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Service Degradation

jbennett360

ULTIMATE Member
Not sure if this will get any responses, due to the nature of who the ISP is and the fact they have a limited number of customers.

Anyway.

Issues over the last few months have been horrific - something that hasn't ever really been an issue with them, so what's changed?
  • We've had multiple down time events, one lasting around 12 hours, on a Sunday, which effected local businesses as card payments wouldn't work.
  • Issues with some sites taking a while to load. Almost like it sits and has to think for ~10 seconds before it decides to load anything.
  • Issues where some websites just won't load. (Weekend just gone Telegram (App/domain) wouldn't load at all but worked fine on data - seems to be back working and loading this morning)
  • General Latency/lag spikes which effect pretty much everything (Probably ties in to point 2)
I'm not sure what's going on, or why it's going on. Seen a few similar reports on Twitter, for all the above issues, but these issues just seem to go ignored.

If there is anyone out there, can they chip in with anything?
 
Are you eligible for Automatic Compensation and do those problems qualify? https://www.kcom.com/home/media/5edlh4zi/automatic-compensation-summary-260319.pdf

Have the faults been reported via the official method/process?
See this is another issue too. Reporting issues is hard work. You'll try and ring the number and be put in a queue to be told you're number one and never get through.

Or you ring the number, you explain the issue and what you've done. They tell you to do a Speedtest, and if the numbers come back fine they effectively say it's a non-issue. Or, they'll tell you to change your ethernet cable!

Sounds counter-intuitive, but I've basically given up contacting them via the official methods, and any other comments that are past on Social media basically get ignored too!
 
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The best that can be done is probably to ask to leave notes on the account, if they have the facility to do that.

Regarding non-deterministic problems that might be revealed by Speedtest.net I would recommend that you login when using a browser or otherwise record the results of the bad tests so that a URL or ID number can be provided to satisfy their tick box approach. You can argue that with non-deterministic tests, it's unlikely you will see the problem when you happen to be on the phone with them.
 
I don't think that's helped these issues if I'm honest.

Speeds are fine still but theres something that causes pages to not load instantly at times. Almost like it has to think about what it needs to do, rather than just doing it.

It's not the sites themselves either because it's never the same one, could be Google, BBC news etc. And it's hard to pinpoint because of how intermittent it is.

What would you even class this as? Lag spike? Latency? It's like the initial connect, figuring out what it needs to do...
 
What would you even class this as? Lag spike? Latency? It's like the initial connect, figuring out what it needs to do...
Latency. What is the ping/latency shown by https://speedtest.net and https://fast.com ?

Unloaded latency needs to be under 30 ms to feel responsive. Wired connections such as FTTP can be under 5 ms.

You can also ping a public endpoint such as bbc.co.uk to see the latency of sending essentially zero data and getting a response with zero data.
 
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Latency. What is the ping/latency shown by https://speedtest.net and https://fast.com ?

Unloaded latency needs to be under 30 ms to feel responsive. Wired connections such as FTTP can be under 5 ms.

You can also ping a public endpoint such as bbc.co.uk to see the latency of sending essentially zero data and getting a response with zero data.
Thought it was probably latency.

Problem is though, if it's intermittent then results from those sites as well as think broadband speedtest won't really show anything will they? Surely it'd need to be set to be constantly monitoring?

Various sites show the latency around 10-13ms, that's FTTP and wired direct from the router. Tried speed.cloudflare.com and the think broadband attached.
 

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Thinking out loud.

Would DNS servers make a difference at all? Instead of using their cached ones, I could try Google? Clutching at straws here! Haha
 
10 ms is good so I was also considering what it might be. The next thing I would consider is a congested destination server but this could be ruled out if all destinations are impacted the same. DNS lookup should only impact early on in visiting a site and then things should go smoother.

I would try testing different devices and perhaps swap out the router to see if the issue disappears when a culprit device is removed.

Browsers usually have a developers' mode to time how long it takes to load a website so you can see the elements that are holding everything up.

You could hotspot to your mobile or otherwise try another internet connection to ensure the problem is not imaginary.
 
10 ms is good so I was also considering what it might be. The next thing I would consider is a congested destination server but this could be ruled out if all destinations are impacted the same. DNS lookup should only impact early on in visiting a site and then things should go smoother.

I would try testing different devices and perhaps swap out the router to see if the issue disappears when a culprit device is removed.

Browsers usually have a developers' mode to time how long it takes to load a website so you can see the elements that are holding everything up.

You could hotspot to your mobile or otherwise try another internet connection to ensure the problem is not imaginary.
I've tried different devices, it does still happen randomly.

It feels likes it's been happening over the last few months, but more so over the last few weeks, which ties in with ISP having issues, unexpected downtime, maintenance etc.

I had thought about the router, but other people have mentioned the same thing, high ping, latency spikes, slow to respond pages, speed tests showing normal speeds but feeling like it's not normal etc so that makes me think it's not me and is the ISP, plus, one user had said he'd been out and bought a new router only to find it still happening! Few reports on twitter too if people having the same thing.

Plus there was the routing issues at the weekend. Some sites wouldn't load at all. Just ended up giving an connection timed out, site can't be reached.

I'm all out of ideas. Maybe I'll have to give it a few days and see what happens, it might fix itself!?
 
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So I left Dev Tools open on the chance that I might be able to capture something.

Navigated to https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football, took a while for it to load in.

Network under dev tools showed a 3.4 seconds orange line (Initial connection) before it decided to start loading in all the elements.

I have seen a few people on reddit complaining of Chrome being slow after the latest update, so that could be something to think about too.

Edit: Scrap the chrome idea, doing it in a clean install of Firefox too.

I'll try using Google DNS, just for an experiment. At least I can then rule that out
 
Last edited:
Try Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 DNS servers.

Also disable HTTPS DNS in browser and see if it helps.
 
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