Packet Loss (BitTorrent Protocol)

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Recently i have discovered that i might be experiencing packet loss on my iburst router, i was lagging in a local game 45 ping in mid day no rain no wind then as my mom went on skype i stopped lagging, straight as she got off i started lagging again :erm:
i just want to know am i high ?
if i'm not is there any application out there that can let me keep sending data ?
 
There are lots of interesting things that happen when your traffic goes through iBurst's shaping engines. I've noticed that when I start a torrent (legal stuff :p ) all my other apps keep dropping and resetting their connections.

gTalk, IRC, telnet sessions and all manner of other applications keep loosing their connections. Turn off the torrent and suddenly all is fine.
 
Hi guys.


As a test please test the following.

Run a background ping as in the following example.

ping iburst.co.za -t -l 1

Then try your normal usage and see the effect.

Let me know.


Thanks
 
Hi Shaun

Just did the test. I get 0% packet loss and 330ms latency when the torrent isn't running and 10% / 890ms when it is running.

The issues that i'm seeing isn't related to packet loss however - the connections are being forcefully disconnected (RST packet for those more technically minded) by some in-line device. Its not a timeout due to packet loss.
 
Shaun ...

That test you are trying is irrelevant to finding problems involved with resetting connections as a ping does not create a connection.

One way might be to open 5 or more telnet sessions to a server then see if any of them are disconnected. But it does sound like there is a problem with the QoS engine in place.
 
hi Shaun

mine was packets : sent 143 received = 141 lost = 2 (1% loss)
minimum = 32ms , maximum 2484 ms , average 337 :erm:
is that like normal ?
 
ambo said:
The issues that i'm seeing isn't related to packet loss however - the connections are being forcefully disconnected (RST packet for those more technically minded) by some in-line device. Its not a timeout due to packet loss.
Click to expand...
Very interesting. My son complains when I try and do just about anything on the iBurst connection while he's playing WoW. We are using Windows ICS. If I share a Vodacom connection instead, I can download, torrent, ssh, vnc and I hear no complaints from him.

We have gone somewhat off topic though, the OP was complaining about packets being dropped when Skype wasn't running.
Gary Waterworth said:
One way might be to open 5 or more telnet sessions to a server then see if any of them are disconnected. But it does sound like there is a problem with the QoS engine in place.
Click to expand...
I will try this and report back. It would be good if we could come up with a standardized test that we can all run.

Right now I'm doing an dist-upgrade on another PC (271 files, totalling about 160MB over http). Results of ping iburst.co.za -t -l 1 as follows:
Ping statistics for 196.30.31.120:
Packets: Sent = 413, Received = 412, Lost = 1 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 66ms, Maximum = 1516ms, Average = 492ms
Click to expand...
 
Doing another dist-upgrade (Karmic Release Candidate), 139 files 100+MB.
No other traffic going over the shared connection, but experiencing packet loss.
--- iburst.co.za ping statistics ---
617 packets transmitted, 398 received, +1 duplicates, 35% packet loss, time 1294530ms
Click to expand...

Update:
This connection deteriorated until I could no longer even resolve iburst.co.za, although iBurst remained connected.
I turned the modem off and on again, and after reconnecting things were better:
--- iburst.co.za ping statistics ---
300 packets transmitted, 300 received, 0% packet loss, time 299366ms
Click to expand...
 
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iBurst said:
Have you tried?
Click to expand...
Hi Shaun
Ran a test today. I had all my normal applications running the and then started a torrent:

My SSH sessions now seem to be stable but all my IM connections were dropping about once every 2 minutes. The moment I stopped the torrent everything returned to normal.

When I download the same file (at about twice the speed mind you) over either FTP or HTTP, I have no trouble with dropped connections.
 
Thanks Ambo

Gives us something to chew on.

Lets see the ideas/suggestions from networks.
 
iBurst said:
Have you had a site evaluation before?
Click to expand...
Yes, on October 5. Your tech suggested I purchase an omni antenna.
He demonstrated one outside attached to his laptop and he got a download speed of 600kbps where I only get 300kbps inside.

I haven't yet purchased an antenna as I'm not convinced it is going to solve the problems with 'lag' in WoW and the packet loss I've experienced. Unfortunately your tech didn't have a spare antenna that I could try out for a few days.

I tried to start a torrent download while having SSH and googlechat sessions open, I didn't experience any packet loss or dropped sessions, but the torrent was going extremely slowly, so maybe it just wasn't generating enough traffic for the shaping to kick in.

Before I could do any ping tests with WoW running, I blew the remainder of the cap on a couple of hundred megabytes of WoW patches, so no more tests until the new cap kicks in.
 
ambo said:
There are lots of interesting things that happen when your traffic goes through iBurst's shaping engines. I've noticed that when I start a torrent (legal stuff :p ) all my other apps keep dropping and resetting their connections.

gTalk, IRC, telnet sessions and all manner of other applications keep loosing their connections. Turn off the torrent and suddenly all is fine.
Click to expand...
I found that I cannot establish a connection to Steam while a bittorrent client is active (including the Blizzard Downloader for World of Warcraft patches). If I pause the bittorrent client's connection I can then connect to Steam and then resume the bittorrent client. It seems once the Steam connection has been established it is OK.
 
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I would like to know if any one else has this problem unable to browse and upload or download torrents.
But able to download from news servers and able to connect and chat voip .
My girlfriend has this problem in Capetown.
 
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r00igev@@r said:
We shape torrents.
Click to expand...
How exactly are you doing that? Why is there so much collateral damage?

Why are other completely unrelated services like Skype, SSH and Steam affected?

Why are torrents from legitimate services like the Blizzard Updater (World of Warcraft and Starcraft II) affected?
Why doesn't iBurst set up a bittorrent client permanently connected to the Blizzard trackers for peering with iBurst subscribers? This should save you a bit in international traffic and improve the experience for your subscribers.
 
You can download WoW updates via normal http, which in most cases is always faster and less bandwidth intensive [no uploading]. It's a better solution. I don't know about starcraft 2 though.

My observations is that iBurst has a limit on the number of active connections at once. Torrents open alot of connections. if you can, try limit the number of concurrent connections or else you may find it will drop some to make space [resulting in packet loss]. This is very observable when you hit the 64 VAS, to a point where you can not have 2 PCs browsing the internet at the same time (if you monitor it, only 1 will ever be loading a web page at a given time.)
 
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