Extreme Xtra data packet shaping last couple of weeks?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Extreme Xtra data packet shaping last couple of weeks?

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#108800 5-Sep-2012 18:47

Hi there, and sorry if the following ia big wall of text;

I noticed my internet speed took a major dive in performance and did my own research plus logged a ticket with Telecom. Im very close to an exchange and connect at 19Mbit on average, and performance is always been very good, a solid 1.7MB/s transfer speed. Last month I did something like 13GB, ie, fairly light user.

Then I noticed online gaming started to lag and download speed was erractic. Heres an interesting screen shot of my networking tab under Task Manager showing network performance during YouTube streaming speed test.

Assuming I got that image to display, you'll see almost a perfect square wave, it goes at 1.6MB/s for 20 seconds then 20KB/s for 10 seconds and so on. Does this 24/7 regardless of the time so its not on-peak throttling.

Note during testing this is the only PC connected to the router via utp, no wireless, and tried different routers in case its internal switch was failing or something odd like that.

The Xtra helpdesk was polite and escalated the ticket to network systems who simply closed the ticket as it "working to specification".

The gaming lag appears to come from lost packets as it hits the hard speed cut as if I leave tracerts running in a loop I can see them time out (usually where ae1-2.akbr4.global-gateway.net.nz should be).

So, does anyone else have this problem and has Telecom suddenly inforced stupid speed restrictions? Should I open more tickets till I get something better than a "to spec" reply even thou WHAT spec is never mentioned.

Btw, downloads dont look as pretty as that square wave as they're not hitting Xtras local cache so are much slower to rise, so average performance is about half that again. But it shows nicely whats happening....

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

58 posts

Master Geek

#681965 5-Sep-2012 18:55

Just thought I'd ad a Speedtest.net screen cap while Im at it.

As you can see, always the same pattern on downloading.

Ragnor

8218 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#682185 6-Sep-2012 10:27

Do you get that throughput pattern when running a speedtest at
http://speedtest.telecom.co.nz/

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#682235 6-Sep-2012 12:14

I believe so, but will double check when I get home.

Talkiet

4792 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#682242 6-Sep-2012 12:26

Telecom does not do any shaping (unless you exceed your monthly cap and get shaped to something approximating dialup speed - that's a WHOLE 'nother topic)

The illustration of the youtube download is very very likely to be Google themselves pacing the download (which at those speeds will be coming from a local Google Cache). Youtube usually only preloads a given amount of the file, so this stop/start behaviour is commonly seen - although not all the time. I think it depends on bitrate of the file, size of the file and perhaps even your burst download speed.

As above, try the Telecom NZ speedtest and do NOT pay any attention to high latency figures in tracerts - they are more often misleading than helpful.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#682255 6-Sep-2012 12:37

That screen cap from YouTube Speed test (ie, I expect in Xtras local cache anyways) was an example only, to capture the screen shot. I can replicate that screen shot downloading from any file server you care to mention (but then its a sawtooth type pattern as its slow to rise, unless I hammer it with 10+ threads per file then it looks identical to the above YouTube capture).

I will post the results from the Telecom speed test tonight, but as I did that with Xtras helpdesk Im certain it was identical.

-Duane

Talkiet

4792 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#682266 6-Sep-2012 12:47

OK, fair enough... Does your latency jump around much if you are not downloading? (ie. ping 8.8.8.8 gives me this)

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=54

Telecom definitely have not put in any traffic shaping that would do this, so it won't be that.

Good to see you tested using a wired connection and great to see you tried a different router. Do you have a second PC you could use to test as well? A friend's laptop perhaps?

Grab something like Netmeter

http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=cat1

and try some more tests, along with something like a legit download of a linux ISO via bittorrent. I'm interested to know if something using a heap of threads has the same apparent issue.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#682290 6-Sep-2012 12:58

I was editing my post when you replied (see changes regarding download servers), but yes, I use DownThemAll via Firefox and typically have it set to the defaults which I think is 3 or 4 threads, at the moment Im being server-unfriendly for testing and its set to 10 threads total, 6 per file.

I like to use Revision3 (online media shows) and download several videos at once, so prior to this issue off peak it can hit and sustain 2.1MB/s and on peak roughly the 1.7MB/s as mentioned in the 1st post (multi-threads set to defaults).

When I was running the ping and tracerts, except the ones that go missing, they are constant and pretty good.

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Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#682326 6-Sep-2012 13:38

Forgot to say I've tried other PCs and get the same pattern. I will download that file when I get home.

Thanks,
-Duane

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#682494 6-Sep-2012 17:54

Just to confirm; three threads on this file;

http://videos.revision3.com/revision3/web/tekzilla/0354/tekzilla--0354--first-hdtv-spec--hd720p30.h264.mp4

Gave;

Telecom speed test finishes in about 4~5 seconds so difficult to show anything, its the blips to the right handside;

Talkiet

4792 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#682532 6-Sep-2012 19:56

Duane: [snip]

Very interesting. Are you able to try a multithreaded DL of of local file (something decent sized from microsoft - so delivered by Akamai)... If it wasn't for the flat bits between the peaks then this can be explained by TCP, but those flat bits do look suspicious.

A local download will remove another element from the equation.

Also if possible, a bittorrent download would be useful to see - a much larger number of slower threads might shed more light.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Duane

58 posts

Master Geek

#682573 6-Sep-2012 22:02

The microsoft download was Win7 SP1 at 0.8GB (http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/A/F/0AFB5316-3062-494A-AB78-7FB0D4461357/windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe)

Gives a familia picture, but the lower speed troughs are 200KB/s and the highs are 2.1MB/s.

I will move to another PC which has a torrent client installed and grab a linux distro or similar and see if theres any change.

Thanks
-Duane

nickb800

2715 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#682576 6-Sep-2012 22:06

This isn't anything to do with the saw-tooth effect of TCP as outlined here perchance?

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=87219#496857 (the reply and whitepaper link specifically, but the OP in that seems to experience similar symptoms on Snap)