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Three network having problems again?

sbaggs

Pro Member
Has anyone else seen problems with the Three network over the last couple of days? I'm seeing speeds drop to about a quarter of what I would usually get, even early in the morning (6am), and sometimes I'm unable to get web pages to load at all - all this despite the router showing satisfactory signal strength, SNR etc. The oddest thing is that if I use a VPN the problems go away - speeds back to normal, sites loading instantly. I'm using a connection over VPN to post this.

I've tried the obvious stuff like restarting the router and switching the DNS to Google (8.8.8.8) or Cloudfare (1.1.1.1) - it makes no difference. I have noticed that trying to run a test on speedtest.net often fails completely, where as fast.com and speedof.me still work if I can get them to load at all.

I was expecting to see some comments here if it was a general problem, but if there were any then I missed them. On the other hand downdetector.com is showing an increase in complaints about Three so maybe it isn't just me. The Three status checker says all is well, but in my experience that doesn't mean very much.
 
Not seeing any problems here at all with Three or Smarty sbaggs, seems to be just my usual speeds on both.
 
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SMARTY (3), all over the place these days. ATM 5Mb/s dl :(
Had 105Mb/s the other day.
 
SMARTY (3), all over the place these days. ATM 5Mb/s dl :(
Had 105Mb/s the other day.
Must just be the usual pot luck where you are, my speeds never vary much from my usual blistering 30/20. :giggle:

At sleepy time I sometimes hit 35/20. :eek::LOL:
 
Yesterday for me (near Camberley Surrey) on Three and Smarty the volume of failed page loading (TLS handshake failures) seemed to be unusually high, but speeds were normal.
So far this morning things seem back to normal, however it's only 6am and we'll see once the network loads increase.

I suspect either configuration changes to their core network or perhaps the temporary loss/downtime of a data center (so other centers are picking up more load/packets being redistributed). But either way it feels like there was (is?) a reduction in packet inspection throughput - VPN traffic can't be packet inspected so it gets fast forwarded through, which is why it resolves it.
 
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When I was with them I noticed some data-centres are better than others. It definitely affects it where your IP originates from.

"Rage ripping" the power from the back of the router and plugging it back in again usually connected to another one, which improved things for a while.
 
Try changing your APN to the other Three APN.
I hadn't thought of that - good idea. The router defaults to three.co.uk and I've never had cause to try 3internet. This morning things seem a lot better, everything is responsive although speed is still not as good as normal, so I'm in "Ain't broke . . ." mode - it's useable (which it hasn't really been for a couple of days) so I'll leave it alone for now. It's on my list of things to try if it goes down again.
 
Yesterday for me (near Camberley Surrey) on Three and Smarty the volume of failed page loading (TLS handshake failures) seemed to be unusually high, but speeds were normal.
So far this morning things seem back to normal, however it's only 6am and we'll see once the network loads increase.

I suspect either configuration changes to their core network or perhaps the temporary loss/downtime of a data center (so other centers are picking up more load/packets being redistributed). But either way it feels like there was (is?) a reduction in packet inspection throughput - VPN traffic can't be packet inspected so it gets fast forwarded through, which is why it resolves it.
Thanks for all the comments, I learn a lot from hanging around here.

Things are better this morning and the Internet is at least useable. I'm usually on band 3 with around 70Mb/s in the mornings, less but still perfectly OK in the evening. This morning the router was on band 1 which gives 20Mb/s. I crossed my fingers and rebooted the router which reconnected to band 3, and now I'm getting about 30-35Mb/s without VPN and 45-50Mb/s with - thanks for explaining why that might be, I was a bit mystified.

I think it might be time for me to move back to FTTC - Three did us well while a phone line would have been difficult because of building work, but I'm out of contract now and the network glitches over the last two or three days have cause me a certain amount of grief. Probably time to move on.
 
Things are better this morning and the Internet is at least useable. I'm usually on band 3 with around 70Mb/s in the mornings, less but still perfectly OK in the evening. This morning the router was on band 1 which gives 20Mb/s.
Three will aggregate bands 1 and 3 if from the same tower and your router can do it. That should give you 90mb/s.
 
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Three will aggregate bands 1 and 3 if from the same tower and your router can do it. That should give you 90mb/s.
I do occasionally see 1 and 3 aggregated ("Band" shows 1,3 on the router), but the increase in speed is quite modest - I've only got close to 90Mb/s on a very few occasions. I did once see 100Mb/s, but not for long!

My feeling is that the limiting factor for my connection is backhaul rather than connection speed. We live in an area which is popular with caravanners in the summer, and it seems a fair bet that many of them will use mobile broadband. The contrast between early morning speeds and later in the day is more marked in the summer season, although it doesn't often drop much below 40Mb/s. You can see the improving trend since the end of the holiday season on the graph - the daily peaks and troughs are Speedtest checks at six-hour intervals - and at the end the results of the recent problems.

As an update, current performance remains useable but still not seeing anything like the speeds we are used to, and there is often a noticeable delay before a web page loads - it all feels sluggish. VPN still produces a marked improvement. As I mentioned before, this has tipped me over into moving off 4G - I signed up for FTTC with Zen on Friday, and have been given an activation date of Monday!
 

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Three will aggregate bands 1 and 3 if from the same tower and your router can do it. That should give you 90mb/s.
Just be aware band 3 on its own is more than capable of providing 90mb/. During my tenure with three I discovered just forcing it onto band 3 only provided a more stable connection (my mast was incapable of providing more bandwidth with band 1 connected at the same time anyway so it was pretty pointless using multiple bands.)

I presume forcing 1 band also limits interference and lightens the load on the B535, which I found to be highly limited in functionality due to its low end chipset being incapable of handling lots of connections simultaneously, (again slowing it down) so presume handling multiple bands don't help it much either.

With mobile data I've come to the conclusion, hardware spec, weather, antenna's making your home look like Jodrell bank and all other external factors don't come close to the negative impact mast contention provides all by itself.
 
Thanks for all the comments, I learn a lot from hanging around here.

Things are better this morning and the Internet is at least useable. I'm usually on band 3 with around 70Mb/s in the mornings, less but still perfectly OK in the evening. This morning the router was on band 1 which gives 20Mb/s. I crossed my fingers and rebooted the router which reconnected to band 3, and now I'm getting about 30-35Mb/s without VPN and 45-50Mb/s with - thanks for explaining why that might be, I was a bit mystified.

I think it might be time for me to move back to FTTC - Three did us well while a phone line would have been difficult because of building work, but I'm out of contract now and the network glitches over the last two or three days have cause me a certain amount of grief. Probably time to move on.
I didn't realise a VPN could give such a speed boost. Without using a vpn did you notice on speedtest.net burst speeds are initially high before taking a big hit and then slowly rise?
 
I didn't realise a VPN could give such a speed boost. Without using a vpn did you notice on speedtest.net burst speeds are initially high before taking a big hit and then slowly rise?
Don't take that as scripture, vpns usually add overhead and delays, however in specific circumstances they can help, such as with bypassing three's packet inspection thus improving performance. Vpn won't work the same way on other operators and not even on three in other areas, unless you do see the same kind of problems.
 
I didn't realise a VPN could give such a speed boost. Without using a vpn did you notice on speedtest.net burst speeds are initially high before taking a big hit and then slowly rise?
VPN doesn't usually give a speed boost in my experience, if anything it can slow things down. As Gavin explained earlier, though, packets sent via VPN can't be inspected by anything between the two ends of the chain. The fact that I saw faster transactions via VPN suggests that something in the Three network is holding packets up while it inspects them - it can't inspect VPN packets, so they don't get held up.

I have seen the effect you describe on speed checkers (not just Speedtest) - I think they often start by sending small blocks of data so speeds fluctuate quite a lot, and then progressively bigger packets which even out the fluctuations, then average out the lot to give an overall speed.
 
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I have noticed some speed changes via VPN on some connections.

eg. updates coming down for MS Flight Sim get capped at 50Mbps without a VPN, with VPN connected (Using NordVpn on an Asus router) they download at 100Mbps+.
 
I have noticed some speed changes via VPN on some connections.

eg. updates coming down for MS Flight Sim get capped at 50Mbps without a VPN, with VPN connected (Using NordVpn on an Asus router) they download at 100Mbps+.
Yes, I've seen the same. Pointing NordVPN to a USA server seems to work well with Flight Sim. I don't know whether that's because ISPs shape Flight Sim traffic (perish the thought), the American servers have more capacity or it's the time difference - their peak demand will be a few hours behind ours.
 
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