Extreme Bufferbloat, frequently giving ping over 1100

[08wadams]

Hi all, first post here so if I've missed any details please let me know so I can add them.

We recently moved from BT to EE, and have had lots of issues. It started with our neighbours being connected on our line instead of us, which took a few days to get sorted. Once we were connected to the we ended up having lots of connection dropouts due to FEC errors, after a few weeks of this we received a new Hub to use which solved the FEC errors. We're now having extreme lag spikes for all devices on the network whenever anything's uploading any significant amount of data.

Bufferbloat test gives the following results: https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=110079f1-15a7-43d0-87c9-16f3f0275d79

Screenshot of Bufferbloat test

These lag spikes impact every device on the network at the time of the spike, both wired and wireless, and happen every single time there's a reasonable amount of data being uploaded (iPhones syncing with iCloud for example), regardless of whether the device doing the uploading is wired or wireless. They can last any length of time from a matter of seconds to over an hour, and absolutely kill everyone's connection.

We're on ADSL, not FTTP, but it's the fastest package offered at our address and Openreach have no plans to upgrade us beyond this, so whilst I'd love to upgrade to a faster speed package, it doesn't look like that's an option.

Is this something that has an easy fix, or any fix at all?

[XRaySpeX]

What router do you have (read its label)?

[08wadams]

Knew I'd forget something, sorry - it's a Smart Hub SH31B

[XRaySpeX]

Of course it has solved the FEC errors. Unhelpfully it doesn't report any error stats or any other useful ADSL diagnostics.

[JimM11]

@08wadams Do you still have your old BT Router?

[08wadams]

That's the same point I got to - unable to do an awful lot with the info from the web interface or app, and it feels like most features have been locked.

I guess a better way of asking my question would be something along the lines of "Is it possible to enable QoS features" or even "Is it possible to manually change the bandwidth allocated to each device". I've got some experience with commercial networking, but none of it feels helpful here without the option to do most things I'd normally do with the network in this situation.

[08wadams]

Unfortunately not - the threats of charges made me send it back!

I'm considering just buying a new router at this point which would give me more options to set things up how I like, but don't know whether there would be any issues caused by this, as well as most new routers not even supporting ASDL, only WAN.

[XRaySpeX]

There are still plenty of ADSL/VDSL modem routers on the market as well as on the 2nd-hand marketplaces.

[JimM11]

@08wadams Link to what you need to cover adsl wise, probably copper from the link setting wise. And as @XRaySpeX plenty second hand out there or even new Tp-Link VX range if you are looking to go down that route

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