Packet Loss (222.152.41.139)

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Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#290133 22-Oct-2021 18:03

Hi all, on Spark Fibre 100, and last few weeks I keep getting bad days with a lot of packet loss, (games timing out, websites not loading etc). Other days it runs fine.

This week had been good until this afternoon, where 222.152.41.139 decides to eat anywhere between 30 to 50% of my traffic. I'm not sure its always that IP, but its always within two hops internal to Spark before the Gateway.

Anyways else having issues or know whats going on?

Attached is a sample plot to twitter, but its all traffic types / locations.

michaelmurfy

/dev/ttys0
11023 posts

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#2799614 22-Oct-2021 18:11

WiFi or Ethernet? If WiFi, you should be using Ethernet.

Also, it is fully normal. Routers on the internet don't respond to ICMP (Ping) traffic over doing their routing duties and so it is totally normal for them to drop ICMP traffic. They're always a router first.

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Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#2799617 22-Oct-2021 18:26

Let me clarify. Packet loss is at that IP, OUTSIDE of my network, from all machines and all devices on my local network wired or not.

I'm well aware of ping packets can be dropped or not responded to, in my experience they're configured to ignore all, or allow all, not reply to random amounts. As that IP only shows loss when I'm having issues, seems a good correlation to me that where the issue is.

michaelmurfy

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#2799618 22-Oct-2021 18:28

Correct. Re-read my message. Routers on the internet are routing traffic, not responding in a timely fashion to ICMP ping requests, they have never prioritized this. You'll always see ICMP loss over a traceroute as everything is already busy routing traffic.

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#2799628 22-Oct-2021 19:18

Right. So if that hop shows 0% packet loss all week except when my connection bricks itself, and then it shows consistent high loss, is that not an indicator of the overloaded or misconfigured or failing router?

And if tracerts and ping plots are to be ignored, what do you suggest to locate the problem hop in the route?

cbrpilot

854 posts

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Spark NZ

#2799632 22-Oct-2021 19:30

Hi Duane,

What you are seeing on pingplotter is not a good indication of any issues.

When you send a ICMP packet (the type used by ping and other utilities) to a router it's not unusual for a router to respond intermittently or not at all. This is because it is not the main job of the router to respond to ICMP - it's job is routing packets. Therefore ICMP is either heavily rate limited, or blocked by most routers. It should not be seen as an issue with the router or that the router is congested etc.

The way to tell that this is true is that every subsequent hop does not show the same 30-50% packet loss.

I.e. every packet is going via the same route, so if there was an issue with a router dropping packets, then it would impact all destinations beyond the router dropping the packets.

Hope this makes sense.

In regards to your original issue I'm not suspecting your fibre connection as the first hop beyond the local network is to our BNG and that is showing no packet loss occurring there. I'd suggest when you start experiencing issues see if you can try and replicate the issue from other devices on your network. Try restarting devices. Try temporarily disabling any firewall and/or antivirus software you are using to see if this helps (don't forget to re-enable if after a quick test).

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

fe31nz

831 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2799732 23-Oct-2021 01:31

If you are suspecting that it is just ICMP packets going missing, then try using TCP trace program that uses TCP SYN packets instead (at least for one direction). For example:

https://simulatedsimian.github.io/tracetcp_download.html

If that router was actually dropping 43% of packets, then you should be getting 43% of packets passing through it going missing, which is not happening. Routers further upstream are responding with much less than 43% packet loss, so the packets passing through the "bad" router are not affected. Only pings that are addressed to the "bad" router are going missing at a high rate, so that suggests that it is an idiosyncrasy of that router rather than a real problem. What is worrying on your trace is that after that router, there is a small packet loss from pings to all subsequent routers. That suggests that the "bad" router or the one after it is actually dropping packets. Even a small packet loss of up to 5% will cause serious problems if it is not just ICMP packets.

yitz

1711 posts

Uber Geek

#2799735 23-Oct-2021 02:00

Must be overloading from the flood of customers joining because of the 6 months free offer 😀

cbrpilot

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Spark NZ

#2801174 26-Oct-2021 10:10

fe31nz:

If you are suspecting that it is just ICMP packets going missing, then try using TCP trace program that uses TCP SYN packets instead (at least for one direction). For example:

https://simulatedsimian.github.io/tracetcp_download.html

Unfortunately using TCP (and I haven't looked into the exact software above, but I assume it's building a traffic path like the pingplotter software) will lead to the same result due to the way that these types of software work under the hood. What they are doing is sending a packet (be that ICMP or TCP or whatever flavour inside the IP packet) destined for the final destination IP each time. Inside the IP header is a field called "Time To Live" (TTL) which specifies how many router hops the packet will survive before being discarded. To find out which is the first router in the path the software sets the TTL on the first packet to be '1'. When the first router gets the packet it subtracts 1 from this value - which means it is now zero, and therefore the packet must be discarded. When it discards the packet it then generates an ICMP packet which it sends back to the source IP telling it that it discarded the packet due to the TTL time being exceeded. To find out what the second router the software sets the TTL to '2', so the second router will discard the packet and send back the ICMP.

So you can see that no matter what type of packet you send you will always get back an ICMP packet, so sending a different type of packet does not change what you will see here.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#2802105 27-Oct-2021 17:01

cbrpilot:

In regards to your original issue I'm not suspecting your fibre connection as the first hop beyond the local network is to our BNG and that is showing no packet loss occurring there. I'd suggest when you start experiencing issues see if you can try and replicate the issue from other devices on your network. Try restarting devices. Try temporarily disabling any firewall and/or antivirus software you are using to see if this helps (don't forget to re-enable if after a quick test).

The issue shows across all devices, that is, wired PC, wifi laptop, imac etc. Usually only one of them is on at any time but I tried the others after rebooting the router etc and it persisted across everything.

It always (so far at least), comes right by the next day when I check, so is the duration of one evening every week or so.

cbrpilot

854 posts

Ultimate Geek

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Spark NZ

#2802184 27-Oct-2021 18:07

Can you describe a little more about what happens when "the issue" crops up? You describe it above as "games timing out, websites not loading".

Is it more than one game?

Do some website work fine and others not? If you reload the same website does it work subsequently? Or is it consistent as to which ones work and which ones do not?

Can you do a speedtest on speedtest.net to a Spark speedtest server? Or does that page time out?

When you restart your modem and are still having the same issue, are you getting a different IP address, or has it kept the same one?

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#2802256 27-Oct-2021 20:36

cbrpilot:

Can you describe a little more about what happens when "the issue" crops up? You describe it above as "games timing out, websites not loading".

Is it more than one game?

Do some website work fine and others not? If you reload the same website does it work subsequently? Or is it consistent as to which ones work and which ones do not?

Can you do a speedtest on speedtest.net to a Spark speedtest server? Or does that page time out?

When you restart your modem and are still having the same issue, are you getting a different IP address, or has it kept the same one?

To be honest, I'm not sure about the IP if it changed or not, I did think about it, after rebooting it I should of checked what it was before....

All websites, including Sparks were slow or needed retries. Was only the one game I play (STO), but steam friend list was disconnecting occasionally but not to bad.

Email client failed to connect to GMail (imap) occasionally and needed retries.

I did try the speedtest.net site at the time and the results were erratic. Eg usual website struggle to load bit, then the test itself timed out, on a retry it was jumping around between 5Mb~20Mb then finished at full 100Mbit, a retest did much the same, and last attempt timed out. At the upload section of the tests all runs seemed to work fine with steady 20Mbit as expected.

You tube stream is watchable as it seems to be able to buffer enough, but switching channels is slow to load (don't recall it timing out thou).

That was all last time it happened, the time before was more severe and nothing worked basically. I switched everything off and watched a movie.

cbrpilot

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Ultimate Geek

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Spark NZ

#2802527 28-Oct-2021 09:48

Hmmmm difficult to pinpoint exactly what could be happening from your description. I'm wondering if you might be having disconnection issues where the connection is flapping?
If you PM me your details and the time/date you last had an issue I can check from that perspective and see if I can see anything from my end.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.