Need help before escalating to ISP: Severe packet loss (Fiber)

[Lynx2123]

Yesterday, I "upgraded" to fiber, since then I've been experiencing packet loss, but it's very confusing, I really can't find out whether it's me or my ISP, I've seen so many conflicting situations that make me think it's me, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.


3 types of packet loss

1 - Basically sitting there doing nothing, bandwidth monitor open on my router and cmd pinging google.com, everything is running smoothly, but then shit hits the fan. CONSTANT dropped packets, usually coming in synchronized pairs, aka 2 packet drops out of every 6...

2 - This one is a bit more understandable, it's buffer bloat. When downloading, not necessarily even maxing my bandwidth, but just downloading at maybe 5-8 Mbps, I get dropped packets. <- This makes me think it's my ISP.


3 - cmd ping to one host dies (looks like dropped packs, but actually, the internet is fine because as soon as I restart the ping to that same location, it works. Virtual packet loss in this case? To fix this issue (or so I thought), I turned on Extend and Spoof TTL on my router. To no avail.

What I've already done:

- Ping from different devices to confirm results (both LAN and Wireless)
- Gone through 3 ethernet cables for modem > router connection.
- Tried several MTU/MRU values (this one seems to have helped at least a bit)
- Ran traceroute, can't put my finger on a specific hop being the issue.


Here are the Fiber optic statistics provided by my ONT, do they look okay?

Transmitted power: 2.8 dBm
Received power: -11.12 dBm
Temperature: 57.93oC
Voltage: 3.29 V
Current: 10.39 mA

I don't want to jump to conclusions and blame my ISP, after all, it is fiber and the chances of it being the main issue are extremely slim, no?

Is there anything else I can do on my end? Any tests I can run?

 

[bill001g]

The simplest test is to plug directly into the ONT with a pc. If you see any packet loss then it is the ISP problem and they need to fix it.

Everyone seems to blame any problem on bufferbloat. That problem should only occur if you are transferring data at the maximum allowed download rate. The equipment rather than drop the packet when the bandwidth is exceeded attempt to store it in a buffer. If you are downloading below your contracted rate why would the router put data in a buffer....so you can not get bufferbloat.

Bufferbloat symptom is not packet loss it is high latency. That is why bufferbloat is a problem it attempt to prevent packet loss in exchange for delays. This only matters really to games, almost any other application the bufferbloat is actually a good thing because they are affected more by loss than delay.

In any case if tools are detecting bufferbloat and you are not downloading near your maximum then the bufferbloat is in the ISP equipment. It can happen if someone else is downloading something and some shared path is overloaded. Only the ISP can fix that there is no setting on your equipment that can affect someone else traffic.

 

[Lynx2123]

The simplest test is to plug directly into the ONT with a pc. If you see any packet loss then it is the ISP problem and they need to fix it.

Everyone seems to blame any problem on bufferbloat. That problem should only occur if you are transferring data at the maximum allowed download rate. The equipment rather than drop the packet when the bandwidth is exceeded attempt to store it in a buffer. If you are downloading below your contracted rate why would the router put data in a buffer....so you can not get bufferbloat.

Bufferbloat symptom is not packet loss it is high latency. That is why bufferbloat is a problem it attempt to prevent packet loss in exchange for delays. This only matters really to games, almost any other application the bufferbloat is actually a good thing because they are affected more by loss than delay.

In any case if tools are detecting bufferbloat and you are not downloading near your maximum then the bufferbloat is in the ISP equipment. It can happen if someone else is downloading something and some shared path is overloaded. Only the ISP can fix that there is no setting on your equipment that can affect someone else traffic.

Yeah, I also thought it might be an issue with the bandwidth not being dedicated, since the issue arises and gets worsened based on the time of day, peak and whatnot. Thankfully, I have 2 fiber providers in my area, if the issue persists, I'll just cancel with this one.

 

[failboat]

there are programs that ping your isp gateway and log + graph. if you can also log your current bandwidth you can compare the two to check if it's bufferbloat. if you drop packs when the pipe should have space it's an issue. maybe they terminated an end bad or something.