Wellington 200/200 Bigpipe Customers: Help troubleshooting my connection

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Wellington 200/200 Bigpipe Customers: Help troubleshooting my connection

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#198024 22-Jun-2016 17:47

Hi everyone,

The wonderful support team at Bigpipe has been helping me troubleshoot my new connection to Bigpipe. Unfortunately, I'm not getting anything close to 200/200 on my line using a variety of tests to a variety of NZ services (Speedtest / Spark Ookla / Vodafone Ookla / Nperf 2 Degrees).

I was wondering if any Wellington based 200/200 customers could run some Nperf 2 Degrees Auckland; Speed Test 2 Degrees Auckland / Speed Test Spark Auckland for me. Yes its a terribly inaccurate proxy of how my connection should perform, but its as inaccurate as everything we have tried so far.

Ultimately, the best thing would be to have an internal bigpipe testing mechanism to know that the internal network is performing correctly, but I understand that isn't an option, so we have to rely on tests to external networks to see how things are going. And given that I've seen many of you consistently show 200/200 results to external networks, I wanted to know whether there was anything in current traffic connections to suggest that a 200/200 result is out of reach but that might be due to external network conditions.

Many thanks in advance should you find the time to help!

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6434 posts

Uber Geek

#1578563 22-Jun-2016 17:54

When you say 'nothing close'. What do you actually mean?

To some people, 190/190 would be unacceptable, to others that would be totally fine.

Presume you have eliminated the following:
1) your router being not powerful enough
2) your pc not being powerful enough

Brumfondl

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#1578568 22-Jun-2016 17:59

Would help to know what you are currently getting and what router you are using. If using Speedtest you should test to the Spark server in Auckland.

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1578571 22-Jun-2016 18:05

Hi there,

Sorry, just to clarify, I'm getting all sorts of wonky numbers on speed tests to the spark auckland and 2degrees auckland servers, even in tests done at 3AM. Wonky = an average of 160/140, with some occasional deviations up and down. Just want to know what others are able to get at the moment.

I'm testing with a Macbook Pro directly connected via Cat6 to the ONT; same machine and cable generated speeds in excess of 600/600 when I took it into an office for testing earlier today.

Am at a fairly advanced stage of troubleshooting with Bigpipe, and we're working on a few more tests, but I just wanted to crowdsource some data, even if it is blunt data without a lot of predictive power about my own line.

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

Uber Geek

#1578593 22-Jun-2016 18:49

The most obvious thing that springs to mind;
Have you ensured you don't have anything else running on your laptop at the same time? I.e. If you have iCloud then if that is backing up at the same time as your speed tests, then it will definitely slow down the speedtest results. Or maybe BitTorrent or even malware.

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1578600 22-Jun-2016 19:02

NonprayingMantis: The most obvious thing that springs to mind;
Have you ensured you don't have anything else running on your laptop at the same time? I.e. If you have iCloud then if that is backing up at the same time as your speed tests, then it will definitely slow down the speedtest results. Or maybe BitTorrent or even malware.

Yes - all carefully checked and calibrated - little snitch profile to enable only the browser doing the test, etc. Like I said, equipment was tested 4 hours ago under same conditions and generated significantly faster speeds.

Sorry - I really didn't mean for this to become a troubleshooting thread, although it's a great unintended bonus, so thanks! It's always useful for me to double check that I've crossed off all the possible ways to mess up my results. I'm conscious that I don't want to waste the Bigpipe's senior tech support time by making some silly error!

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1578603 22-Jun-2016 19:09

Rappelle:

Just ran these from Wellington. Better than I usually get, if I'm honest. I've seen some really poor peak hours speeds to Auckland before.

Great - many thanks. I generated equivalent tests just a few minutes later and I get significantly lower results (40% lower uploads; 20% download), so that's telling me (with large bands of errors thrown around for good measure) that different Wellington based Bigpipe customers may have different results. Of course a lot of this can depend (to some limited extent) on the level of saturation across the rest of the local Chorus infrastructure supporting the handover to Bigpipe. But even with generous allowances I would have hoped to have something similar.

I know, I know, this is so imprecise - if you're about to have a dig at me know that I'm all for good empirical methodology when trying to figure stuff out. This is killing me. Ideally I'd have a Bigpipe iperf server to test to, but this type of blind guestimating is all I can do at the moment!

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1578609 22-Jun-2016 19:28

Rappelle:

What sort of network setup do you have? Router? Cables?

I'm not even at the router stage. I have an ERL, a TP-L 24 port POE switch, and the whole house CAT6 cabled and tested.

But I'm just directly connecting my MB Pro to the ONT and running the testing.

Edit: And a Cat6 cable that I've tested to run between the MBP and the ONT

RunningMan

6130 posts

Uber Geek

#1578644 22-Jun-2016 20:41

thewanderingv:[snip]

But I'm just directly connecting my MB Pro to the ONT and running the testing.

Was the other connection also direct to ONT? Just wondering if there's enough overhead in the OS X PPPoE implementation to slow things down. Any difference with a router doing the PPP connection?

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1578663 22-Jun-2016 21:13

RunningMan:

Was the other connection also direct to ONT? Just wondering if there's enough overhead in the OS X PPPoE implementation to slow things down. Any difference with a router doing the PPP connection?

Yes it was over a test PPPOE connection. My edgerouter and a Dell laptop generate similar results when plugged in directly.

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1578665 22-Jun-2016 21:19

Update: Thanks for the troubleshooting help everyone.

The incredible Bigpipe support team just pulled another trick from their bag and set up a small test server to see what was happening with my connection. After some iperf tests and a packet capture, it turns out that there's some packet loss, duplicate acknowledgements and retransmissions which should not be happening. They don't have any Wellington network congestion, and it's virtually impossible that 23 other houses have magically connected to UFB in the last ten days since I was connected, and are all uploading like crazy every time I check speeds :)

So it looks like it's a problem between the ONT and the handover for now. Fingers crossed that this will lead us to a fix.

Than you Bigpipe - you guys have gone way beyond the call of duty in willing to persevere! Makes me really glad I swapped providers.

michaelmurfy

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#1579140 23-Jun-2016 18:05

@thewanderingv this appears to be the problem I am getting too (also based in Wellington) - @BigPipeNZ any chance you can check this? I've already got a ticket lodged for international problems.

RunningMan

6130 posts

Uber Geek

#1579158 23-Jun-2016 18:29

michaelmurfy:[snip]

@thewanderingv this appears to be the problem I am getting too (also based in Wellington)

I think your problem's different - you just referred too many of your neighbours to Bigpipe, and they ran out of bandwidth

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1579191 23-Jun-2016 19:02

michaelmurfy:

@thewanderingv this appears to be the problem I am getting too (also based in Wellington) - @BigPipeNZ any chance you can check this? I've already got a ticket lodged for international problems.

Could you post some Auckland Spark test results and an Nperf 2Degrees result?

michaelmurfy

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#1579753 24-Jun-2016 18:57

@thewanderingv just had a call from BigPipe - ran some iperf tests etc and it looks like the national issue is resolved. Able to max out my connection nationally now. Just the international issue remaining of which is under investigation.

thewanderingv

182 posts

Master Geek

#1579808 24-Jun-2016 20:17

michaelmurfy:

@thewanderingv just had a call from BigPipe - ran some iperf tests etc and it looks like the national issue is resolved. Able to max out my connection nationally now. Just the international issue remaining of which is under investigation.

It hasn't resolved for me - I'm still getting pretty low upload speeds. Are you able to hit 200/200 on any speed test?

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