UPDATE2 Peak Time Latency Spikes Return to Haunt Virgin Media’s Broadband

Customers of broadband cable operator Virgin Media are once again reporting a spike in latency during peak times (typically starting at before 7pm and running until around 11pm), which can cause disruption for latency dependent software / services like fast paced online video games and voice/video calls etc.

Latency is a measure of the time (delay in milliseconds [1000ms = 1 second]) that it takes for a packet of data to travel from your computer to a remote server and then back again (ping). The delay is usually measured in milliseconds (e.g. 1000ms = 1 second) and modern fixed line broadband connections will often have an average latency of anything from around 10-40ms.

A lower score (shortest time) is always best for latency, although the times can be affected by various things such as the performance of remote internet servers, connection technology, ISP network congestion, peering / routing problems and the setup of your own home network etc. We should stress that today’s news is separate from the latency bug that is known to exist inside Virgin Media’s Intel Puma 6 powered SuperHub 3 router (here).

At some point all ISPs will suffer network problems that can cause a spike in latency and if the posts on Virgin Media’s Community forum (e.g. here, here and here) and Thinkbroadband are anything to go by then that’s precisely what has been hitting the cable operator this week (during peak times). Sadly it’s an issue that also cropped up at the same ISP in March.

Customers who suffer the issue are likely to see their latency times more than double (the green and blue bits are what you should pay most attention to above), with some going from around 20ms to nearly 80ms and that’s enough to cause a noticeable impact on some online video games and possibly a few other internet services. However other services may not show any noticeable impact.

The suspicion is that this could be the result of a peering problem between Virgin Media’s national network and the London Internet Exchange (LINX), which has caused similar problems in the past and usually results in a few days or weeks of the same until the ISP rebalances their traffic. We have asked Virgin Media and they are currently investigating (expect a comment shortly).

UPDATE 6:39pm

We’ve just received the following comment.

A Virgin Media Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“A very small number of Virgin Media customers (less than 1%) may have noticed a deviation in their expected connection performance when using some tools and websites

This is caused by a link failure resulting in the loss of around 0.98% of Virgin Media’s broadband capacity. This will affect these customers at peak times (after 6pm).

Virgin Media is working hard to restore the capacity as quickly as possible. We apologise to the small number of customers affected for any inconvenience.”

UPDATE 18th May 2017

The same pattern was observed again last night and if past problems are anything to go by then we might continue to see this for a few more days or possibly even weeks.