Unusable Fiber from Mweb

[AndriesAB]

A few years ago when Metro FIber installed fiber in our area I took the time to find a reliable ISP. Before the Fiber we had a MWEB ADSL package with no issues for years. I called up sales specifically asking for these 3 main factors in their fiber products. "Is it uncapped, unshaped and unthrottled?". The sales rep assured me and I quote "Our fiber products are uncapped, unshaped and unthottled".

Since we already had an account with them I decided to just go with them as our fiber provider. The first 2 months after the installation we had unusable fiber. I eventually complained so much I got in contact with a lady that manages the bridge between mweb and metrofiber. She apologized and explained to me that they oversold. Mweb couldn't handle all the traffic in the area but they were busy with upgrades. Since she was honest with me I had no issues. The upgrades took place the following week. Below and behold all was well and running. No shaping or throttling. Low latency. No packet loss.

Despite some downtime due to fiber breaks we never had issues. It would be resolved in 1-2 days.

Recently we've had nothing but issues with them and have received no support at all. After Metrofiber made their lines cheaper and mweb upgraded us for free as the amount we are currently paying is the same as the upgrade. Since then we've had unusable internet in the evenings. I eventually opened a query with them to only be told that we are being shaped. I explained to him we were promised no shaping was taking place. Their response was that shaping has always been in the fiber packages to optimize it for gaming and streaming and that they would call us back. I got upset and told them I don't want a call back and that we will be in contact with accounts to cancel.

The following day they called us and said something must be wrong with our line and we can expect a call from them in a few hours. That few hours turned into never hearing from them again. I requested a callback in the query to only have the query closed a few hours later without a response. This made me actually cancel it.

This shocked me as literally the thing being impacted the most was gaming. I then called sales to pretend to be a new customer to be told the same thing. "Uncapped, Unshaped and Unthrottled". I've been unable to get in contact with mweb again regarding this.

Factors:
- Speed tests are normal. 500up and 500down with low ping(3ms), 0% packet loss and 0.3 jitter.
- Every game I try to play has 180+ ping despite being local. Cod? 180+ping. Discord? 180+ping. Anything I try to play has 180+ ping despite it being local
- My Apple music and spotify simply refuses to load in the evenings when I'm on wifi but on cellular its fine.
- Netflix buffers for about a full minute before attempting to play to only be greeted with low quality.
- In the evenings (Around 4pm to 11pm) the internet becomes unusable with constant ping spikes, drops and 20-100% packet loss however speed tests are perfect.

I've gone ahead and also did their suggested tests. I plugged my laptop with a 1GB/s card into the ONT and setup a broadband connection using a CAT 6 cable. Exactly the same result. Perfect speed tests but everything else is still unusable. I'm the technical guy in the family so I always deal with them.

We had to give a 2 months notice so we can only use our new ISP (CoolIdeas) in September. Our internet is still giving a lot of issues in the evening. Especially now since right after we cancelled. Although I do not think it's a line issue but it might still be. Is there anything I can do beyond this point? Contacting mweb regarding this is proving to be impossible as after entering the account ID number on the phone our account no longer seems to get found and attempts to open new queries on their site simply say we have reached our query limit however there are none open.

 

[SubtleBeast]

Not an expert, but this sounds like a network issue. Not enough capacity most likely.
You can try and change your DNS to Google or 1+ or try a VPN, although I'm pretty sure this wouldn't have an impact.

 

[PBCool]

Hi, which router are you using? Can you pop some traces to the likes of 1.1.1.1 and uktest.cisp.co.za

 

[AndriesAB]

Not an expert, but this sounds like a network issue. Not enough capacity most likely.
You can try and change your DNS to Google or 1+ or try a VPN, although I'm pretty sure this wouldn't have an impact.

I honestly have no idea. VPN makes things worse as expected. DNS makes no difference.

 

[SubtleBeast]

I honestly have no idea. VPN makes things worse as expected. DNS makes no difference.

Thought as much. Usually see these kind of problems with capacity constraints on a network. Could be caused by cable break/s or not enough provisioned links.

 

[AndriesAB]

Hi, which router are you using? Can you pop some traces to the likes of 1.1.1.1 and uktest.cisp.co.za

We are using a ASUS RT-AC86U. It's only a few months old. I doubt this is the router as I've setup a broadband connection on my laptop directly on the ONT device without the router and I get the same results. Speed tests are perfect however games or discord are 180+ping despite being SA servers. I used to get 3ms - 10ms ping on those services.

I ran a trace on the 2 items you suggested:

Tracing route to one.one.one.one [1.1.1.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  196.214.208.1
  3    15 ms     5 ms     5 ms  196.38.77.39
  4     6 ms     3 ms     3 ms  196.38.77.38
  5     5 ms     7 ms     3 ms  168.209.100.48
  6     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  pr2-pkl-ae1.ip.ddii.network [168.209.1.179]
  7     5 ms     5 ms     6 ms  cloudflare.ixp.joburg [196.60.8.198]
  8     5 ms     4 ms     4 ms  one.one.one.one [1.1.1.1]

Trace complete.

Tracing route to uktest.cisp.co.za [154.0.5.20]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     3 ms     4 ms     3 ms  196.214.208.1
  3     4 ms     2 ms     3 ms  196.38.77.39
  4     6 ms     4 ms     3 ms  196.38.77.38
  5     5 ms     7 ms     7 ms  168.209.100.144
  6     6 ms     7 ms     7 ms  core1b-pkl-be-2.ip.ddii.network [168.209.1.162]
  7     3 ms     3 ms     2 ms  197.96.214.113
  8     3 ms     4 ms     3 ms  100.99.2.33
  9     5 ms     3 ms     4 ms  100.99.0.84
 10   171 ms   172 ms   171 ms  cisp.demarc.cogentco.com [149.14.250.250]
 11   172 ms   171 ms   171 ms  u104-cust.coolideas.co.za [154.0.5.20]

Trace complete.

EDIT: I added a Discord trace too:

Tracing route to southafrica3280.discord.gg [66.22.240.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     *       <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     4 ms     3 ms     3 ms  196.214.208.1
  3     2 ms     2 ms     3 ms  196.38.77.39
  4     4 ms     4 ms     3 ms  196.38.77.38
  5     5 ms     7 ms     6 ms  168.209.100.144
  6   193 ms   192 ms   191 ms  core1b-dock-ten-0-4-3-0.ip.ddii.network [168.209.100.17]
  7   172 ms   171 ms   172 ms  20ge.linx-jnpr.th-n.i3d.net [195.66.225.146]
  8   188 ms   188 ms   186 ms  frstd1-rt001i.i3d.net [109.200.218.154]
  9   192 ms   192 ms   191 ms  esmad1-rt001i.i3d.net [109.200.218.253]
 10   194 ms   194 ms   194 ms  esmad1-rt002i.i3d.net [109.200.218.11]
 11   174 ms   173 ms   174 ms  zajnb1-rt001i.i3d.net [109.200.219.11]
 12   174 ms   173 ms   174 ms  66.22.240.10

Trace complete.

 

[AndriesAB]

Thought as much. Usually see these kind of problems with capacity constraints on a network. Could be caused by cable break/s or not enough provisioned links.

My theory is that they are only allowing selected services. I've noticed in call of duty for example its fine but lets say I'm playing a game with dedicated servers meaning mweb would have no idea what domain or IP to prioritize so its high ping.

 

[PBCool]

Everything above looks very normal, I would guess they just arent advertising your IP block locally correctly or to all peers. To have this fixed will take longer than the process to move over unfortunately.

 

[AndriesAB]

Everything above looks very normal, I would guess they just arent advertising your IP block locally correctly or to all peers. To have this fixed will take longer than the process to move over unfortunately.

We've already cancelled Mweb. Moving over end of August. What I found wierd about the trace routes is that if you look at the origin of those IP addresses it goes from ZA to UK then back to ZA again resulting in the high ping ussage. If I directly ping the discord IP for example I get about a 3ms latency however doing the traceroute or connecting to the voice endpoint gives me 180ms+.

Could it be that for some reason it's going through a UK exchange?

 

[PBCool]

We've already cancelled Mweb. Moving over end of August. What I found wierd about the trace routes is that if you look at the origin of those IP addresses it goes from ZA to UK then back to ZA again resulting in the high ping ussage. If I directly ping the discord IP for example I get about a 3ms latency however doing the traceroute or connecting to the voice endpoint gives me 180ms+.

Could it be that for some reason it's going through a UK exchange?

Yeah aware of the move hence my comment

Nah it's correct, that host of ours is in the UK and the discord looks correct as well. If it was bouncing latency would actually be much higher.

Using something like warp VPN might be a temp fix for you.

 

[AndriesAB]

Yeah aware of the move hence my comment

Nah it's correct, that host of ours is in the UK and the discord looks correct as well. If it was bouncing latency would actually be much higher.

Using something like warp VPN might be a temp fix for you.

Gotta love your customer service. Getting better service from another ISP on a 3rd party website. Thanks for the help.

I'll look into the VPN thing when I get home. I've attempted Proton VPN's Plus servers to be greeted with 250+ ping despite being SA servers as well. I have however noticed that my if I use my company VPN it's fine.

 

[PBCool]

Gotta love your customer service. Getting better service from another ISP on a 3rd party website. Thanks for the help.

I'll look into the VPN thing when I get home. I've attempted Proton VPN's Plus servers to be greeted with 250+ ping despite being SA servers as well. I have however noticed that my if I use my company VPN it's fine.

Proton probably don't have local pops, give warp a go and let me know.

 

[AndriesAB]

Proton probably don't have local pops, give warp a go and let me know.

Hi,

I was hoping you could just give a "What the problem might be" answer. I have recently gotten new information. Some of my family members live less than 1km away from me. They are also with MWEB. Out of curiosity I ran the same tests on their network that I ran on mine and ended up with the same result. High latency with the same applications but low latency with the speed tests while friends also living really close using another ISP have low latency regardless.

Would you say this is a MWEB infrastructure issue? This started happening after a major outage in my area that lasted almost a day. Since then latency has high.

 

[PBCool]

Hi,

I was hoping you could just give a "What the problem might be" answer. I have recently gotten new information. Some of my family members live less than 1km away from me. They are also with MWEB. Out of curiosity I ran the same tests on their network that I ran on mine and ended up with the same result. High latency with the same applications but low latency with the speed tests while friends also living really close using another ISP have low latency regardless.

Would you say this is a MWEB infrastructure issue? This started happening after a major outage in my area that lasted almost a day. Since then latency has high.

Usually its a peering thing or commercial transit agreement, for instance if they use HE overseas for transit and don't get a local port it will prefer the international route. Without doing technical tests on those lines ourselves it's just speculation for me.

 

[SubtleBeast]

Would you say this is a MWEB infrastructure issue? This started happening after a major outage in my area that lasted almost a day. Since then latency has high.

Sounds like bad splicing perhaps. MWEB should check if levels are within spec.