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Think i'm done...


slashformayor
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Can you not connect the R1 to the Sky hub and then connect the power lines to the R1?

 

I can't really answer the soldering question unfortunately. You should be fine to use Sky Q with the Duma, I can't foresee any problems, just ensure you've got R1 in DMZ.

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516180b1b41e781d59fa41d9efce053b-08-11-2

 

I bit the bullet and soldered the 30m run of cable to the wires that come into th house. Some people may start shouting at me saying that it is not my property to be tampering with, but i couldn't care less. If the engineer had done as i had proposed, then i would not have the problems i have now.

 

So i removed the MK4 faceplate, removed the push connected wires, twisted together and soldered then connected the faceplate upto the other end via pushfit and connected everything back up. You can see the dropped packets above while the line was disconnected. Initial speedtests showed marginal improvement over the last tests i did, at about 45mbps, but still low compared to the 75mbps i was getting. I did some ping tests and i was getting great pings though, so i left it as was, and also turned my soldering iron OFF. The test straight after yielded full speed at 75mbps and pings of less than 10ms!

 

Success!

 

So i have left it overnight because as you can see from the graph there is alot of noise right after i did the work, so i've checked on it this morning and there is a noticable improvment before i soldered and after. There is practically no yellow in the graph.

 

Is it normal for those random yellow spikes to appear every now and again? I guess the ones at 8am are the start of peak time etc, but what about the one at 2am?

 

My next step is to take a gander at the connection point at the roof of the house from the pole in the street and see if i can't splice this 30m reel of wire into that, take it through the loft and out the back of the house, leaving me with my master socket actually where i want it! I could just leave this connection as it is and run the cable back up the house and into the loft, but that is basically adding about 8 meters of un-needed cable. Once i have this cable in place i will be able to put the Sky hub in modem only, put the R1 in DMZ and use the R1 as before.

 

Oh and Fraser, thanks for the reply. I did some more testing and although i have improved latency somewhat though the powerlines, i am still getting massive spikes in packet loss Latency (time outs), maybe once every 5 seconds or so. I know powerlines are a bad choice for gaming, but with the way the engineer left it, it is my only way of connecting my console currently until i can get this run of cable to the other side of the house.

 

Another thing to point out for anyone lurking and have Sky Q, the boxed and hub seem to have Powerlines built in, but have not been fully implemented yet. They still supposedly work, and have to be turned on from the secret menu though. I may have a play with this when i am up and running.

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Nicely done, great to hear you got that issue sorted!

 

The peak times I would expect given ISP congestion. 2am one could be a one off as it seems to be a single spike.

 

Without the power lines do you experience the same when directly connected?

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Nicely done, great to hear you got that issue sorted!

 

The peak times I would expect given ISP congestion. 2am one could be a one off as it seems to be a single spike.

 

Without the power lines do you experience the same when directly connected?

I was literally using the ping command in an elevated dos prompt screen, and have it keep pinging till i cancel, i notice that randomly i will get about one time out every 7 pings or so. This is pinging to the xbox from the router side, so it is going through the router then through the powerlines then to the xbox. Average travel time is 2ms with the occasional 4-5ms and then a 20+ms. I have a fair amount of electrical items on this ring though, so i am guessing it is just noise, but it's strange that they work so good when plugged in upstairs and it has to go through a consumer unit and a second ring to connect.

 

As my IP is not a static one like VM, i ahve set up another ping monitor to continue checking results. Hopefully come the weekend i will have the master socket correctly placed and i can start playing with the R1/hub configuration.

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Nicely done, great to hear you got that issue sorted!

 

The peak times I would expect given ISP congestion. 2am one could be a one off as it seems to be a single spike.

 

Without the power lines do you experience the same when directly connected?

I have finished my installation yesterday. I removed the crimp connectors from Openreach engineers installation and twisted/soldered my new cable in it's place. Up through the soffit into the loft, down the back wall of the house and in through the same hole that the Sky engineer used for the sat dish, so it ended up being quite a clean finish. I'm just left with a hole in the front wall to patch up.

 

Now my setup is as follows: Internet enabled Devices - R1 - Q Hub. I have disabled both wifi bands on the Q Hub and hard wired the Silver Q box to the R1. I have then enabled the powerlines feature on all Q boxes (minus hub) and disabled all Wifi bands on each Q box too. This free's up some wifi traffic as my TV streaming is essentially running through my sockets.

 

After i had everything working as it should i setup a final monitor on Thinkbroadband and left it running overnight, and from 6pm to 6am it was incredible. Totally flat, ping of less than 10ms (more like 7-8ms) and no spikes. Then from just after 6am till now i still have the same flat graph, but the minimum ping is almost double what it was. Literally it's like somone flicked a switch and the ping doubled.

 

Originally i thought it was because i updated both Q tv boxes before i went to bed, however, reading online i may be suffering with Interleaving?

 

Can anyone tell me how to enable Fastpath? The Sky Hubs are locked so i don't have access to telnet direct through it. Even some directions on how i can check myself if Fastpath has been disabled would be great.

 

I can post snapshots of the ping monitors if that helps?

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Fastpath is something we have no control over but if you are having pings as low as you say you are I'd say you are allready on fastpath,fastpath will be enabled on a line by the DLM,all you can do is sit tight and wait for dlm to lift interleaving if it's even there at all,I'm on fast path and my ping is solid 15ms

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Each interleaving depth adds 8ms of latency.

 

G.inp "should" be available from your cabinet so that is fast path with on the fly error correction, I would have thought SKY would have shipped the SKYQ routers with compatible firmware.

 

You may have to hang on for a FW update from SKY.

 

But 16ms is still really good and a flat line jitter free ping is terrific, pleased for you.

 

Gaming will be spot on now you are away from the clutches of cable :)

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Fastpath is something we have no control over but if you are having pings as low as you say you are I'd say you are allready on fastpath,fastpath will be enabled on a line by the DLM,all you can do is sit tight and wait for dlm to lift interleaving if it's even there at all,I'm on fast path and my ping is solid 15ms

 

 

Basically don't disconnect it at all because it will be picked up as a fault by the dlm

 

 

Each interleaving depth adds 8ms of latency.

 

G.inp "should" be available from your cabinet so that is fast path with on the fly error correction, I would have thought SKY would have shipped the SKYQ routers with compatible firmware.

 

You may have to hang on for a FW update from SKY.

 

But 16ms is still really good and a flat line jitter free ping is terrific, pleased for you.

 

Gaming will be spot on now you are away from the clutches of cable :)

Many thanks for the replies!

 

I was afraid you would say that i need to wait lol. I'm quite patient, but i've not had chance to game at all really since having the new line installed!

 

I'm not sure if it was clear in my post though. I originally had a ping of about 7-8ms, but looking at the monitor it has nearly tripled and is roughly 21-22ms. A speed test usually yielded pings of around 14ms but now have doubled to around 30ms!

 

Here is the point where the jump happened... (the monitor did have data from 6pm the night before, not sure why it is blank. The big block of packet loss was after i reset the router and was reassigned a new ip).

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I have since left the modem unplugged for an hour or so to grab a different IP in the hopes that i might get re-routed or something, but the results are exactly the same. I have left it alone since yesterday afternoon at 2pm.

 

The other thing is when i do a speed test it connects me to a server in Coventry, whereas before it was Telford. Telford is a hell of a lot closer to me.

 

I guess i will have to wait until the interleaving is lifted, and i hope it does. Sky can;t just tease me with pings in the single digits and then take it away from me just like that lol.

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You must leave the modem on 24/7 the DLM (dynamic line management) will see these as line errors and add more latency with interleaving to try and fix what it thinks are line drops.

 

Leave it on so you regain fast path.

 

Leaving it off over 30mins should not be seen as a line drop but just leave it on as you are trying to make the line look as stable as possible :)

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You must leave the modem on 24/7 the DLM (dynamic line management) will see these as line errors and add more latency with interleaving to try and fix what it thinks are line drops.

 

Leave it on so you regain fast path.

 

Leaving it off over 30mins should not be seen as a line drop but just leave it on as you are trying to make the line look as stable as possible :)

Awesome. Thanks Zennon. Will see what the next few days bring.

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Brilliant, stay synced and you may see more.

 

Sweet graph, that's fibre for you

What do you think this means? I've not touched the router since i started the monitor.

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Looks like the reduction that i saw a couple of days ago has been reapplied. Does this mean that i have errors on the line? You can see a massive spike in packet loss yesterday, which is strange as nobody was even home at that time!

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It looks like a resync at the pl points.

 

You see the spike as it resyncs when it adds more interleaving depth.

 

Just leave it and keep an eye on resyncs/retrains.

 

Apart from the resyncs at 12 am the jitter is very low and that what counts in gaming.

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It looks like a resync at the pl points.

 

You see the spike as it resyncs when it adds more interleaving depth.

 

Just leave it and keep an eye on resyncs/retrains.

 

Apart from the resyncs at 12 am the jitter is very low and that what counts in gaming.

ok i'm on day 10 and it has come down by all of about 1ms in total. Jitter is still very good, however i really want my single digit ping back.

 

I'm under the impression that not even Openreach can change the profile on a line, is this correct? As i am with Sky and on their forums they have basically point blank told me they cannot do anything with regards to interleaving.

 

As a side note, i played BO3 downstairs for the first time since having fibre and the R1, and it was incredible! In the 2 hours or so i was playing, my worst score was 8/8 from joining a game in progress, and this was with a party of 2 friends! Had one of my best party game scores of 39/6 too!

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Like the Z said, don't worry about the interleaving.

I've had interleaving on my line since the first month I had VDSL (it was fastpath for that first month).

But I can't tell any difference.

I can tell that it's a lot better than the jittery shite I had before that though and that's what matters.

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Like the Z said, don't worry about the interleaving.

I've had interleaving on my line since the first month I had VDSL (it was fastpath for that first month).

But I can't tell any difference.

I can tell that it's a lot better than the jittery shite I had before that though and that's what matters.

 

Haha, well i'm leaving the monitor on anyway, so i will check back if i see any changes.

 

I've noticed this thread has had quite a few views/posts. If mods want to lock it that's cool, however i will continue to post updates for anyone with the same troubles as i had if not.

 

Having a newborn daughter means i don't get to game as much anymore, which is ironic considering i changed my isp for mainly for gaming (and VM as a company suck giant donkey wang), but in the little gaming i have done it has been well worth it. And for anyone considering Sky Q, i highly recommend it, top piece of kit, and for the next 12 months i am paying a third of what i did with VM for better quality.

 

Peace

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I've noticed this thread has had quite a few views/posts. If mods want to lock it that's cool, however i will continue to post updates for anyone with the same troubles as i had if not.

 

Having a newborn daughter

 

It's good to read a success story with ISP issues, there's plenty enough of the opposite!

 

Congratulation Slash, when she's old enough she'll thank you for not making her game on a jittery line ;)

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I use ping plotter to keep an eye on my line, it should work with just the smarthub.

 

The static IP is meaning your ISP should use static IP not your devices.

 

Quote :

Can you monitor my connection if I have a dynamic IP?

We can only monitor your line if you have a static IP address as we are not able to track changes to your IP address at the moment. We will look at adding this functionality in a future version.

 

From http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

 

So setting a device is not what you need here but a ISP that has a static or use a service like ddns.

 

Or just check your IP at the time with a site like http://www.ipchicken.com/ then set the BQM to your latest IP for a new test if your dynamic IP changes.

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Ah I thought the type of IP was something you controlled after seemingly being able to "set" a static IP back on Virgin Media. Thanks for clarifying.

 

I use Pingplotter only at the mo, and it shows I've got a fantastic line; I was just interesting in seeing how that looks on a BQM compared to the mess it was on VM lol. I tried finding my IP before it changed and starting a BQM but no joy; it either showed nothing or red for packet loss, I honestly can't remember. I know there's no way to enable ICMP echo requests on the Smart Hub, as it seems fairly devoid of features (even the ability to change MTU, or ping/tracert, which were all available on the Superhub).

 

Sorry for going a bit off topic, that was just bugging me as I couldn't find a workaround.

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That BQM monitor can be a bit funny with dynamic IPs, I remember it doing it to me before.

 

I think you can still get it monitoring your line but if your IP changes then the graph will go blank after that (and you have to set it running again with the new IP).

 

Although I did have a time where I couldn't get it to monitor it at all, think it showed red all over as if it had constant 100% packet loss.

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