Recent online gaming ping spikes when streaming Netflix

[dubstepzombie]

ah I see the ombudsman won't get involved unless you get a deadlock letter, I'd be interested in knowing how you get on because for me it was all about speed and because I have the correct speed there is nothing they're prepared to do and probably nothing I can do because it's all about speed, lag and latency isn't an issue.

Although the rep raised a complaint on my behalf I have no complaint reference, I should get a complaint number I can use later I guess.

[Mighten82]

Lol, good luck. My goal is simply to get away from bt now because im sick and tired of the rubbish broadband and customer service ive had, and a teenage son gamer constantly doing my head in because someone has went on netflix!

I'll update with any results tomorrow

[dubstepzombie]

ok something seems to be changing for me, I'll have to check tomorrow but I think I'm seeing an extra hop in the BT core network, ping plotter was only spiking up to about 50ms while spamming Tidal tracks and sometimes not spiking at all, I was thinking yeah I can live with that - it's not horrendous. 

Then I decided to run ping tracer and then double checked with a standard Windows ping - massive packet loss / drops and these look to be originating from the BT core network in slough. Almost like buffering has been reduced and swapped for packet loss 🙂

It appears ping plotter doesn't show packet loss on the graph, I'll have to write a decent ping utility one day.

At least acknowledging a problem and trying to fix it would satisfy me - with an eventual fix at some future point, it does look like something is being changed...

I'll monitor tomorrow evening and post if I see any changes.

[nemodog69]

if BT dont fix this what other isp`s  are other people using that dont get this problem. Anybody tried ghost gaming broadband or Hyperoptic ??

[Reaps]

I have Zen now.

Here's my BT line when I had this issue:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/0385b9bfab8dae90c613c727a547ff9d47...

Here's my Zen connection after leaving:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/31e1700c8eb9b2ba78c2eb84b1169e3fb8...

[dubstepzombie]

Reaps - do you know if your exchange has any Zen equipment installed i.e. local loop unbundling - LLU ? you can check by using 'samknows exchange' (google it seeing as I can't post a direct link) or if you wouldn't mind posting the town / village you're in.

[dubstepzombie]

Looking at the ping trace I have the same number of hops but different IP addresses involved - still using the same Overwatch game server IP address. I know IP's can change with load balancing, so it's either that or BT are making changes to their core network.

2 4 ms 4 ms 3 ms 172.16.17.59
3 * * 7 ms 31.55.186.181
4 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms 31.55.186.188
5 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms 195.99.127.90
6 84 ms 8 ms 8 ms peer2-et-7-0-0.slough.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.252.112]
7 17 ms 19 ms 25 ms 195.66.226.234

New tracert from yesterday.

2 5 ms 6 ms 4 ms 172.16.17.59
3 * * 18 ms 31.55.186.177
4 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 31.55.186.184
5 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms host213-121-192-120.ukcore.bt.net [213.121.192.120]
6 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms peer2-et-7-0-0.slough.ukcore.bt.net[109.159.252.112]
7 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms 195.66.226.234

BTW Sky will help with termination fee's up to £100, so I think next month I'll just move to Sky and pay BT their fees, even if BT ease the issue I don't trust them, all other ISPs have status pages where you can check for problems - not BT.

[Reaps]

The checker doesn't show Zen having any LLU.
I asked them this when I was moving to them. They said as long as there's a BT phoneline, they can provision a line for me.
So, that's what they did. No issues since.

[dubstepzombie]

Thanks Reaps, this does make me annoyed, no matter what evidence you provide BT with they just ignore it, I got an email earlier about my complaint with BT, apparently it's been closed, no explanation as why they've closed it.  I suspect it'll be your line is ok and your speed is therefore there's no issue.

Apparently BT helped me "Thanks for getting in touch with us recently. We're pleased we could help. ", my next idea is to post something on the sky forums and see if I can get someone to run the same ping test with network load to see if spikes can be spotted. I might also expand this idea to the Zen and Plusnet forums.

[Reaps]

Question to you guys who have this issue still.

Do you have any TV package with BT?

I wonder if you're provisioned differently if your account has a TV package listed against it.

I have a colleague in work who has no TV package, lived in the same town as me, but has never had this issue.