Vumatel- FTTH, latency issues.

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Smilyface

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Hi all, looking for some info and tips about the behaviour of fibre lines.

I'm currently using vumatel FTTH in greenside, with a 4/1Mb line provided by "Cool Ideas"
I have the following issue:
When watching twitch streams, I sometimes have issues with the stream randomly dropping my connection completely. I've heard this might just be a twitch thing, or something to do with the international connection being too busy, but that's not a big issue. Streaming works great in general otherwise.

One big issue I am getting is random latency spikes while gaming. During the past weeks of trying the line out, my pc has been the only one connected to the internet, I have had resource monitor open to see my networking activity at all times, and the game itself (Counter strike: GO) has useful built in tools to show the state of the connection. From the past week, I have noticed that I get ping spikes (Usually up to 800-1000ms) for no apparent reason, with nothing other than the game using the net, no packet loss, server side lag or anything on my end that would usually cause such an issue.

This is happening on local servers, and would usually never happen on my normal adsl. It doesn't occur often, but when it does, the spikes are usually a few minutes apart from each other.

My ISP said that there shouldn't be any reason for something like this to happen on their side, and I've been assured that my line isn't being shaped or throttled.

So I'd really like to know if anyone can explain to me why this kind of sudden and random latency can occur on a fibre line.
 
It could be the router. If possible try connecting the PC staight to the CPE while you play online. See if that makes a difference.
 
Actually used the connection for a week without the router before I went and collected it; all the same issues were there.
 
I have this same problem on my 2 Mbps ADSL with CS:GO & twitch. It is very annoying. Maybe it is the backbone the ISP runs on or something? I'm with WebAfrica though.
 
You would need to run e.g winmtr to see on what hop the issue is.
 
CS:GO server @ 41.0.11.164 in JHB

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
|Host --------------- % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|--------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|192.168.0.1 --------- 0 | 450 | 450 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 |
|154.0.7.1 ------------ 0 | 450 | 450 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 0 |
|154.0.2.125 ----------0 | 450 | 450 | 0 | 5 | 808 | 0 |
|196.14.104.83 -------0 | 450 | 450 | 1 | 7 | 796 | 1 |
|196.26.0.10 --------- 1 | 447 | 446 | 0 | 9 | 876 | 1 |
|vodacom.jinx.net.za-0 | 450 | 450 | 2 | 8 | 801 | 3 |
|41.0.0.33 ----------- 0 | 450 | 450 | 2 | 8 | 798 | 2 |
|41.0.0.33 ----------- 1 | 447 | 446 | 2 | 8 | 875 | 2 |
|41.0.11.164 -------- 1 | 447 | 446 | 2 | 8 | 874 | 2 |
|___________________|_____|_____|____|____|_____|____|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

Sorry for how messy that table is, that's just what the program gave me when I asked for text format.
As can be seen there, There is a really good latency in general, minimal packet loss, but the max. ping spikes up to 800+ at just about every IP it checks. It's pretty rare that it happens, but still not sure what causes it when there's no other load on the line.
 
Last edited:
Smilyface said:
CS:GO server @ 41.0.11.164 in JHB

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
|Host --------------- % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|--------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|192.168.0.1 --------- 0 | 450 | 450 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 |
|154.0.7.1 ------------ 0 | 450 | 450 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 0 |
|154.0.2.125 ----------0 | 450 | 450 | 0 | 5 | 808 | 0 |
|196.14.104.83 -------0 | 450 | 450 | 1 | 7 | 796 | 1 |
|196.26.0.10 --------- 1 | 447 | 446 | 0 | 9 | 876 | 1 |
|vodacom.jinx.net.za-0 | 450 | 450 | 2 | 8 | 801 | 3 |
|41.0.0.33 ----------- 0 | 450 | 450 | 2 | 8 | 798 | 2 |
|41.0.0.33 ----------- 1 | 447 | 446 | 2 | 8 | 875 | 2 |
|41.0.11.164 -------- 1 | 447 | 446 | 2 | 8 | 874 | 2 |
|___________________|_____|_____|____|____|_____|____|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

Sorry for how messy that table is, that's just what the program gave me when I asked for text format.
As can be seen there, There is a really good latency in general, minimal packet loss, but the max. ping spikes up to 800+ at just about every IP it checks. It's pretty rare that it happens, but still not sure what causes it when there's no other load on the line.
Click to expand...

Wow, um, yeah that's essentially massive contention on the ISP side. That contention is in their DC from what I can tell, so either their switch isn't big enough or they don't have sufficient capacity on the breakout portion of the network. Without knowing their network architecture it's impossible to say for sure, but it's something their support staff should be escalating to have resolved as it's certainly on their end and their responsibility...
 
Wow this winMTR is an awesome tool for this sort of problem resolving. Thanks for mentioning it!
 
The honeymoon with CISP will start to wear off. Really soon now.

They are basically the provider-of-choice on the Vumatel network, since always. They don't have competition on there at the moment and that is bad news. I'd estimate 95% of users Vumatel area are signing up with CISP - including me - through the interactions I've had with people in the area.

Their their competitors' packages are a joke in comparison. Something has got to give at some stage. Either CISP is underpriced or the other's are ripping us off on fiber. I hope it is the latter and that CISP will be able to pack on upstream conectivity as they grow.

PS: It looks like they have 1G at JINX and 1G at Teraco which seem way thin - considering _all_ their customers are on fiber.
 
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| 192.168.100.1 - 0 | 18 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| 192.168.9.9 - 0 | 18 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 |

| 196.41.104.129 - 0 | 18 | 18 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 |

| 196.41.96.161 - 0 | 18 | 18 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 |

| 217.78.92.145 - 8 | 14 | 13 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |

| 217.78.88.201 - 0 | 18 | 18 | 145 | 145 | 148 | 145 |

| 217.78.88.130 - 0 | 18 | 18 | 145 | 146 | 148 | 146 |

| 217.78.88.249 - 0 | 18 | 18 | 145 | 145 | 148 | 146 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|



Are these results indicative of anything spicy happening with my ISP in CT?

Thanks for the help
 
^^ I'm no expert, but your results look fine to me, the last couple of addresses have high latency, but those are probably international (Looks like the UK).

@Koos, Both CISP and Voxtelecoms informed me that they had no fair use policy before I signed up with my ISP. However CISP did admit that it was because they didn't have much traffic to deal with at the time, and might need to do something about it in the future. Vox also pointed out that they had only recently moved onto their own backbone rather than the IS backbone, so they were still in the process of creating their fair use policy.

CISP seem like a nice bunch, I do hope they can keep up with their growing customer base.
 
Well it's been quite a while since this issue started, but I figured I'd bump this thread with some new information.

Thanks to a great amount of help from the tech support at cool ideas, I have been narrowing down the cause of this connection instability for about the last month.

After thouroughly eliminating my equipment as a possible cause, replacing both router and cpe hardware and rechecking the connection at all possible points, we concluded that there was no hardware problem with the connection on my side or with my line.

Once that was established they sent over a spare router of theirs that they used to remotely run pings, tracert and mtr tests in the background while troubleshooting my line. They similarly ran multiple tests from their own servers and switches. Nothing much came from this, there didn't appear to be any problem with their switch itself or contention.

After this they decided to run some tests after fully unthrottling my line, and it turned out that when my line is not being shaped at all (i.e. a full 1gb/s line speed) the instability issue goes away.

From this they have so far concluded that either there is a problem with how the vumatel backbone throttles connections down to the desired line speed, which causes instability, or just that my normal line speed was too easily distrupted by spikes in network usage. Their suggestion is to change my 4mb line up to a 20mb line to see how things fare over a month or so.

So far I think they are on the right track, but I figured I might as well ask for some more input on here while I'm at it, in case someone with vastly more knowledge of fibre might want to give any alternative explanations.
 
Hi Smilyface, I have been involved in trying to resolve this for you, as you have mentioned we have gone to major extents to try and narrow this down for you. We have been recommended by Vumatel to run the higher line speed as from what they see there have been a lot of traffic dropped due to saturation of the link. Unfortunately at this layer we need to try what is recommended by the transit provider.
 
Smilyface said:
Well it's been quite a while since this issue started, but I figured I'd bump this thread with some new information.

Thanks to a great amount of help from the tech support at cool ideas, I have been narrowing down the cause of this connection instability for about the last month.

After thouroughly eliminating my equipment as a possible cause, replacing both router and cpe hardware and rechecking the connection at all possible points, we concluded that there was no hardware problem with the connection on my side or with my line.

Once that was established they sent over a spare router of theirs that they used to remotely run pings, tracert and mtr tests in the background while troubleshooting my line. They similarly ran multiple tests from their own servers and switches. Nothing much came from this, there didn't appear to be any problem with their switch itself or contention.

After this they decided to run some tests after fully unthrottling my line, and it turned out that when my line is not being shaped at all (i.e. a full 1gb/s line speed) the instability issue goes away.

From this they have so far concluded that either there is a problem with how the vumatel backbone throttles connections down to the desired line speed, which causes instability, or just that my normal line speed was too easily distrupted by spikes in network usage. Their suggestion is to change my 4mb line up to a 20mb line to see how things fare over a month or so.

So far I think they are on the right track, but I figured I might as well ask for some more input on here while I'm at it, in case someone with vastly more knowledge of fibre might want to give any alternative explanations.
Click to expand...

Just go 20MB. You have Fibre for Zeus' sake.
 
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