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[bogof]

What are folk's opinions on Sky's network?

Mum & dad are on NowTV broadband - I'll not lie, it's very cheap, at £22 for 80/20 FTTC inc landline and loads of calls.  Recently they've had a few disconnections.  I've had a look and set up a BQM; looks pretty rubbish.  I was wondering if it might just be their line, but then I found another random Sky BQM and it's very similar, even with the same big spikes in the same place.

Mum & dad:

Random Sky customer:


I'm wondering if this is just par for the course with Sky.  If so, any recommendations for a better inexpensive service?

[Weaver]

It’s the dripping blood - packet loss - that you need to look out for. As for service quality, you largely get what you pay for.

[bogof]

Looks like there is plenty of loss going on.  The major loss events over the last couple of days were synchronized between the graphs, hinting at backend issues (away from the exchanges). 

Annoyingly, even though they are currently on FTTC, because their cabinet is now full, and their line is unbundled to Sky, we can't order a migration; we only get the option of an ADSL line.  Will have to wait for a port to free up before being able to migrate them off NowTV (even though I believe they'll stay on the same port in the cabinet!)

[bogof]

I mean, what on earth is going on here?  Rubbish.

[Weaver]

35% packet loss means that the network is completely unusable. They need a huge additional amount of error correct, G.INP is a must if they don’t have it already, and changing to a very high interleave depth is needed too, because that packet loss burst appears to be a bad noise spike of a nasty duration, and it may be that that long duration is just too much for a shorter interleave depth to cope with. That is all just speculation because I really need to see the full stats from the modems.

[bogof]

35% packet loss means that the network is completely unusable. They need a huge additional amount of error correct, G.INP is a must if they don’t have it already, and changing to a very high interleave depth is needed too, because that packet loss burst appears to be a bad noise spike of a nasty duration, and it may be that that long duration is just too much for a shorter interleave depth to cope with. That is all just speculation because I really need to see the full stats from the modems.

I think you're missing the point... those spikes are the same for my mum & dad and also some other random Sky customer's live BQM that I found on the internet, as is the broad timing of the lower levels of packet loss, coincident with peak times.  So they're not line related, they're somewhere in the backhaul (or at least, some issue with the connectivity between TBB and Sky).  Nothing I do to their modem is going to improve it.

For what it's worth, they get full line rate 80/20 on FTTC, and their latency (outside of when it is impacted by the network) is basically the same as my FTTP line, so I can't see that they're being interleaved or anything like that.

[Weaver]

I see. Your argument is quite correct. The answer then is to switch to a decent ISP.

[Chrysalis]

When I was on sky (now multiple years ago) the network seemed solid, but their local Netflix CDN stuff was slowing right down, by the time I left it was struggling to get enough bandwidth for a 1080p stream.

At the time I had a samknows box connected, and could see from the historical year graph there was a gradual decline in Netflix speedtesting.

[bogof]

When I was on sky (now multiple years ago) the network seemed solid, but their local Netflix CDN stuff was slowing right down, by the time I left it was struggling to get enough bandwidth for a 1080p stream.

At the time I had a samknows box connected, and could see from the historical year graph there was a gradual decline in Netflix speedtesting.

That's useful info.  Mum and dad are heavy content consumers, and mum in particular complains about slow startup etc of streams.  I would usually fob her off and tell her it is running at full line speed.  It adds an extra dimension to me thinking of ditching NowTV/Sky.

I see. `your argument is quite correct. The answer then is to switch to a decent ISP.

Yes, I suppose that is all there is for it.  No amount of whinging at NowTV/Sky will achieve anything other than giving me an aneurism.

For fun I did just check and see that in fact, their baseline 80/20 FTTC latency via Sky is perhaps slightly better than my 900/115 FTTP via AAISP, tee hee.
The rest of it, not so much!

[meritez]

Interesting, if the on-net CDN is contended, then it's going to make most stuff unbearable.

My parents do similar with 4K Iplayer over a 5ghz wireless mesh and the FTTC is only capable of 65/15, it is TalkTalk Business though, which relieves some of the contention.

Over on ISPreview, it's been noted that SKY and Now have re-joined OFCOM's Voluntary Code of Practice for Broadband Speeds:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/01/uk-isp-sky-broadband-finally-adopts-ofcoms-latest-speed-code.html

[craigski]

Possibly due to the introduction of Sky Glass & more recently Sky Stream?

https://www.sky.com/tv/stream

ie more streaming traffic on the Sky networks.

I am sure the Sky network engineers are very busy at moment with capacity and CDN upgrades   

https://sky.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/sky_careers?q=network

[Chrysalis]

That's useful info.  Mum and dad are heavy content consumers, and mum in particular complains about slow startup etc of streams.  I would usually fob her off and tell her it is running at full line speed.  It adds an extra dimension to me thinking of ditching NowTV/Sky.
Yes, I suppose that is all there is for it.  No amount of whinging at NowTV/Sky will achieve anything other than giving me an aneurism.

For fun I did just check and see that in fact, their baseline 80/20 FTTC latency via Sky is perhaps slightly better than my 900/115 FTTP via AAISP, tee hee.
The rest of it, not so much!

Never seen an AAISP TBB graph like yours, usually they very spiky to TBB.  Looks very clean.

[Chrysalis]

Interesting, if the on-net CDN is contended, then it's going to make most stuff unbearable.

My parents do similar with 4K Iplayer over a 5ghz wireless mesh and the FTTC is only capable of 65/15, it is TalkTalk Business though, which relieves some of the contention.

Over on ISPreview, it's been noted that SKY and Now have re-joined OFCOM's Voluntary Code of Practice for Broadband Speeds:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/01/uk-isp-sky-broadband-finally-adopts-ofcoms-latest-speed-code.html

It might be different now, but it was a major factor in me leaving Sky, I remember trying to get myself of the Sky Netflix CDN.

[bogof]

Never seen an AAISP TBB graph like yours, usually they very spiky to TBB.  Looks very clean.

TBB changed something about their network in December which make a big improvement (favouring a new LONAP port, vs their previous LINX one).  It was fixed from around 2pm on 7th Dec (see attached).  Apparently AAISP's TBB charts weren't the only ones to improve.
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/newsite/t/4726852-re-low-tbb-speed-test-results-when-my-isp-is-identified.html

I also have smart queues enabled now on my border gateway - an X86 OpenWRT box doing PPPoE.  Limiting throughput to around 860Mbps down / 97 Mbps up, and prioritising pings.  I still use my Ubiquiti UDM SE, but have the PPPoE offloaded this way.  No double NAT as have a block of IPs from AAISP so the Ubiquiti has a real IP.  All of this means local traffic (such as running speed tests) has effectively no effect on the BQM, so I'm really just looking at the network between me and TBB.  If you look at my BQM vs the BQM for AAISP's gateway you will see that they are basically the same, minus the BTW transit overhead to here - there is a full speedtest that happens every day around 4am which is all but invisible, whereas before the above local activity would cast a notable shadow on the BQM.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I also have smart queues enabled now on my border gateway - an X86 OpenWRT box doing PPPoE.  Limiting throughput to around 860Mbps down / 97 Mbps up, and prioritising pings.

Losing 50-60Mbit to make a chart cleaner seems a bad compromise to me, unless you genuinely were having latency issues under load.