BT ADSL High latency - advice

[DannyM]

Hi Folks,

I was in the office on Sunday to update a NAS box we have and noticed the internet was really slow, however yesterday the internet was not useable at all. I called BT and it seemed our hardware was at fault, we have a Zyxel SBG3300 which has an ADSL modem built into it. I did a factory reset of the router and restored the settings.

The internet has been working OK today but still slow, but I did a tracert through the router software and I got this:

traceroute to google.co.uk (216.58.198.195), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 host81-148-96-1.in-addr.btopenworld.com (81.148.96.1) 529.211 ms 530.983 ms 507.821 ms
2 213.120.178.141 (213.120.178.141) 559.230 ms 463.678 ms 475.433 ms
3 213.120.177.98 (213.120.177.98) 554.781 ms 436.454 ms 402.400 ms
4 217.41.168.189 (217.41.168.189) 414.346 ms 608.734 ms 609.705 ms
5 217.41.168.107 (217.41.168.107) 603.796 ms 549.048 ms 623.883 ms
6 109.159.249.76 (109.159.249.76) 651.948 ms - ms - ms
7 acc1-10GigE-0-1-0-7.l-far.21cn-ipp.bt.net (109.159.249.118) 634.876 ms - ms - ms
8 core4-te-0-12-0-19.faraday.ukcore.bt.net (109.159.249.21) 628.127 ms - ms - ms
9 109.159.253.67 (109.159.253.67) 671.930 ms 652.509 ms 693.129 ms
10 216.239.56.227 (216.239.56.227) 440.974 ms 335.534 ms 330.558 ms
11 216.58.215.195 (216.58.215.195) 305.476 ms 623.416 ms 567.480 ms
12 lhr26s03-in-f3.1e100.net (216.58.198.195) 535.870 ms 481.809 ms 496.751 ms
----Traceroute end----

If this has come directly from the router should I be thinking BT is at fault? Or could it still be a router issue?

Thanks

[kalniel]

Could still be router, sorry.

[abaxas]

Agreed with above, check router first. Maybe use the supplied one and see what happens.

[peterb]

It could be either. Trace route is a connection less protocol and may tend to over emphasise latency anyway as you are building up a picture over a number of pings.

There does seem to be a lot of bouncing around BTs network, but that could be a temporary thing. Generally each leg of the transmission relies on a routers routing table that changes over time, so if weekend maintenance has been taking place, that might slow down traffic.

I don't think there is much you can do other than try a different router at your end. But even the response from the last hop (Google's server) looks slow.

[DannyM]

Tracing route to google.co.uk [216.58.213.163]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  BTBusinessHub.home [192.168.1.1]
  2    59 ms    53 ms    62 ms  host81-135-160-1.in-addr.btopenworld.com [81.135.160.1]
  3    59 ms    63 ms    52 ms  213.120.178.141
  4    60 ms    61 ms    53 ms  213.120.177.98
  5    42 ms    39 ms    37 ms  217.41.168.189
  6    43 ms    35 ms    48 ms  217.41.168.107
  7    52 ms    56 ms    49 ms  109.159.249.76
  8    66 ms    65 ms    74 ms  core4-te0-9-0-26.faraday.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.249.59]
  9    70 ms    77 ms    77 ms  peer1-xe0-1-0.faraday.ukcore.bt.net [213.121.193.173]
 10    71 ms    66 ms    64 ms  109.159.253.67
 11    65 ms    77 ms    78 ms  216.239.56.227
 12    68 ms    74 ms    81 ms  209.85.252.177
 13    69 ms    82 ms    73 ms  lhr26s02-in-f163.1e100.net [216.58.213.163]

Trace complete.

I connected the BT Business hub back up, it's quick and dirty for the minute, but it seems the Zyxel isn't playing out, I've looked into the config a little but nothing as changed, I guess it needs to be RMA'd.

Thanks guys!