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[bogof]

Ha!  Two Weeks!   That's nothing...
 
I suppose there are a lot of possible points of failure; with Zen having their own equipment that has to be connected to and managed in each exchange, BTW having to make connections between the head end equipment our fibre connects to and the supplier network.  BUT! No-one made Zen decide to go this route, there is a perfectly serviceable option available, and they don't really seem capable (or perhaps willing) to get to the bottom of these issues when they do crop up. 

Mine wasn't anything like as bad as yours; I had a real struggle with them as my performance was teetering on / just over the edge of being acceptable.  So I wouldn't like to bet it's exactly the same issue.  There were a couple of folk over at Think Broadband forum whose speed issues were much more like yours.  But there was a common thread of issues with their GEA network.  It's quietened down for a while at TBB, so maybe they've managed to resolve most of these problems.

Re: getting out of contract; you can light a fire under them.  You need to give them notice that you intend to leave under the terms of your contract and Ofcom Code of Practice owing to them not delivering advertised speeds; they then have 30 days to fix it or release you.  This does seem to be a pathway you have to specifically request - once you are on this pathway a note appears in your account to indicate it and the effective date in question.

As my speeds were actually slightly marginal, I went for a bit of a different tact with them than the COP, which has very wide speed targets, and instead wrote:

"I would like this email to serve as formal notice that under your terms I judge that you have made a change to my service that is to my significant disadvantage in migrating me to the Zen GEA service.  The change went through on xx/Jun (without notifying me, though I can see the order in the portal that you must have placed when migrating me).  Please undo the changes made during the migration and return my connection to how it was pre-migration.  If you are unable to undo the change, please take this as my notice of intent to end our agreement in no less than 30 days.
From your current retail terms:
 "14.5 If we make a change that is to your significant disadvantage, you should notify us as soon as possible. If we are unable to undo that change, you may end our Agreement without penalty by giving us at least 30 days’ notice. Your notice must be given within 30 days’ of the changes being notified to you. You will not have to pay any charges for the remainder of any minimum period which may apply to the services.""

3 days after this and actual "FAULT RAISED" happened on my account.

[Jasonkruys]

Haha, yes, I read your thread. What an unnecessarily long and drawn out debacle.

Yeah, indeed, if the service was marginal it would be less of an issue (still an issue none-the-less), but it is either OK or unusable, and up and down like a fiddler's elbow.

Whilst it is only 2 weeks, we've quickly got to the nub of the issue, and I honestly don't see how they can argue it. I bet they try though. Ultimately, they either fix whatever is causing the issue or move me back, and if they haven't fixed it or commit   to move me back in the next couple of days I'll make every effort to get released.

Thanks for the steer on the contract.

[j0hn]

Good grief. Just looked and Zen performed a GEA migration on 24th May, can't be a co-incidence. I've just pointed that out to Zen with a quick email.

After reading your 1st post I was going to tell you to look for this in their control panel.
Zens GEA network seems to be absolutely useless for anything 500Mb/s and above.

Pretty much every slow speed post I've seen from a Zen customer on an Ultrafast FTTP product has seen their issues start upon the GEA migration.

Ask Zen to move you back on to BT Wholesale backhaul and the problems will disappear.
Failing that (if they refuse) then I would strongly recommend changing provider (to 1 that doesn't use Zen backhaul).
Zen have been trying to fix their issues relating to poor speed on their GEA network for many many months now. The Zen sub forum on Thinkbroadband.com is full of users with identical problems. They had a perfect service with full throughput 24/7 then overnight performance deteriorates. Each time the user has had a GEA migration on to Zens own network.
Here's just 1 of the threads with many customers with the exact same issue
The only resolution for every customer was a migration back off the Zen GEA network (back to BT Wholesale usually) or changing provider. I've not seen a single example of Zen fixing things.

They have wasted days of your time with all these Openreach engineers. It's entirely down to Zens network.
The test the engineer ran terminates at the exchange, which is where Zen take over the connection from Openreach.

[XGS_Is_On]

Interestingly I'm on a Zen Wholesale service for my backup and it's fine.

Having read this thread I'll put some more telemetry on it.

[Jasonkruys]

Is there any way of veryfying a migration back to the Wholesale GEA? Apart from a restoration of normal service?

I got excited this morning, had 6 hours of no issues from 0200, but it has just flopped again - 10Mb/s

Let's see what they say today - yesterday, I asked to be migrated back or allowed to move.

[craigski]

Is there any way of veryfying a migration back to the Wholesale GEA? Apart from a restoration of normal service?

Do a trace route to 1.1.1.1, and see what you gateway is, I recall BTW backhaul used different Zen gateway IP addresses vs Zen backhaul, could have changed now though:

https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,27091.msg456733.html#msg456733

[Jasonkruys]

Do a trace route to 1.1.1.1, and see what you gateway is, I recall BTW backhaul used different Zen gateway IP addresses vs Zen backhaul, could have changed now though:

https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,27091.msg456733.html#msg456733

Thanks, that seems to stack up. Currently using 51.148.77.141, meaning Zen backhaul.

[bogof]

Interestingly I'm on a Zen Wholesale service for my backup and it's fine.

Having read this thread I'll put some more telemetry on it.

I don't think their problems were ever thought to be universal, as you'd expect given their size there would be a bit more outcry; but I think the reason to avoid seems to be that in the event you are affected they simply didn't seem to have effective routes to resolving these issues.

My link was mostly ok-ish, but many speed tests to many sites - even multithreaded - would top out at well below line rate (usually around 2/3rds or so).  All resolved when switched back to BTW.

[meritez]

Interestingly I'm on a Zen Wholesale service for my backup and it's fine.

Having read this thread I'll put some more telemetry on it.

That'll be interesting, what speed is your Zen Wholesale backup?

[kitz]

Apologies if Ive missed something, but I dont seem to have seen any post that quotes  time frames.  Ive seen several posts saying that its sometimes ok, but sometimes its dreadful.. and others showing appalling speeds, but no mention I could see if the test was done at a specific time.

Are things worse in the evenings.  What are things like at say 2am-5am?  Is there any time of the day/night since the switch that things have been ok.
I'm trying to eliminate the possibility of them having under provisioned some of the cablelinks.  When you have connections capable of up to 1Gbps, then it doesnt take a genius to work out a 10Gb cablelink could become saturated by several heavy users.  I seem to recall something somewhere that Zen had ended up provisioned some users on a 1Gb link.  Their network now is quite large and covers a large % of the country. I'd expect to see a lot more unhappy people if there was something wrong with the network configuration.

[Jasonkruys]

Hi Kitz,

For me, it is completely random. I set up monitoring early (before I realised the probable cause) for exactly that reason - see whether there were trends during peak times, or during particularly hot periods of the day, or when it was raining, or indeed happening at the same time every day - none of the above. All over the place at any time.

One day, for example, I had 600kb/s from 00:00 to 04:00 BST, but full speed 09:00 - 11:00. No two days are the same.

Unlike bogofs, mine seems to very much be 'all or nothing'. Occasionally, I am blessed with 80Mb/s for half an hour or so, before dropping to less than 10Mb/s. Otherwise is is full speed, or less than 10Mb/s.

Zen are insistent the previous GEA issue has long been fixed, but thos fixes don't appear to be working on my line only. They are basically just ignoring me now and rolling out platitudes, apologies, and a promise they'll get to the bottom of it soon - last reply this morning. Perhaps I am being too patient.

That being said, things do appear to be improving. Gradually I seem to be getting slightly longer and longer periods or acceptable.performance, rather than it being very 'spiky' - it's more 'steppy' now 

EDIT: Added 3 PNG's to better demonstrate some of the issues:

24 Hours on May 31st
24 Hours on Jun 02nd
Last 12 Hours

Other days are similar speeds in terms of min/max, but happening at completely different, and random times. As said, the last 12 hours has been the best day yet.. 

[kitz]

Thanks for the reply.  School holidays is another thing to look out for.  However it does look a bit random.  I wonder if Zen would tell you the cablelink capacity and how they monitor. isnt much if the head end exchange covers a wider area of several smaller exchanges.       Sorry that I can't come up with any other suggestions  :/

[Jasonkruys]

Thanks Kitz. Yeah, random indeed - on Wednesday it is 3 weeks, so dodging the holidays as well. Also, would have to be pretty ropy planning if capacity was causing 4-600 kb/s for hours. Since I posted those charts, I've not had more than 30Mb/s this evening.

Zen is still plugging away at trying to understand it. I'm confident moving me back to BT Wholesale will fix it - issues started at exactly 0400 on the day the migration is showing as being fulfilled. Before that, clean as a whistle, and line speed without a single blip since August installation.

Difficult to get anything out of them now, but common theme is that the exchange equipment is showing no congestion, no errors, no discarded packets and everything looks ok. They've set up a ping from their end as of Friday, so I assume they're seeing the packet loss I'm seeing on the TBB BQM that exactly mirrors the poorest speed period, but I have no idea what tools they have to determine where the issue is - that appears to be where they are, they can see the overall issue, but can't fix it/work out what is happening.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I just don't get how they are continuing to roll this out while constantly hitting the same problem.  Surely at some point the brakes need pulling while they figure out what is wrong?

The only thing I can think of is this must hit customs randomly, there must be people on GEA where its working fine.  Although the sceptic in me thinks its just due to the minority of people who would even notice the problem.

[Chrysalis]

I just don't get how they are continuing to roll this out while constantly hitting the same problem.  Surely at some point the brakes need pulling while they figure out what is wrong?

The only thing I can think of is this must hit customs randomly, there must be people on GEA where its working fine.  Although the sceptic in me thinks its just due to the minority of people who would even notice the problem.

I expect its looked at in a way of how many customers actually report the problem (who notices?), if its something like zero point something, which is probable, then its probably not going to stop the rollout of something that cuts their operating expenses.  Sadly many ISPs now are reactive instead of proactive.