asgaard https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2016/08/04/plusnet-packet-loss-and-gaming-lag Thu, 23 Apr 26 15:19:46 +0000 en 1 0 Plusnet packet loss and gaming lag https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2016/08/04/plusnet-packet-loss-and-gaming-lag Thu, 04 Aug 16 12:27:11 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2016/08/04/plusnet-packet-loss-and-gaming-lag A few people seem to be talking about this, but since the start of last week (25th July 2016, i.e. 10 days now) I've been getting unreasonable amounts of packet loss on Plusnet fibre. Sometimes it's fine, other time I'm losing 20% of my packets. It's making gaming impossible as latency shoots up to multiple seconds at random intervals. At one point, Planetside 2 was reporting a 90 second lag! Packet loss is visible on ICMP, and websites (TCP/HTTP) become unresponsive at random intervals too.

I submitted a fault report last week which doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

This isn't isolated to me:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/High-packet-loss-and-other-DNS-issues/td-p/1354749
http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17612893774?page=1
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=29859356
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4vho1j/packet_loss_issues_in_eu/
https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Packet-loss-when-using-video-conferencing-servi[...]]]> A few people seem to be talking about this, but since the start of last week (25th July 2016, i.e. 10 days now) I've been getting unreasonable amounts of packet loss on Plusnet fibre. Sometimes it's fine, other time I'm losing 20% of my packets. It's making gaming impossible as latency shoots up to multiple seconds at random intervals. At one point, Planetside 2 was reporting a 90 second lag! Packet loss is visible on ICMP, and websites (TCP/HTTP) become unresponsive at random intervals too.

I submitted a fault report last week which doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

This isn't isolated to me:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/High-packet-loss-and-other-DNS-issues/td-p/1354749
http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17612893774?page=1
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=29859356
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4vho1j/packet_loss_issues_in_eu/
https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Packet-loss-when-using-video-conferencing-service/td-p/1353723

The lack of any official response seems to indicate that Plusnet are employing an ostrich approach.

Using a VPN doesn't help either because I just get loss to the VPN.

(Unrelated:) They were also supposed to be raising my downstream limit from 40mbps to 55mbps on Monday, which hasn't materialised.

Overall: If you are currently wondering whether Plusnet are good for gaming, the answer up until two weeks ago was "yes". The answer right now is "definitely not".

Update: 2016-08-23: Two and a half weeks later this is still an intermittent problem, but it's occurring less frequently than it was. I got bored of pursuing Plusnet support because they take days to respond, don't read my responses properly and don't seem to be willing to admit there's a problem they need to fix. I am off contract now so if it continues the easiest course of action is a different provider.

Update #2: Forget that, it's worse than ever tonight.

Plusnet packet loss

Update #3: git clone through PlusNet: 10kB/s. git clone through VPN on the same machine: 400kB/s. Ouch.]]>