Bufferbloat - Best ISP to minimise?

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somewherenotthere

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Hi guys,

I have tested a whole string of ISPs trying to get around this issue, but it seems to be a common problem with SA ISPs.

Does anyone know of an ISP (ADSL preferably) that has a decently sized (small) buffer?

Issues I experience with a few people in my household is one-at-a-time-ing. This means that if someone is doing something on the internet, even if not very bandwidth intensive, everything just stops.

Webpages load quickly for a few seconds, then it just drags on if it has a large amount of content.

Anyone had good experience with eliminating this? Or have an ISP that is amazing?

Dankie mense.
 
somewherenotthere said:
Hi guys,

I have tested a whole string of ISPs trying to get around this issue, but it seems to be a common problem with SA ISPs.

Does anyone know of an ISP (ADSL preferably) that has a decently sized (small) buffer?

Issues I experience with a few people in my household is one-at-a-time-ing. This means that if someone is doing something on the internet, even if not very bandwidth intensive, everything just stops.

Webpages load quickly for a few seconds, then it just drags on if it has a large amount of content.

Anyone had good experience with eliminating this? Or have an ISP that is amazing?

Dankie mense.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's ISP related. Your problem (if you are using DSL) is most likely that the upload bandwidth is hogged. i.e. you can't send requests quick enough to receive. Well that's my thought at least :)
 
I like to think we're pretty amazing. But this doesn't sound like an ISP issue necessarily. Sounds like either a congestion or upload issue where uploads are saturating your line. Or perhaps even downloads, although you say nothing bandwidth intensive is running. You'd need to monitor this using proper bandwidth monitoring tools though rather than anecdotal evidence as there may be malicious software on one of the machines that is hogging the connection.
 
Dan C said:
I don't think it's ISP related. Your problem (if you are using DSL) is most likely that the upload bandwidth is hogged. i.e. you can't send requests quick enough to receive. Well that's my thought at least :)
Click to expand...

ADSL is terrible with that, I guess.

But even with lots of QoS it doesn't really help. Also, I don't do any P2P sharing so my uplink should not be overused, especially on a 1mb/s up.
 
Best is to post a winMTR test (available for free download) to a non-ISP-cached site (i.e. not Google) and post the results here after 20 seconds, 1 minute, and 5 minutes. Do this when the connection is "normal" and also once the connection gives troubles, for comparison purposes.
 
Crystal Web said:
I like to think we're pretty amazing. But this doesn't sound like an ISP issue necessarily. Sounds like either a congestion or upload issue where uploads are saturating your line. Or perhaps even downloads, although you say nothing bandwidth intensive is running. You'd need to monitor this using proper bandwidth monitoring tools though rather than anecdotal evidence as there may be malicious software on one of the machines that is hogging the connection.
Click to expand...

I have some monitoring up. Uplink is not excessively used.

Could very well be congestion. I agree. Will try set up something to see if it changes depending on time of day.
 
somewherenotthere said:
I have some monitoring up. Uplink is not excessively used.

Could very well be congestion. I agree. Will try set up something to see if it changes depending on time of day.
Click to expand...

If the bandwidth isn't being hogged or saturating your line, then congestion may be a factor to an extent, although the test results will show us what's potting here. Could also be a faulty router. This is in all likelihood not ISP related as the only "buffer" would be the shaper queuing packets which won't happen simply because there is activity on the line. Shapers are also layer 7 application based so would depend on the type of traffic moving over the account, so the fact that you imply that it's a common occurrence without a common cause/application leads me to believe that this has nothing to do with the ISP's shaper at all and rather something happening causing packets to drop before the ISP's network. Could be a faulty POTS filter; faulty modem/router; faulty setup/config; wireless interference; exchange congestion (although I'm not leaning towards this either based on what you've mentioned so far); DNS issues on the network; faulty cabling; line fault; or a combination.
 
somewherenotthere said:
Hi guys,

I have tested a whole string of ISPs trying to get around this issue, but it seems to be a common problem with SA ISPs.

Does anyone know of an ISP (ADSL preferably) that has a decently sized (small) buffer?

Issues I experience with a few people in my household is one-at-a-time-ing. This means that if someone is doing something on the internet, even if not very bandwidth intensive, everything just stops.

Webpages load quickly for a few seconds, then it just drags on if it has a large amount of content.

Anyone had good experience with eliminating this? Or have an ISP that is amazing?

Dankie mense.
Click to expand...

The only time I've seen this is when someone is using torrents and the ISP has a limit on the number of open connections.
 
Chevron said:
The only time I've seen this is when someone is using torrents and the ISP has a limit on the number of open connections.
Click to expand...

Then the torrent traffic should be limited and nothing else. Otherwise the shaper is not configured correctly or it's a punitive measure imposed by the ISP for opening too many connections. No idea why though - the ISP could simply try to keep it rate limited on the protocol without imposing penalties.
 
Crystal Web said:
Then the torrent traffic should be limited and nothing else. Otherwise the shaper is not configured correctly or it's a punitive measure imposed by the ISP for opening too many connections. No idea why though - the ISP could simply try to keep it rate limited on the protocol without imposing penalties.
Click to expand...

It's not shaping that I'm talking about. Because torrent clients open hundreds of connections some ISPs don't like that. So even if you rate limit your torrents to 100kpbs, you can't use your line for anything else as you've used up your allocation of open connections.
 
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| www.routerlogin.com - 0 | 360 | 360 | 1 | 3 | 119 | 4 |
|105-236-240-129-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za - 0 | 360 | 360 | 9 | 18 | 131 | 14 |
| ipc-recieve-tb-1a.mtnbusiness.net - 0 | 360 | 360 | 10 | 23 | 133 | 14 |
| tb-dca-2.za--qux-i.za.mtnbusiness.net - 1 | 356 | 355 | 10 | 19 | 185 | 15 |
| compj-cpt-1.mtnns.net - 0 | 360 | 360 | 11 | 21 | 134 | 14 |
| ls-cr-2.uk--tb-cr-1.za.mtnns.net - 0 | 360 | 360 | 154 | 167 | 351 | 161 |
| ls-pr-1.uk--ls-cr-2.uk-a.mtn.net - 0 | 360 | 360 | 154 | 164 | 322 | 236 |
| linx-10ge.lon1.uk.portlane.net - 0 | 360 | 360 | 155 | 166 | 323 | 161 |
| po12-20g-516.sto4.se.portlane.net - 0 | 360 | 360 | 184 | 199 | 381 | 188 |
|vl-3305-adminor-demarc.sto1.se.portlane.net - 0 | 360 | 360 | 182 | 195 | 377 | 187 |
| 46.253.203.68 - 0 | 360 | 360 | 181 | 193 | 346 | 189 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
Click to expand...

Some random website.
 
That only really does an average ping thing... my line is quite stable other than what I call "buffer problems". Surely I am not the only one that experiences such things?
 
somewherenotthere said:
Some random website.
Click to expand...

One issue I can comment on, and the other I absolutely cannot.

Allowed comment: your router worst ping is 119ms. On average though it's fine, but this shows that there may be some wireless interference coming in to play on occasion, or a faulty port or cable on the modem-router. Sort this out and test again, which would lead us to possible issue #2 which I personally cannot comment on, looking at the traces. :)
 
Chevron said:
It's not shaping that I'm talking about. Because torrent clients open hundreds of connections some ISPs don't like that. So even if you rate limit your torrents to 100kpbs, you can't use your line for anything else as you've used up your allocation of open connections.
Click to expand...

Hundreds of connections wouldn't cause that problem. Thousands, perhaps. It's still a sorely ill-configured shaper that allows concurrency to slow other protocols to the extent the OP mentions. However it looks to be a combination of problems based on the traces - the first being the Netgear modem-router here which may be causing some of the troubles, looking at that 119ms ping on the first hop. Average however is 4ms so this indicates that the spikes are very intermittent - also not seeing any packet loss there (on the first hop, at least), which is what one would immediately suspect as the culprit for altogether slow throughput.
 
Last edited:
That looks like packet loss on a shaper or something.
 
somewherenotthere said:
You guys are hung up on the one value... average is 3.... it was probably just an outlier due to wireless connection time. I will run it again from a wired PC
Click to expand...

Not hung up on anything at all. Trying to help. :confused:
 
Sinbad said:
That looks like packet loss on a shaper or something.
Click to expand...


in those 5 min 0% loss.

will try run it when I know people aren't on my local network, and on a wired device so eliminate the inherent ping spikes.

I will tell you how I picked this up at first, I was playing some CS and my ping jumped up by around 100ms.

Even though CS uses very little bandwidth, it seems like extended use led to more and more ping. I tried this over a couple evenings and it seemed to be a common factor (even after booting all other users from the router).

Which led me to believe something is using a buffer/cache. When I get to the end of the buffer, it just adds me to a pool of k@k (probably with the lowest form of being, torrenters :D).

I hypothesise that once this is reached, it becomes very sensitive to use of any other application of the internet. Anyway, I know one solution: get a huge amount of bandwidth.... but I can't go much higher without finding my sync limit.

Anyway that was my theory. Thanks to everyone for trying to assist so far.
 
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