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Ridiculous packet loss on 3

GroundControl

Regular Member
Looking for some advice here on what fault I’m reporting to Three…

I’ve got a three sim in a Zyxel outdoor router in an area of very good signal (4g and 5g both have very good signal quality stats - the mast is 400m away line of sight from the outdoor router).

Speeds are consistently good but the level of packet loss is terrible - up to 30% when pinging sites like bbc and google. This means that apps like Teams / zoom / FaceTime regularly drop out / drop the audio momentarily.

I’ve got a separate 3 sim and in two different handsets (iPhone and android) the packet loss is similar.

Standing under the mast the packet loss is still there on both phones albeit slightly less.

I’m certain of which mast the phones and router are connecting to by using a combination of cellmapper and Netmonster apps.

I’ve also tried a couple of other local masts and they all seem to have some degree of packet loss a typically 5%.

There is no fault showing on the mast but when I connect either the devices connected to the router or the phones to a VPN the packet loss goes completely.

So my question is:

1. For those of you on three - what rate of packet loss do you typically see?

2. Given the packet loss goes straight away when connecting via a VPN does this point to some kind of routing problem on three where the three network is providing DNS etc?

3. Is anyone else experiencing this?

4. What problem am I reporting to 3 other than packet loss? Am I wasting my time even trying to report the fault.

Any thoughts welcome 🙏
 
Can't really provide advice but that definitely isn't right. I don't know whether it's a great idea, but have you tried disabling 5G? You should still get a decent amount of speed (estimating 300mbps at best). There's a chance your 5G signal is extremely weak (assuming that you only have N78) and that may be causing issues.

On an O2 4G connection, B1+20 I'm getting this with no packet loss at all (maybe time to complain in the O2 thread since I should definitely not be getting 5mbps lol)

Screenshot_2024-01-24-20-25-09-475_org.zwanoo.android.speedtest.webp
 
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What APN are you using?
I’ve tried manually setting 3internet, three.co.uk and 3secure - as well as letting the network set the APN.

On network settings I’ve also played with the obvious choices - IP4 / IP6 and changing DNS to google / cloudflare.

As the same issue seems to be present on a different SIM in 2 different handsets (both set to allow the network to set APN) I can’t really see much else I can change on the user side.
 
Doesn't help you much but I have packet loss monitoring set up on mum's router with Three (3internet) and she's never experienced any loss.

The monitoring was a hangup from when she was on Vodafone which suffered horrendously from packet loss- which incidentally from what I've read on other forums doesn't seem to be any issue any more.

1000035624.jpg
 
2. Given the packet loss goes straight away when connecting via a VPN does this point to some kind of routing problem on three where the three network is providing DNS etc?
I'm no expert by any means but given the above I would say you can rule out mast congestion (and device fault bearing in mind you've tried others) and would agree it sounds like a Three routing/network shaping fault. I'm in Southampton so perhaps it's something more local to you. I know when Voda was playing up for some users on this forum it would be absolutely fine for others up north.
 
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Doesn't help you much but I have packet loss monitoring set up on mum's router with Three (3internet) and she's never experienced any loss.

The monitoring was a hangup from when she was on Vodafone which suffered horrendously from packet loss- which incidentally from what I've read on other forums doesn't seem to be any issue any more.

View attachment 10542
Did they switch the packet loss from Vodafone to Three? 😔 this merger smh
 
Doesn't help you much but I have packet loss monitoring set up on mum's router with Three (3internet) and she's never experienced any loss.

The monitoring was a hangup from when she was on Vodafone which suffered horrendously from packet loss- which incidentally from what I've read on other forums doesn't seem to be any issue any more.

View attachment 10542
Can you tell me what did you use to do the monitoring?
 
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