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On Tue, 22 Oct 2013, Daniel Robinson wrote:
Okay, Even with TalkTalk Fibre I sometimes have an Issue with YouTube video streaming. Obviously it isn't a case of not enough bandwidth on my part I'm sure 40Mbps is fast enough to stream so I'd say perhaps there is something wrong with YouTube, unlikely - but your symptoms are not uncommon. I didn't phone TalkTalk that would have been suicide, I turned my router off over night and changed the filters, haven't had a problem since. Infact, I think others here can say why turning router off over night is a good thing, my limited knowledge says it helps clear static or feedback on the line. Have you tried adjusting your MTU settings to something lower?
The issue with fiddling like this is that unless you're meticulous to change just one thing at a time and run checks before and after, you might as well be part of the "have you tried turning it off and on again" brigade. All you achieve is masking the real issue, or worse, not knowing if the issue was your end, or their end - ie. turn it off overnight - what if that overnight the ISP or BT changed something? You'd never know, but would them think that it was your own power cycle that "fixed" it.
And in-general, don't fiddle with the MTU unless you know what your doing.Power cycling your modem/router: In general don't do it. If you're connected to an ADSL2 (8Mb) exchange then too many line drops will start a line renegotiation cycycle which can take days. BT are supposed to be stopping this on ADSL2+ connections (up to 24Mb, and faster) and coming in-line with what more LLU providers do which is to just give you the fastest speed the line will sync. at. In theory the line may be more unstable, but people seem to want speed over quality, so...
But I'll re-iterate the importance of checking your modems line sync. speed. Do that first and it'll tell you much more than going to speed test sites, youtube, etc.
And don't forget that the Internet is a contended resource. You are sharing the data pipes to the exchange with your PC with everyone else in your house using the same connection..
Then (Using a BTW reseller) from the exchange with everyone else using your exchange. That's then shared over the BT wholesale network and then there is potentially more contention when BT hands it over to the ISP. Even then, inside the ISPs own network there may be more contention, then there's the ISP peering points - yet more sources of contention. Going further, there's the website you're trying to access and there are still thousands of data centers where you just get a 100Mb feed into your rack - obviously the big CDNs who run their own data centres have better resources, but there is still contention.
For an LLU ISP, you skip the BT wholesale network and go directly from exchange to ISP, but consider this: My local exchange has TalkTalk LLU. There are approx 2000 lines. If 15% of these people (300) use talk talk, and average line speed is 15Mb/sec, then that's a potential draw of 4.5Gb/sec. Do you think TT has run a 4.5Gb line from our exchange on the edge of Dartmoor into their core network? It would be nice to think so, but somehow I doubt it, so there's another source of contention that might be no worse than going over the BT wholesale network...
Obviously the ISPs hope that everyone isn't online at the same time - there are laws of averages, statistical analysis and so on, but even so...
If you want no contention between your own LAN and the edge of your ISP, then you need a leased line. Prices for them start at around Â600 a month - which might seem stupidly high, but imagine a busy office of 20 people, all using the same ADSL line, then re-consider..
Oh- lets not get bogged down with the delivery mechanism either - fibre to the cabinet, fibre to the premises - it's all ADSL - Asymetric Digital Subscriber Line - a consumer-grade contended service. 12 years ago I had what people today are calling "fiber". Delivered by Telewest to a cabinet then coppe from the cabinet to the premises... Really no different to today - FTTC and FTTP are just extending the fibre closer to the consumer, but the contended data service remains the same.
Gordon
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