Routing problem?

[SwannyD2]

Hi all,

What’s the best way to alert EE to a local routing problem?

EE’s system wants to send out an engineer to my property, but I’m confident that the problem lies further up the chain.

Long story short, I was with BT with Fibre 900, reporting my speeds through an Ofcom scheme with Sam Knows.

Until this time last year there was no problems with speed reporting, I comfortably delivered 950 meg down, more recently this is dropped to less than 30 meg. My upload has remained fine. But I do receive problems watching multicast TV, picture breakup etc, when downloading App Store apps.

After spending a lot of time troubleshooting this with Sam Knows, some speed tests via some servers are delivering the full speed, many more are not, including those connected to Apple and Microsoft. This affects things like downloading apps, updates and 365 files.

It’s been highlighted further over the last few weeks as I’ve been downloading updates to iOS, taking more than 2 hours per device, when it should be more like minutes.

I recently switched to EE, and hoping the problems I’ve been having would go away but they haven’t.

Whichever servers/routing experiencing problems, also now includes EE because running a speed test for the line prompts me to have an engineer sent out as a fault is detected. I’ve also noticed breakup of channels running on multicast through EE TV.

I understand a little bit about traffic routing and connections, and I’ve been through the whole process of using Ethernet to connect, rebooting devices, replacing cables restarting everything. This is definitely a problem further upstream, and could really do without an engineer call unless absolutely necessary when I can demonstrate the discrepancy so clearly using a VPN.

Connecting to a VPN via Dublin (I’m in Belfast), instantly remove the speed limits I’m getting, and I can download updates at easily 20x the speed without it.

I’m using the standard router supplied, default settings for DNS (having tried others too). I can’t think of anything else to try.

Is there anyway to get this raised or flagged with the team through the forum to investigate further, and save confusion and call outs that aren’t likely to be a simple replacement of kit inside the property?

Thanks in advance.

[Mustrum]

@SwannyD2  Alas OFCOM and Samknows know nothing about telecoms and internet connectivity, so from a personal perspective I would not take anything they say to mean anything. I used them a number of years ago, but all they did was massivley increase my internet usage with their tests and slow down my internet experience with their continuous tests which never did operate when I was not using it, unlike their claims.

No ISP is going to guarantee speeds to other organisations such as Apple or Microsoft especially when millions of other customers are upgrading their software/firmware.

This forum is not Customer Services and there are no formal links through to and technical support teams.

However there are a number of knowledgeable fellow customers who may be able to help with your issues.

HTH

[JimM11]

@SwannyD2 Only possible suggestion would be to call EE CS and get to tech support, see if they will listen to you and go from there. Starting point has to be somewhere, would let the telecoms engineer come do his job, and raise the flag. What is your standard router model?  

[SwannyD2]

No, I understood that too, hence the testing of VPNs to spot the problem. I didn’t find their service impact anything of my usage or speed, quite the country, they were able to spot this issue first. They reached out to check if there were any internal problems. 

I’m not asking EE to guarantee speeds, I’m asking them to investigate a problem which I can demonstrate, and their own system appears to show.

Apple and Microsoft are two of the world’s largest online presences, if I can receive a file in a fraction of the time using a VPN and non-native routing, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to investigate why they can’t. 

I appreciate that this is a customer to customer forum, but there are people on here who have access to accounts to look into issues, and maybe others with similar problems who may of been on the meri-go-round that is customer support…. It’s why I’m posting here and not somewhere like Reddit. Fingers crossed. 

[SwannyD2]

Thanks. I can see how this is going to go through customer services though… I take a day from work, they send an engineer round to do what I’ve already done, and still gets kicked upstairs. 

I’m using Smart Hub Plus, but it’s the same on Eero and on BT HomeHub 2 also. 

[Mustrum]

@SwannyD2  with luck, one of elusive people you hope of may respond, but do give them a chance.

Were It me, I would try without the SamKnows box for a while to see if you notice a difference.

[SwannyD2]

Like I said, network has been stripped back to bare bones. 

SamKnows hasn’t been connected since the start of the year. It’s useless when it’s reporting such data anyway. 

[Mustrum]

@SwannyD2  have you heard of/or use Think Broadbands BQM?

 https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality 

It needs something to ping, ideally your router if y.ou can set it to respond to pings. But the graphs produced can give a good idea of what is going on with your broadband link. Sight of the results should help/

[SwannyD2]

Thanks, I’ll take a look. A quick run of their speed test shows something’s not right….  Fibre 900…

[Mustrum]

@SwannyD2  no, those results are not good.

From a priority point of view, your speeds need sorting first, so an engineer visit really should happen very much sooner than later.

If you still have routing issues after the speeds are sorted, they can be looked at - might need a new thread!