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[Alex Atkin UK]

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.

While I can understand to some extent the "roll it out and problem solve later" from their perspective, it could also bite them in the rear if it turns out to be a hardware problem.

[bogof]

How you getting on @Jasonkruys?

[spudgun]

How you getting on @Jasonkruys?

I'd be interested to hear more about this too as, hopefully, fttp is in the next 12-18 months here and I am currently on Zen fttc and have been happy with Zen for over a decade. I am, however, concerned about the reports of issues of some users who have been put on to the GEA backhaul, as that may make me think twice about sticking with Zen when fttp comes.

I had the GEA migration on my 80-20 (full sync) fttc circuit in March 2022 and have had no issues, but these reports do concern me and if you could continue to share your experiences it would be greatly appreciated.

[Jasonkruys]

How you getting on @Jasonkruys?

Still suffering. Still getting fobbed off, and since the GEA migration was pointed out, Comms have gone from being vaguely useful, to 'im still chasing the network team'. Fault is recorded on my account on 26th May - after 30 days I'll raise a formal complaint and try the Ofcom code of practice they've signed up to - after 30 days of not being able to access promised speeds and I should be able to exit. Hopefully I'm at an advantage in that my issue is not poor performance that is on the edge of the guarantee, but frequently virtually no connection at all.

Still naively hoping they might fix it or eventually concede and migrate me back.

In the space of a few weeks I've gone from being a Zen advocate recommending them all the time, to now saying avoid them at all costs.

[spudgun]

Still suffering. Still getting fobbed off, and since the GEA migration was pointed out, Comms have gone from being vaguely useful, to 'im still chasing the network team'. Fault is recorded on my account on 26th May - after 30 days I'll raise a formal complaint and try the Ofcom code of practice they've signed up to - after 30 days of not being able to access promised speeds and I should be able to exit. Hopefully I'm at an advantage in that my issue is not poor performance that is on the edge of the guarantee, but frequently virtually no connection at all.

Still naively hoping they might fix it or eventually concede and migrate me back.

In the space of a few weeks I've gone from being a Zen advocate recommending them all the time, to now saying avoid them at all costs.

I'm sorry to hear that, but thank you for the update. I hope you don't mind, but I have a couple of questions:

Were you a Zen customer before having fttp?
If so, did your line get transferred to GEA when on fttc/g. Fast (or alternative) and then BT backhaul for fttp when it was installed and then GEA as mentioned in the thread?

Apologies for hijacking the thread a little, but I'm echoing your views on Zen and going from an advocate to bring very concerned and thinking I should research alternatives.

[Jasonkruys]

I'm sorry to hear that, but thank you for the update. I hope you don't mind, but I have a couple of questions:

Were you a Zen customer before having fttp?
If so, did your line get transferred to GEA when on fttc/g. Fast (or alternative) and then BT backhaul for fttp when it was installed and then GEA as mentioned in the thread?

Apologies for hijacking the thread a little, but I'm echoing your views on Zen and going from an advocate to bring very concerned and thinking I should research alternatives.

Hi, no problem.

Yes, I was a very happy customer with Zen prior to FTTP on an FTTC service. Yes, I did have a GEA Migration when on FTTC - no issues. Switched to FTTP in August and have had a faultless connection on the wholesale GEA, until 24th May when I then had a Zen GEA migration on FTTP.

It does seem it is only FTTP connections >500Mb/s that are seeing issues, and apparently not all of them or you'd expect a lot more fuss.

[j0hn]

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.

Is this a 550Mb or 1Gb package?
I recall previously you describing your backup as being 330Mb (though that was probably a couple years ago)

I just spent about an hour reading through the Zen sub forum on Thinkbroadband and it's a genuine struggle to find a single user who's able to get consistent full throughput on Zen GEA on 550Mb or 1Gb.
Lower tiers seem unaffected.

Usually when someone posts a specific issue like this there's the odd "my line is fine" post but all I see is a whole ocean worth of "me too". For most users it's a considerable overnight degradation coinciding with a GEA migration order showing in the control panel.

[craigski]

I recall on the bogoff thread, the issue was some users (maybe specific to locality/exchange) experienced poor speedtest performance some of the time, especially with single thread speedtests.

A while ago I suggested it could be due to LAG of ethernet ports. I am by no means a network expert, so this may all be rubbish.

Could Zen be using LAG with mixed speed ports at some exchanges, to provide redundancy and higher aggregate speed, eg mixing 1Gb and 10Gb links? I did a quick google and this seems possible (by default) on Nokia equipment, so I assume is on other types of equipment.

If you are connected to one of these exchanges and you do a single thread speed test you may be unlucky and the path is down a 1Gb link, as it cant be split across multiple ethernet connections of different speeds.

However, when you do a multi thread speed test and/or maxing out your connection with multiple IP connections to different destination IP addresses, some traffic could be on a 1Gb and some on a 10Gb physical connection, so you would see better overall performance, as you are utilizing multiple paths, both 1Gb and 10Gb.

So if the exchange does have mixed speed LAG, and you are on that exchange trying a single thread speedtest, you may not see the results you were expecting?

[bogof]

Could Zen be using LAG with mixed speed ports at some exchanges, to provide redundancy and higher aggregate speed, eg mixing 1Gb and 10Gb links? I did a quick google and this seems possible (by default) on Nokia equipment, so I assume is on other types of equipment.

If you are connected to one of these exchanges and you do a single thread speed test you may be unlucky and the path is down a 1Gb link, as it cant be split across multiple ethernet connections of different speeds.

I'm not sure how much value there is speculating in how they might have it set up badly, if it were a simple "switch flip" you'd expect their network operations team would have worked it out by now...

For what it's worth, my speed tests were mostly "poor" (550-700Mbps on a 900Mbps connection) even with multi-threaded speed tests to most sites, with only a few sites being line rate.  On the BTW network the vast majority of sites would be at line rate with the same test, with only a handful of less capable sites performing poorly.

[Jasonkruys]

Agree with Bogof. My situation appears much worse - at the worst periods, it's as if I have no connection at all the speed is so bad - irrespective of what I am trying to do. Whilst the theory seems sound (And I believe it is Nokia kit in my exchange following the Openreach visit), I can't see it causing that big of an issue - including up to 20% packetloss on the TBB BQM that started following migration, and coincides with the abysmal performance. In the last 'non-update' I got, there was a hint there was a 'group of customers' that had the issue, although they can't work out what it is.

For example, in one of the 'Poor' periods a couple of weeks ago, I was achieving 600kb/s on multiple multi-threaded speed test sites, including speediest.net (Zens server, Swift, and others), TBB Multi-threaded, Fast.com, Netflix inbuilt speed test. The 'Connection test' in the Zen control panel wouldn't even run it was so bad! This was consistently the case for 4 hours, with multiple re-connections to try and change the route. Indeed, I did see the lag-1 change to lag-2 on the second hop past the gateway, and it made no difference.

[bogof]

I had frustrating calls with Zen where they'd tell me their Speedtest.net server wasn't to be trusted.  I hired a fast AWS instance and benchmarked it at almost 10G up/down...!  Go figure...

You might want to see next time it breaks if any site is OK.  I had much better results on Voicehost Norwich than Zen's own server, for instance, when it was playing up.

[Jasonkruys]

I had frustrating calls with Zen where they'd tell me their Speedtest.net server wasn't to be trusted.  I hired a fast AWS instance and benchmarked it at almost 10G up/down...!  Go figure...

You might want to see next time it breaks if any site is OK.  I had much better results on Voicehost Norwich than Zen's own server, for instance, when it was playing up.

It's broken 2/3rds of the day, and no sites are OK. Apologies, thought I'd made that clear previously. Just used Zen as one example in response to the previous reply. When I say nothing works, I really mean nothing works - can barely get to BBC, Sky TV guide sketchy, Kitz not accessible. As said before, the issue was never I'm not getting.good speeds on a speed test, it was my internet is broken and nothing works - the speed test data came later as a way to characterise the issue and what times of day it happens - I hoped there was a pattern, but there is not!

For example, on my mobile data currently, as page loads on Kitz are cripplingly slow and it is impossible to reply. Out of all 9 servers I just tried on speediest.net, fast.com, TBB broadband test, waveform speed/buffer bloat test, the fastest was fast.com at 649 kbp/s. All of them were between 400 and 649.

Complaint email sent to Zen Saturday. Thus far, completely ignored.

Update yesterday from the Tech Core Support - Hope you are well, the NOC are working with Openreach to try and fix the problem.

Marvellous...

[Alex Atkin UK]

Update yesterday from the Tech Core Support - Hope you are well, the NOC are working with Openreach to try and fix the problem.

Marvellous...

On the plus side, at least they're trying.  But given the past reports of this, if its the same problem, I'm sure not optimistic.

[Jasonkruys]

On the plus side, at least they're trying.  But given the past reports of this, if its the same problem, I'm sure not optimistic.

Are they trying? Or are they just saying we are working on it, we'll let you know?

4 weeks now, and the same reply - we are working on it, and we'll let you know as soon as we have anything. If they haven't worked it out in 4 weeks (plus however long with all the other cases!), I'd say there is no chance they will. 

My email to complaints on Saturday has so far not seen a response - does anyone know what the usual acknowledgement time is?

[Alex Atkin UK]

Well, your issue is worse than every other case so, hopefully?