Strange internet reliability issue
Discussion
I'm experiencing random, but quite regular drops in internet performance.
Most of the time, it's working fine, and then for a short period of 5 to 30 seconds, no service, then it returns to normal.
This is enough to be an annoyance when browsing the web, and also enough to drop my wife's VPN connection to work when she's WFH.
The internet is Sky Broadband Ultrafast 1, which when working normally gives 90mbps download and 30mbps upload speeds with a latency of 5ms or less.
The Sky router is plugged into a Netgear 8 port gigabit switch via cat5e cable.
The WiFi on the Sky router is disabled.
WiFi in the house is provided by a Ubiquiti AP which is also directly wired into the switch.
I'm seeing this behaviour from wireless connected devices (wife's Windows 10 laptop and Chromebook), and also from my Mac Pro, which is wired into the switch, rather than on WiFi.
I've set up 2 sets of monitoring on the internet "connection" using the broadband quality monitor on the thinkbroadband website. One of these monitors the connection to the external IP of the Sky router, and the other to my Mac Pro.
The monitoring of the link from their website to the external IP address of the Sky router shows no issues at all over several days.
The monitoring to my Mac Pro shows frequent latency and packet drop errors, which co-incide with when I'm seeing service interruptions.
This leads me to suspect that the issue lies with my internal home network, rather than the external internet link.
Is there any low-cost tool or app that I could use to monitor the internal network for possible connected devices which may be generating large amounts of traffic? Might there be an intermittent problem with the Netgear switch?
Any thoughts/ideas welcome.
Most of the time, it's working fine, and then for a short period of 5 to 30 seconds, no service, then it returns to normal.
This is enough to be an annoyance when browsing the web, and also enough to drop my wife's VPN connection to work when she's WFH.
The internet is Sky Broadband Ultrafast 1, which when working normally gives 90mbps download and 30mbps upload speeds with a latency of 5ms or less.
The Sky router is plugged into a Netgear 8 port gigabit switch via cat5e cable.
The WiFi on the Sky router is disabled.
WiFi in the house is provided by a Ubiquiti AP which is also directly wired into the switch.
I'm seeing this behaviour from wireless connected devices (wife's Windows 10 laptop and Chromebook), and also from my Mac Pro, which is wired into the switch, rather than on WiFi.
I've set up 2 sets of monitoring on the internet "connection" using the broadband quality monitor on the thinkbroadband website. One of these monitors the connection to the external IP of the Sky router, and the other to my Mac Pro.
The monitoring of the link from their website to the external IP address of the Sky router shows no issues at all over several days.
The monitoring to my Mac Pro shows frequent latency and packet drop errors, which co-incide with when I'm seeing service interruptions.
This leads me to suspect that the issue lies with my internal home network, rather than the external internet link.
Is there any low-cost tool or app that I could use to monitor the internal network for possible connected devices which may be generating large amounts of traffic? Might there be an intermittent problem with the Netgear switch?
Any thoughts/ideas welcome.
It's an unusual problem, normally you'd suspect either the ISP or a WiFi issue, the suggestion of CGNAT is a possibility, but I don't think Sky use that.
To measure your MAC's response, presumably you've set up a firewall rule to get that traffic through the Sky router? So it could still potentially be an issue with the router doing something unexpected, as responding to an external ping would be a different code path to dealing with forwarded NATted traffic into your network. That said, it seems unlikely.
Do you have the Ubiquiti management agent running? That keeps some stats on wireless utilisation and you might see a spike in traffic when it goes slow.
Switches are really cheap, so you might just try swapping another one in.
To measure your MAC's response, presumably you've set up a firewall rule to get that traffic through the Sky router? So it could still potentially be an issue with the router doing something unexpected, as responding to an external ping would be a different code path to dealing with forwarded NATted traffic into your network. That said, it seems unlikely.
Do you have the Ubiquiti management agent running? That keeps some stats on wireless utilisation and you might see a spike in traffic when it goes slow.
Switches are really cheap, so you might just try swapping another one in.
outnumbered said:
It's an unusual problem, normally you'd suspect either the ISP or a WiFi issue, the suggestion of CGNAT is a possibility, but I don't think Sky use that.
To measure your MAC's response, presumably you've set up a firewall rule to get that traffic through the Sky router? So it could still potentially be an issue with the router doing something unexpected, as responding to an external ping would be a different code path to dealing with forwarded NATted traffic into your network. That said, it seems unlikely.
Do you have the Ubiquiti management agent running? That keeps some stats on wireless utilisation and you might see a spike in traffic when it goes slow.
Switches are really cheap, so you might just try swapping another one in.
As I dislike threads where people offer helpful advice (thanks everyone above), and the OP never responds, I thought I'd provide an update.To measure your MAC's response, presumably you've set up a firewall rule to get that traffic through the Sky router? So it could still potentially be an issue with the router doing something unexpected, as responding to an external ping would be a different code path to dealing with forwarded NATted traffic into your network. That said, it seems unlikely.
Do you have the Ubiquiti management agent running? That keeps some stats on wireless utilisation and you might see a spike in traffic when it goes slow.
Switches are really cheap, so you might just try swapping another one in.
I checked the wireless traffic when experiencing a drop in performance, and didn't see especially heavy traffic on the wireless network.
As a result, I decided to try swapping the switch, so got a TP Link TL-SG608E 8 port switch (£25) to replace the existing Netgear GS108E 8 port switch. The new switch has been in place for a couple of days and the problem has completely disappeared. The broadband monitoring graphs for both the external and internal monitoring points also support this with no latency or packet loss errors.
So it looks like the switch was faulty. Either way Mrs CnC is happy as her work VPN is once again reliable, so I'm also happy.
Thanks everyone, and Merry Christmas to you all.
Good result.
I've stopped buying Netgear devices after I had 2 devices that turned out to have dodgy power supplies. I'm still using the 8 port NG switch but I found a suitably rated power supply (from my big box of old cables and power plugs I can't bear to throw away) and soldered the NG plug on to it.
I've stopped buying Netgear devices after I had 2 devices that turned out to have dodgy power supplies. I'm still using the 8 port NG switch but I found a suitably rated power supply (from my big box of old cables and power plugs I can't bear to throw away) and soldered the NG plug on to it.
).C n C said:
As I dislike threads where people offer helpful advice (thanks everyone above), and the OP never responds, I thought I'd provide an update.
I checked the wireless traffic when experiencing a drop in performance, and didn't see especially heavy traffic on the wireless network.
As a result, I decided to try swapping the switch, so got a TP Link TL-SG608E 8 port switch (£25) to replace the existing Netgear GS108E 8 port switch. The new switch has been in place for a couple of days and the problem has completely disappeared. The broadband monitoring graphs for both the external and internal monitoring points also support this with no latency or packet loss errors.
So it looks like the switch was faulty. Either way Mrs CnC is happy as her work VPN is once again reliable, so I'm also happy.
Thanks everyone, and Merry Christmas to you all.
Thanks, I'd not seen this thread before and I'd got as far as your second sentence and immediately thought 'your switch is rebooting'. As I had exactly the same with a 24 port TP link switch. I replaced it with a ubiquiti managed switch and equally haven't had an issue since.I checked the wireless traffic when experiencing a drop in performance, and didn't see especially heavy traffic on the wireless network.
As a result, I decided to try swapping the switch, so got a TP Link TL-SG608E 8 port switch (£25) to replace the existing Netgear GS108E 8 port switch. The new switch has been in place for a couple of days and the problem has completely disappeared. The broadband monitoring graphs for both the external and internal monitoring points also support this with no latency or packet loss errors.
So it looks like the switch was faulty. Either way Mrs CnC is happy as her work VPN is once again reliable, so I'm also happy.
Thanks everyone, and Merry Christmas to you all.
Report to ISP and let them monitor the line. - maybe put a ping logger on yourself and pass on the drop outs to them when you raise it with the ISP.
I went thru this and the ISP were, to be fair, fairly good, even though it can take a while to take you seriously.
They will almost certainly tell you to put the router direct into 'test socket' (depending on BT wall box)', add an ADSL filter (even if your BT socket has one built in, and see if it gets better.
usually go armed with your ping logger results and tell them you've done all the above and they will take you more seriously from the start, and probably will get escalated sooner. Last time this happened to me I got whole new copper to the house.
I went thru this and the ISP were, to be fair, fairly good, even though it can take a while to take you seriously.
They will almost certainly tell you to put the router direct into 'test socket' (depending on BT wall box)', add an ADSL filter (even if your BT socket has one built in, and see if it gets better.
usually go armed with your ping logger results and tell them you've done all the above and they will take you more seriously from the start, and probably will get escalated sooner. Last time this happened to me I got whole new copper to the house.
sparkyhx said:
Report to ISP and let them monitor the line. - maybe put a ping logger on yourself and pass on the drop outs to them when you raise it with the ISP.
I went thru this and the ISP were, to be fair, fairly good, even though it can take a while to take you seriously.
They will almost certainly tell you to put the router direct into 'test socket' (depending on BT wall box)', add an ADSL filter (even if your BT socket has one built in, and see if it gets better.
usually go armed with your ping logger results and tell them you've done all the above and they will take you more seriously from the start, and probably will get escalated sooner. Last time this happened to me I got whole new copper to the house.
It was his net gear switch. I went thru this and the ISP were, to be fair, fairly good, even though it can take a while to take you seriously.
They will almost certainly tell you to put the router direct into 'test socket' (depending on BT wall box)', add an ADSL filter (even if your BT socket has one built in, and see if it gets better.
usually go armed with your ping logger results and tell them you've done all the above and they will take you more seriously from the start, and probably will get escalated sooner. Last time this happened to me I got whole new copper to the house.
C n C said:
outnumbered said:
It's an unusual problem, normally you'd suspect either the ISP or a WiFi issue, the suggestion of CGNAT is a possibility, but I don't think Sky use that.
To measure your MAC's response, presumably you've set up a firewall rule to get that traffic through the Sky router? So it could still potentially be an issue with the router doing something unexpected, as responding to an external ping would be a different code path to dealing with forwarded NATted traffic into your network. That said, it seems unlikely.
Do you have the Ubiquiti management agent running? That keeps some stats on wireless utilisation and you might see a spike in traffic when it goes slow.
Switches are really cheap, so you might just try swapping another one in.
As I dislike threads where people offer helpful advice (thanks everyone above), and the OP never responds, I thought I'd provide an update.To measure your MAC's response, presumably you've set up a firewall rule to get that traffic through the Sky router? So it could still potentially be an issue with the router doing something unexpected, as responding to an external ping would be a different code path to dealing with forwarded NATted traffic into your network. That said, it seems unlikely.
Do you have the Ubiquiti management agent running? That keeps some stats on wireless utilisation and you might see a spike in traffic when it goes slow.
Switches are really cheap, so you might just try swapping another one in.
I checked the wireless traffic when experiencing a drop in performance, and didn't see especially heavy traffic on the wireless network.
As a result, I decided to try swapping the switch, so got a TP Link TL-SG608E 8 port switch (£25) to replace the existing Netgear GS108E 8 port switch. The new switch has been in place for a couple of days and the problem has completely disappeared. The broadband monitoring graphs for both the external and internal monitoring points also support this with no latency or packet loss errors.
So it looks like the switch was faulty. Either way Mrs CnC is happy as her work VPN is once again reliable, so I'm also happy.
Thanks everyone, and Merry Christmas to you all.
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