids all on facebook?) - except, of course, to the PlusNet site itself and to my emails, which connect instantly (do they have some kind of priority status?).  Frequently I have to keep hammering the mouse button before anything happens, and if I just sit and wait in late afternoon/early evening I could die of old age before I get a response.

Funny, also, that apart from the PlusNet pages, the only other site where the response is reasonable is the broadband speed checker, which consistently shows I am getting 6 megabits speed - which is no use at all if PlusNet is dropping links or failing to connect most of the time.  When I joined PlusNet the service was good - now I'm locked in I wish I hadn't switched, and I'm certainly not recommending PlusNet to anyone unless they sort this mess out fast.

[see further details 20 december - apologies to PlusNet]
p.s. This is the eighth attempt to post this message - the rest have just timed out.  

[xpcomputers]

Clearly something not right there! You are right to be concerned...

How long has this been happening for you?

Which product are you on?

I am using the net today, after 4pm and my connection seems as snappy as ever for all sites, and I only have about 4.5MB connection... so that would indicate a different problem potentially!

Which speed checker did you use?

Can you visit the exchange checker and visit the VP Capacity page, so we can see if BT have problems of broadband congestion at your local telephone exchange. And provide a link to the VP capacity results page.

Can you also visit the gateway checker, to see which Plusnet gateway you are connected to. On this one, copy & paste the text of which gateway you are on and post it here (the page link would just show me MY gateway not yours). This is to see if the gateway you are on at Plusnet has been dropping packets of data.

Mike

(ps.. that's not to say Plusnet haven't had some speed issues of late, but what you are seeing sounds more extreme than that to me!)

[Gnomeface]

Mike,

Thanks for the sympathetic and helpful reply.  It's been happening for around 2-3 weeks, gradually getting worse.  I'd assumed that bandwidth was the problem at first but then it became obvious that email was fine (fast response and quick downloads) but web pages that seemed to involve several "bits" (excuse my lack of knowledge of web terminology) would frequently hang - as if there had been a lost response somewhere.  Quite often, pressing the stop button and re-initiating would produce the expected page immediately, but in late afternoon recently it has become almost impossible to get anywhere without a page request left hanging.  Even now (around midnight) when I used an IE history link to return directly to this thread I had to try about 5 times before it worked.

OK, to answer your questions - as best I can.
How long? A couple of weeks or so.
Product? Not sure, but it's a standard 8Mb package (costs £11.99/month now that my introductory 3-month half-price offer has just finished).
Speed checker:
http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/
(it took about 25 attempts and several minutes to get into Google to check this - once in the checker it told me 4.2 mbits/sec!!)
Exchange checker showed no outages or problems (Kingswear exchange).
Gateway checker gave 'You are currently connected to the "Telehouse East, Juniper 3" gateway. This gateway is sometimes known as pte-ag1.'.

Thanks for your interest, and for any advice.

Paul.

[Gnomeface]

Mike,

Further information - I use Windows XP with IE8 browser, but have had exactly the same issues using Netscape 9 browser.  Now, 20 minutes or so after my last response, everything seems to be working normally for a change.

[xpcomputers]

Plusnet runs a harsher set of traffic management profiles from 4pm til midnight, to balance the load better in peak times.

However, web surfing shouldn't ever get as slow as you are reporting, unless there are severe problems on their network.

I would try re-booting your router next time this happens, as it will hopefully bump you onto a different gateway at Plusnet. If you have been unlucky to end up on a congested pipe, this should solve it. You can run check on the gateway checker before & after the reboot, to check that the gateway changes, as there is a chance you end up back on the same one, which would need a second router reboot to try again.

It sounds like you are on Plusnet's Value package. This is the slowest package that Plusnet offer, but it should never get as slow as you are reporting. This clearly shows something is wrong somewhere, and this needs resolving.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to help you better tomorrow.

Mike

[mbeckett]

Hi there,

Please do try switching gateways as Mike suggests. If this does not help send me a PM with your username and I'll take a look into your account for you.

[Gnomeface]

Today was fine early on, and from 4-5pm, then it became hopeless at 5:05pm, leaving me stranded in the middle of a web update (I had to terminate the program in the end, after 5 minutes of getting no response from that or any other web site).  I tried reconnecting the physical phone plug at the master socket and putting in a new ADSL filter but this didn't seem to improve things. A short while later it all returned to the normal quick response!
Then I checked this thread (thanks again for the advice) and rebooted the modem.  I did try this yesterday without improvement, but today I checked the gateway after the reboot and I'm now on "Telehouse North, Juniper 2". At the moment all seem fine.

I realise I'm on a fairly basic package but the speed checker showed 6.2 Mbits/sec this morning and tonight at 5:30pm I downloaded a 21Mb file in about 30 seconds, so it's not pure speed that is the issue - more like dropped requests or similar.  Anyway I've learned a fair bit from your replies already so I'll persevere, and maybe try to switch gateways if the problem keeps recurring.

Thanks again for the responses.  I'll post in a few days time with an update.

[mjtaylor]

Hi Gnomeface,

Thanks for letting us know, hope you do start seeing an improvement. Please let us know if you'd like us to take a look at your account.

[xpcomputers]

An extra piece of the jigsaw for you would be:-

Using the gateway checker as before, you can always tell which gateway you are on. You can then look this up on Plusnet's Packet Drop graphs (per gateway). This will allow you to see which gateways are currently (or historically in the last 48 hours too!) having capacity issues for various traffic types.

The peaks on the graphs show where traffic was dropped for a particular traffic category (Top to bottom in the colour-coded key:- Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, or Best effort).

All websurfing & email should be Gold (which is a high priority), which shouldn't show any issues on any gateway (only Platimum is higher priority). Silver is like "normal traffic". Bronze is Low priority, and Best effort is the lowest.

Downloads, FTP, VOIP, Gaming, Streaming, Peer to Peer etc all get different categories to make sure that the most important traffic remains snappy and usable all the time. Well that is the theory, but mostly it works very well!

You can see how different traffic types get categorised on this page.

As you can see, from the graphs over the last two days, that there are peaks that appear on most gateways between the hours of 4pm & Midnight. However, these are only really applicable in the lowest Bronze & Best Effort queues (which is only stuff you would expect to see dropped at peak times anyway). None of the gateways appear to be dropping any Silver or above.

Clearly, something else is going on here, which is not right...

I would take Plusnet up on their offer to look at your account in case you have been assigned the wrong profiles in your account somehow. For this, they will need to know your Plusnet username.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[Gnomeface]

More useful information, thanks Mike.

The current situation is not as bad as it was, but still somewhat problematic - and it's happening at any time of day.  E.g. this morning at 09:20 I started an on-line editing session which involved several screens before a Javascript editing program downloaded to me; it all went through quite quickly until everything stopped near the end of the download - and I was then left hanging and eventually had to restart the whole process.

I still think that the system is losing a 'request' or 'acknowledgement' somewhere, so that a 'conversation' between my machine and the server that I'm connected to comes to a halt with both ends waiting for the other one to respond.  Sorry about the lack of correct terminology!  When data is actually being transferred the speed is fine.  As it happens on IE8 and Netscape I don't think it's a browser problem.

I'm on a 3rd different gateway.  The stats for it yesterday looked quite good compared to some of the others, but I still had occasional problems.  I'll take up the offer to look at my account now.

Thanks again.

[xpcomputers]

I would do that, as your problems don't appear to match problems that Plusnet have reported, so something else is going wring here that needs specific checking!

You will need to pass your username to a Plusnet staff member.

Either in the thread if you don't mind that, or you could PM one of the staff members who has posted here with that info (if you prefer to keep the account details private).

Mike

[Gnomeface]

I pm'd my details yesterday to mbeckett, so hopefully someone can take a look.  Yesterday's browsing was mostly OK - getting car insurance quotes (a painful business anyway) but no hung transactions.

I've checked the firmware status of my Netgear router and it's the latest version, and I'm linked by Ethernet cable;  I may switch to another computer which is wireless linked to my network via a Netgear Access Point into the same router, just to see if the problem is still there on that link.  I haven't checked whether the problem appears on that computer yet because the wireless link has been a bit unreliable, but I've just fitted a directional aerial to it and this has made a big improvement in the signal quality.

A question - the stats for the gateways show substantial peaks in "dropped packets", hitting 40% at times on one gateway.  Does a "dropped packet" represent a user left hanging, or does it get automatically re-sent?

[spraxyt]

Dropped TCP packets should be resent automatically, but will result in slower connections (because missing packets have to be resent). I don't think UDP packets are resent, but the application should expect and be prepared to cope with that problem.

David

[xpcomputers]

But also depends on the colour of the peak!

If it is the copper  & bronze colours, then these are the lowest priority items, that would be expected to have  rough ride during peak times (they only ever get the left over scraps of bandwidth the other more important traffic has left behind), so stuff like Peer to Peer that is a bandwidth hog is down here with dropped traffic.

Up in the gold queue (bright yellow on the graphs), is where normal web surfing traffic takes place... this should see well over 99% of traffic get through evenin Peak times. Any web surfing packet that gets lost (whether by Plusnet or the wider web) gets resent automatically and wouldn't normally contribute a significant delay to the loading of a page, unless LOTS of packets where being lost/dropped! (Which would be shown by a big bright yellow peak on the graphs if happening at the Gateways!)

So the 40%peaks shouldn't be a worry (as long as they are bronze or copper coloured!)

Mike

[Gnomeface]

OK, I've spent weeks testing to track down this problem, and failed.... but I'm almost certain it is NOT the Plusnet service.  I've had my browser hang in exactly the same way when trying to logon to my router (!), and my wireless access point (via the same router) works perfectly for a laptop simultaneously accessing a URL that is hanging on my desktop.

So... APOLOGIES TO PLUSNET!

I've now tried replacing:
- every cable and filter throughout my system;
- the firmware on my router, and (in desperation) the router itself
- my ethernet card
- my browser (I've tried 2 of them)
and I've tried turning off my firewall (ZoneAlarm, which hasn't logged any problems anyway) and AVG anti-virus.

The only thing left as far as I can see is the link between the browser and the Ethernet port, which is presumably a part of Microsoft's networking software;  I haven't changed anything in this at all, and wouldn't know what to fiddle with anyway.

As a final resort I may have to scrap the computer itself, unless anyone has any further ideas!

p.s. I was left hanging trying to post this, and pressing the X (stop) button produced the usual plain grey screen - but I backed off and found that my message had been posted OK.