Slow downs on an evening all of a sudden

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Slow downs on an evening all of a sudden

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82 posts

Master Geek

#1310489 23-May-2015 18:03

Same here. Horrendous speeds from about the same time for me too.

I've had an update from Felix@Bigpipe though, and he says that Chorus are investigating now. They've now had a few people that are experiencing similar issues too he explains. Fingers crossed...

Virgil

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#1310559 23-May-2015 20:12

Hmmm, all slowed to an absolute crawl here too ... is it worth raising a ticket with Bigpipe, or just wait for it to get resolved itself?

Lurking ...

tnaseem

82 posts

Master Geek

#1310615 23-May-2015 22:57

Doesn't hurt to report I guess. At least they'll know how many people are being affected.

Just done a test now, and it's still crawling along at around 5 to 6 Mb/s. Normally by this time it's picked up, but not tonight. The slowdown started earlier too at around 11am. Been in single figures since then.

cyberhub

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Master Geek

#1311376 25-May-2015 15:25

Great to see that bigpipe has been proactive with this issue.

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BigPipeNZ

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BigPipe

#1311387 25-May-2015 15:47

Looks we've had about a dozen or so cases of this, and whilst there will always be people having the issue who don't submit tickets, that does indicate it's a very small subset of people on our network.

So far, seems to be entirely restricted to Auckland but no apparent consistency on location within Auckland. everything from Te Atatu to Waiuku, and East Tamaki. (hard to diagnose too, since the symptoms are virtually identical to when somebody is simply saturating their connection with bittorrent or similar)

We're pretty confident there is nothing at our end, and, seeing other threads from other ISPs and talking to people at Spark and VF it does seem likely to be a Chorus issue. We've escalated it with them, and hope to get some results soon.

Thanks for your patience everyone.

Cheers

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hashbrown

463 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1311466 25-May-2015 17:33

I suspect a lot of ADSL customers won't have even noticed. 5Mb/s it quite usable. Netflix works okay for me for example. If it hadn't been for this thread I wouldn't have checked and linked it to a couple of niggling issues I'd been having.

Anyway I'll log a fault when I get home and add my data point.

BigPipeNZ

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BigPipe

#1312171 26-May-2015 17:12

Hey guys,

Just an update to let you know what is going on at our end today

1) our network team have done a heap of digging and are confident it's nothing on our side of the network or our upstream provider. We have oodles of capacity both domestic and international (we just added more international only a couple of weeks ago)

2) We've escalated with Chorus. They have responded that they are aware of congestion on some parts of their network due to traffic growth being much higher than forecast (we've all seen the recent press releases on this). It is only affecting xDSL customers. Chorus has a plan to upgrade these links, but will happen over the course of the next 1-2 months (some will be very soon, others take a little while)

3) We've also heard from colleagues at Spark, VF, and other ISPs that are experiencing the same issues with a small subset of their DSL customers.

4) In the meantime we're starting a process to reach out to customers on the same DSLAMs and cabinets/exchanges as the ones who reported the speed issues to see if they are also experiencing problems (many people don't report issues, so we're trying to be proactive). It will help cement the precise locations e.g. if we get responses from these customers that they are seeing the same problems, it means that location can be identified as a problem area.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11454911
"Ratcliffe today said that uptake had exceeded most people's expectations, with the recent introduction of Netflix's streaming video services helping underpin some of that growth. While there has been reports of congestion slowing down internet service on Chorus's copper network during peak usage times, Ratcliffe said the fibre network was unaffected."

(just bear in mind for anyone else reading this that if you are seeing slowdowns, it doesn't mean you are definitely part of this issue. It still makes sense to do the standard troubleshooting first to rule out things like wifi congestion, flatmates torrenting etc, as well as submitting a ticket with us if you haven't already so we can keep you updated)

bigpipe.co.nz
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tnaseem

82 posts

Master Geek

#1312322 26-May-2015 21:58

Many thanks for the update (and the email which I just received). At least they're on the case...

Here's hoping it'll be a quicker fix than 1 or 2 months mentioned though. It's got to a point now that I can't stream Netflix / Spotify, etc without crappy buffering issues every few seconds.

One thing I don't understand though is the sudden drop in speed. I would have expected a slower decline, but mine has been almost overnight (from 50Mb/s down to 5Mb/s on an evening).

kobiak

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#1312328 26-May-2015 22:01

on bigpipe ufb 100/20mbps plan. from akl cbd :(

over lan. nothing is uploded/downloaded in background

helping others at evgenyk.nz

hashbrown

463 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1312428 27-May-2015 06:55

Smells fishy to me. This doesn't explain the sudden onset of the slowdown or the jumps in latency I'm seeing. Also if Chorus know where the congestion is, why can't they just tell Bigpipe so they don't have to guess.

Tinfoil hat time. Chorus have been caught out by Netflix and unlimited plans and their response is to divert bandwidth away from the copper network to ensure no bad coverage of the politically sensitive fibre network. Ties in nicely with the quote from the herald article.

sbiddle

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#1312435 27-May-2015 07:26

hashbrown: Smells fishy to me. This doesn't explain the sudden onset of the slowdown or the jumps in latency I'm seeing. Also if Chorus know where the congestion is, why can't they just tell Bigpipe so they don't have to guess.

Tinfoil hat time. Chorus have been caught out by Netflix and unlimited plans and their response is to divert bandwidth away from the copper network to ensure no bad coverage of the politically sensitive fibre network. Ties in nicely with the quote from the herald article.

Your tinfoil has needs resizing. Copper and UFB networks are completely separate.

And as for Chorus being caught out by Netflix - that's entirely possible.. But you should remember it was Chorus last year telling the industry that usage would explode this year with video and they offered Boost HD ADSL2+ and VDSL2 plans to the market with higher dedicated CIR far in excess of what current EUBA plans can offer. The response from the industry and the Commerce Commission was to basically tell Chorus where to stick it.

People have to understand that copper is still a best effort service and that the performance most users get on EUBA is far better than the Commerce Commission regulated UBA offering.

johnnysavs

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1312669 27-May-2015 12:51

I have submitted a ticket as well.

I am based in Ellerslie, with ping drops and download speed drops in evenings (not sure about daytime during week as not home). Generally improves around 11pm. I notice this as I game online in the late evenings and ping time has had a noticeable change in the past week.

BigPipeNZ

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BigPipe

#1312874 27-May-2015 16:32

kobiak:

on bigpipe ufb 100/20mbps plan. from akl cbd :(

over lan. nothing is uploded/downloaded in background

We believe the UFB network is not affected by this, so your problem is (probably) something else.

Best thing is to send our team a support message and we can investigate.

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hashbrown

463 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1313060 27-May-2015 20:28

sbiddle:
hashbrown: Smells fishy to me. This doesn't explain the sudden onset of the slowdown or the jumps in latency I'm seeing. Also if Chorus know where the congestion is, why can't they just tell Bigpipe so they don't have to guess.

Tinfoil hat time. Chorus have been caught out by Netflix and unlimited plans and their response is to divert bandwidth away from the copper network to ensure no bad coverage of the politically sensitive fibre network. Ties in nicely with the quote from the herald article.

Your tinfoil has needs resizing. Copper and UFB networks are completely separate.

And as for Chorus being caught out by Netflix - that's entirely possible.. But you should remember it was Chorus last year telling the industry that usage would explode this year with video and they offered Boost HD ADSL2+ and VDSL2 plans to the market with higher dedicated CIR far in excess of what current EUBA plans can offer. The response from the industry and the Commerce Commission was to basically tell Chorus where to stick it.

People have to understand that copper is still a best effort service and that the performance most users get on EUBA is far better than the Commerce Commission regulated UBA offering.

I can accept a "best effort" service slowly degrading as capacity builds up, and upgrades aren't done. However it doesn't explain going from 50Mbit/s to 6Mbit/s overnight. The logical explanations are,

a) Chorus has a fault, or
b) they are actively making changes to their network that are negatively impacting customers.

If Chorus aren't going to front and admit to case a, we are free to wildly (and admittedly mischievously) speculate on case b.

I welcome any other explanations as to why this breaking was an overnight event, but fixing it will take a couple of months.

sbiddle

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#1313086 27-May-2015 20:44

There is of course always option

c) Excessive usage has created an issue

If there was a hypothetical situation of an ISAM 1Gbps uplink being saturated by VDSL2 users it's something that could easily happen overnight. I'm not sure however what the fix would be.

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