Exchange contention

jamster · 26th February 2006

Time for a rant...

So, for the last week and a half my speeds have been fluctuating between ~ 500kbps and the full 2 megs, getting dns timeouts and dropped packets, apparantly because my exchange contention is red. (CMGREB) Before that it worked fine - how does an exchange become contended overnight?!

Gotta love BT - their attitude (plusnet tell me) is that because my speeds are higher than 400kbps I don't have a problem with my connection.

Grrrr!

alexcf · 26th February 2006

Yea, I've been having the same problem in Brighton. I've got my ISP (Enta) to rant quite a bit at them. Well, it's improved quite a bit during the day which is a bonus, get my good old 240k/sec, makes streaming logs and ssh sessions much easier again.

Then, if I do a speed test right now, I'm only getting 50-80k/sec. Ho hum, I'll live, atleast its usable in the daytime.

Kind regards,

markcastle · 27th February 2006

I guess i'm lucky... always get full 10Mbps any time of the day or night (ntl cable)

CrystalVPS · 27th February 2006

I get my full 2mbit but my ssh sessions always drop if idle for 2 minutes (NTL 2mbit)

Moony1234 · 27th February 2006

Thats life, and it'll only get worse.

Due to contention your only gaurenteed 2mbit/50 if your on 50:1 2mbit adsl, which is a very very small amount of bandwidth!

markcastle · 27th February 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by CrystalVPS

I get my full 2mbit but my ssh sessions always drop if idle for 2 minutes (NTL 2mbit)

Never once had that issue.

Karl · 27th February 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moony1234

Thats life, and it'll only get worse.

Due to contention your only gaurenteed 2mbit/50 if your on 50:1 2mbit adsl, which is a very very small amount of bandwidth!

Yep, the less consumers are willing to pay, the more and more contention will come in to effect, especially with headline higher speed services.

Provida · 27th February 2006

Hey Chris / Alex - give it a couple of weeks, you may find that BT will upgrade the VC and your connection will be back to normal.

crystaldata · 28th February 2006

Not had any trouble until recently with Metronet, all started whe plus.net took them over, and migrated the MN network to the Plus net one. Then several lines started becoming un reliable

JonWitte · 28th February 2006

Ditto. We're canning Metronet - support has gone to pot as well (gone from name+email of a human to some borg queue-type-thing) Looking at IDNet right now, anyone got any experience of them?

Ricky · 28th February 2006

THIS USER HAS BEEN GAGGED BY THE FORUM HOSTS FOR SPAM OR BREAKING THE RULES...
User will be ungaged in around 65 hours from this post.

Provida · 1st March 2006

Gaaah! Spoke too soon, my own speed is now down to 160Kbps. Last time the fault was rectified by BT changing RAS mapping, so it sounds like a config problem in the IP Stream network, but it's suddenly started happening again. If I find out the details of the change BT made last time I'll post them here.

monaghan · 1st March 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonWitte

Ditto. We're canning Metronet - support has gone to pot as well (gone from name+email of a human to some borg queue-type-thing) Looking at IDNet right now, anyone got any experience of them?

We resell IDNet ADSL service and have had no problem with them. Not sure what their retail is like though.

tema · 1st March 2006

An overnight change like that could mean a few people switched on their p2p apps and opened up their music/pron/vid collection to the world. BT will react to bandwidth hikes like this but, as Jake says, they do take a few weeks to upgrade the exchange VCs.

jamster · 1st March 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Provida

Gaaah! Spoke too soon, my own speed is now down to 160Kbps. Last time the fault was rectified by BT changing RAS mapping, so it sounds like a config problem in the IP Stream network, but it's suddenly started happening again. If I find out the details of the change BT made last time I'll post them here.

Hmmm not sure I know what a RAS mapping is, but any info you could provide would be great

I think mine looks a lot like contention because of the fact it only goes wonky during the evenings (I ran the following tests last sunday/monday

Code:

22:38 26th feb 22:48 → 1042 kbps 
09:28 27th feb → 1928 kbps 
19:20 27th feb → 824 kbps

Hope they hurry up with the fix. (Exchange CMGREB if anyone has access to the relevant contention data - it's missing off of samknowsbroadband).

Yep Plus.net are irritating if you want support. Recently I asked them to change my reverse dns record using their automated form. They give you a choice of either username.plus.com or your_static_ip.plus.com. I asked for the latter... guess what my reverse dns is now...

Yep.... the literally cut and pasted.... your_static_ip.plus.com

Grrrr... Thinking of moving over to Zen or Enta but I'm hopefully moving to London in the summer so need to check out contract lengths and the like (and whether they'll migrate your connection to your new address for free).