Cambridge area - lag spikes?

[system11]

Is anyone else in the Cambridge are suffering from lag spikes? I've been running continuous traceroutes to a gaming server I use, and ever since Friday 1am it's been getting frequent spikes of packet loss, often resulting in me disconnecting from the game (sometimes if I just stand still it recovers).

Then I ran the same tests against a weberver I have in London - spikes happen at the same time. Then I tested just a few hops into NTL - bingo, same problem. It happens somewhere around something my trace tool thinks is '10.128.196.1' (not a valid IP on my home network or router, so I assume this is some NTL internal IP), and 80.1.202.77 which is a Cambridge router.

Signal and power levels on the modem look ok, only things in the error log are me rebooting it to see if it would help.

I'm going to call them later, although it's usually fairly futile - first they'll ask me to reboot Windows I expect. I don't suppose anyone has a real support number for them?

[Mick Fisher]

Originally Posted by system11

I don't suppose anyone has a real support number for them?

The following newsgroup might be your best option.
virginmedia.support.broadband.cable

[AmAtoL]

The best that you can hope for on here is for people to say that as long as you average 26ms and can show no evidence of packet loss over a 10 second trace then everything is fine.
*'s and N/A's are fine too, it's just the servers way of saying that it doesn't like gaming traffic, and would much prefer it if everyone just downloaded the entire internet instead.
Therefore alleviating the awkward problem of them having to actually provide a reliable service

Target Name: estel.multiplay.co.uk
IP: 85.236.101.109
Date/Time: 16/12/2007 10:21:08 to 16/12/2007 10:21:17
1 7 ms 8 ms 8 ms 10 ms 6 ms 8 ms 9 ms 7 ms 9 ms 10 ms [10.236.84.1]
2 9 ms 11 ms 41 ms 17 ms 10 ms 10 ms 8 ms 1077 ms 8 ms 7 ms oldh-t2cam1-b-v135.inet.ntl.com [80.5.165.225]
3 8 ms 9 ms 1077 ms 8 ms 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms 9 ms 17 ms 10 ms [62.252.192.169]
4 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 25 ms 10 ms 900 ms 9 ms 19 ms 10 ms man-bb-b-so-020-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.242.245]
5 13 ms 10 ms 49 ms 10 ms 15 ms 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 1066 ms 9 ms lee-bb-a-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.175.141]
6 16 ms 27 ms 16 ms 1152 ms 14 ms 16 ms 16 ms 17 ms 17 ms 28 ms pop-bb-b-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.238]
7 18 ms 15 ms 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 16 ms 24 ms 17 ms 17 ms tele-ic-2-as0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.184.6]
8 17 ms 18 ms 15 ms 14 ms 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 17 ms 17 ms [212.250.14.114]
9 17 ms 20 ms 16 ms 16 ms 50 ms 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms 25 ms 34 ms [195.72.129.14]
10 15 ms 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms 25 ms 16 ms 16 ms 17 ms 15 ms 16 ms estel.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.101.109]
Ping statistics for estel.multiplay.co.uk
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 15ms, Maximum = 25ms, Average = 16ms

Target Name: estel.multiplay.co.uk
IP: 85.236.101.109
Date/Time: 16/12/2007 10:21:55 to 16/12/2007 10:22:04
1 9 ms 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms 11 ms 9 ms 1198 ms 25 ms 6 ms 7 ms [10.236.84.1]
2 7 ms 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 7 ms 26 ms 8 ms 9 ms 24 ms 11 ms oldh-t2cam1-b-v135.inet.ntl.com [80.5.165.225]
3 1143 ms 9 ms 10 ms 36 ms 8 ms 29 ms 9 ms 16 ms 19 ms 24 ms [62.252.192.169]
4 9 ms * 11 ms 8 ms 11 ms 12 ms 25 ms 20 ms 12 ms 10 ms man-bb-b-so-020-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.242.245]
5 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 38 ms 9 ms 11 ms 12 ms 921 ms 10 ms 11 ms lee-bb-a-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.175.141]
6 16 ms 48 ms 15 ms 17 ms 16 ms 22 ms 16 ms 14 ms 974 ms N/A pop-bb-b-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.238]
7 16 ms 1038 ms 40 ms 16 ms 18 ms 17 ms 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms tele-ic-2-as0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.184.6]
8 13 ms 15 ms 15 ms 40 ms 1615 ms 27 ms 15 ms 15 ms 158 ms 16 ms [212.250.14.114]
9 15 ms 18 ms 17 ms 13 ms 152 ms 20 ms 18 ms 14 ms 15 ms 17 ms [195.72.129.14]
10 16 ms 15 ms 16 ms 36 ms 16 ms 16 ms 14 ms 15 ms 16 ms 15 ms estel.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.101.109]
Ping statistics for estel.multiplay.co.uk
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 14ms, Maximum = 36ms, Average = 17ms

Target Name: estel.multiplay.co.uk
IP: 85.236.101.109
Date/Time: 16/12/2007 10:23:23 to 16/12/2007 10:23:32
1 6 ms 7 ms 1084 ms 6 ms 6 ms 21 ms 8 ms 8 ms 12 ms 10 ms [10.236.84.1]
2 8 ms 11 ms 7 ms 9 ms 11 ms 14 ms 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms 8 ms oldh-t2cam1-b-v135.inet.ntl.com [80.5.165.225]
3 18 ms 9 ms 18 ms 10 ms 12 ms 12 ms 10 ms 9 ms 8 ms 11 ms [62.252.192.169]
4 10 ms 12 ms 9 ms 1113 ms 14 ms 9 ms 11 ms 12 ms N/A N/A man-bb-b-so-020-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.242.245]
5 13 ms 10 ms 8 ms 10 ms 18 ms 13 ms 11 ms 10 ms 11 ms N/A lee-bb-a-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.175.141]
6 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms 44 ms 21 ms 15 ms 14 ms 16 ms N/A pop-bb-b-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.238]
7 1539 ms 15 ms 16 ms 15 ms 1046 ms 14 ms 25 ms 16 ms 13 ms N/A tele-ic-2-as0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.184.6]
8 86 ms 110 ms 138 ms 158 ms 44 ms 1208 ms 49 ms 26 ms 19 ms N/A [212.250.14.114]
9 19 ms 18 ms 17 ms 17 ms 35 ms 48 ms 17 ms 16 ms 17 ms N/A [195.72.129.14]
10 19 ms 27 ms 19 ms 15 ms 30 ms 17 ms 22 ms 15 ms 17 ms N/A estel.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.101.109]
Ping statistics for estel.multiplay.co.uk
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 15ms, Maximum = 30ms, Average = 19ms

See what I mean, stats seem fine but what a shambles connection.

Oh Yeah it's Sunday morning too :-

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:31:23 UTC

Test 1: 1024K took 9656 ms = 106 KB/sec, approx 873 Kbps, 0.85 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 16297 ms = 62.8 KB/sec, approx 517 Kbps, 0.5 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 10984 ms = 93.2 KB/sec, approx 768 Kbps, 0.75 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 17078 ms = 119.9 KB/sec, approx 988 Kbps, 0.96 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 787 Kbps, 0.77 Mbps

If I didn't laugh I would cry.

[system11]

The speed is something I haven't had any kind of trouble with - in fact when not having little fits it's fine. Every 5-10 minutes though - bam, packet loss even as close as the default route handed out by the cablemodem (done more testing - this is where the problem starts).

[Hom3r]

I'm in Harlow (comes under Cambridge) and I have suffered bad lag while on facebook

[sprattgraham]

Seems OK here in Bishop's Stortford, Cambridge Network

Tracing route to estel.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.101.109]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 10.0.1.1
2 8 ms 8 ms 10 ms 10.128.20.1
3 8 ms 8 ms 7 ms cmbg-t2cam1-a-v109.inet.ntl.com [80.1.202.9]
4 8 ms 14 ms 7 ms cmbg-t2core-a-ge-wan62.inet.ntl.com [195.182.176.37]
5 12 ms 12 ms 10 ms pop-bb-a-so-133-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.174.177]
6 12 ms 35 ms 12 ms win-bb-b-so-010-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.202]
7 12 ms 12 ms 10 ms win-bb-a-ge-000-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.161]
8 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms 212.43.162.194
9 32 ms 10 ms 12 ms tele-ic-2-as0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.184.6]
10 13 ms 15 ms 14 ms 212.250.14.114
11 20 ms 16 ms 16 ms 195.72.129.14
12 25 ms 16 ms 15 ms estel.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.101.109]
Trace complete.

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by Hom3r

I'm in Harlow (comes under Cambridge) and I have suffered bad lag while on facebook

I think that's a Facebook problem as i have the same. Everything else is rock solid.