High Latency During The Night

[johnannd]

Greetings. So, I moved into this building about a month ago.

I called an ISP and subscribed to a 2Mbit ADSL connection. The connection is stable and it offers me a minimum speed of 200 kBps which is amazing especially in this area. The connection is very stable. I do not have any disconnections or anything. The speed is the same 24h. Here is my problem, though. During the day my connection offers low latency and I enjoy it. During the night my latency goes way up by a factor of 3x. This actually ruins my gaming experience. The speed is not affected at all like mentioned.
I called my ISP and they said that my connection does not have any problems because I cannot get them to understand what latency means (or they choose to play dumb).

I started researching about two weeks ago and I found out about DSL stats and network components such as DSLAMS. Here are my observations.

During the day my DSL stats are like this:

SNR Margin = 30-34
Attenuation = 35

During the night it is like this:

SNR Margin = 16-25
Attenuation = 39-40

I can do whatever I want during the night. I can browse and watch videos and even download without issues. The speed is not affected at all. Though, I cannot do anything dependent on latency like online gaming.

I came to the conclusion that the problem is most likely at the DSLAM when too many are using the internet. I mean it probably has too many users and that what causes the high latency. I cannot technically explain why though because I do not have any IT knowledge. I read on another forum that the DSLAM could be fully saturated. What are your thoughts on this? Is my conclusion right regarding the DSLAM? If I asked my ISP to change my port on the DSLAM would that help me? From my understanding there are multiple DSLAMs at the phone exchange office. Could they simply move me from one to DSLAM to another if the one I am on is saturated?

Can electrical interference from so many people using electrical devices affect my line in a way that causes me to having high latency during the night only and not the day? If I replace my phone cables to the building aggregation box into CAT cable, would that help me lower my latency?

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thank you.

 

[razel]

Not sure about your latency, but you can try to solidify your DSL signal. If you can strip everything down to the basics. DSL modem only to your telephone POT. No splitters, no filters.

I used to have issues with borderline low SNR at the upper limit of DSL speeds in my area 6-8mps+. DSL modem would always try to switch between 6+mbps and <6mpbs which made Internet unreliable. It wasn't until I removed all filters at every phone line in the home and ran only one filter at the POTs and moved my DSL modem into the garage right on the other side of the POT where I stabilized my connection.

Again, it does not directly address your ping issue, but if packets get lost because of low SNR, that in the real world is an increase in lag.

 

[Harrod]

What you are describing about latency happening at night is due to peak time utilization that occurs between the hours of 4pm and 1am. This is the time that kids are getting home from school and everyone else is getting off of work.

If you could provide a traceroute to google, or anywhere else I might be able to tell you where the problem is at, including if it's on your local loop. Another thing that will cause higher latency is if the modem is set to train up with interleaving, this setting is set at the DSLAM and the only way you could get it changed is by calling the ISP and have them change it from Interleave to Fast path.

Your SNR number look good and the attenuation isn't bad, I'm guessing you are probably about 2 miles away from the remote your line equipment terminates on. If your SNR number is less than 10, thats when you should worry about the connection to the house. Also you may want to see if your modem is showing errors on the connection, maybe check it during the day and then see if it starts taking errors during the night.

 

[frowertr]

It's been since the 90s when I worked for an actually dial up ISP, but if memory serves, a specific DSLAM services a neighborhood. If you aren't actually close to the CO (no one usually is) your DSLAM is sitting outside somewhere close by. I'm not sure they could switch you to another one even if they wanted to.

An ADSL circuit is dedicated from you to the DSLAM/CO. However, after that you are on shared bandwidth just like the rest of us. Being night is the peak times, your issue doesn't surprise me. Not sure there is anything you can do except pay more for increased bandwidth if it's available. Though simply increasing bandwidth won't help with packet loss if this is the real problem.