Latency spikes between Sky and Work

[mcg9]

I've been encountering issues whilst workig from home using Citrix Workspace to connect to my company's datacentre.

This has resulted in notable lag when typing or moving windows about the remote session. I have queried this with the technical support team at work and they've highlighted latency between the datacentre and Sky with a lot of latency fluctuation observed in the connection.

My hub is telling me its happy with 52.8 mb/s - and interestingly, I don't seem to observe issues whilst using Youtube etc.

My router stats are below - is there any action I can take at my end that can help improve this - or is this something that a Sky engineer needs to sort out?

Many thanks in advance.

(Sky not allowing me to post as a table - have attached image as well)

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collision Pkts Tx b/s Rx b/s Up Time WAN MER 18988837 50311659 0 6756 12918 123:28:57 LAN Up 2334484 60108 0 12717 0 123:30:40 WLAN (2.4 GHz) Up 1919332 154754 0 13501 0 123:28:15 WLAN (5 GHz) Up 57909392 24232943 0 0 39052 123:27:58

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Broadband Link Downstream Upstream Connection Speed (Kbps) 56529 20000 Line Attenuation (dB) DS1:8.9    DS2:21.8    DS3:35.3 US0:4.4    US1:18.4    US2:28.3 Noise Margin (dB) DS1:6.4    DS2:6.4    DS3:6.4 US0:8.8    US1:6.8    US2:6.8

[jamesn123]

@mcg9 

How is your PC connected to the hub? WiFi or ethernet? If ethernet is this direct ethernet to the hub or through something like powerline, boosters etc?

[Chrisee]

@mcg9 short answer is no you cannot change the routing from your end. However Sky's backhaul network is pretty fast and has good connections to most cloud services but if the data centres your company uses  are located remotely with many jumps there will be lag its simple physics. It is possible a server is running slowl but the network shoulld route round the it until it is fixed. Don't expect support from Sky on this as they simple cannot supply it and will quote that the connection is sold for domestic use.

One major introduction of latency is wifi especially if you have boosters so hopefully you use ethernet for work. Second area that can introduce delay is lag from DNS services Sky's are not the best ideally configure your device to use apublic DNS from Cloudflsre or Google. If you do need to use Sky's disable the Boadband Shield service.  

[mcg9]

Thanks both - I'm sat next to a Sky Q Mini box which (I thought) acted as a wifi booster and so connect wirelessly.

I don't have broadband shield active, so I'll see if I can dig out an ethernet cable to see if this helps with the latency.

[jamesn123]

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@mcg9 wrote:

Thanks both - I'm sat next to a Sky Q Mini box which (I thought) acted as a wifi booster and so connect wirelessly.

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Well there is your problem. Your right it does act as a WiFi booster, but it increases the range of your network at the cost of speed & latency. You are adding a ton of latency between yourself & the hub, let alone to the wider internet and your works Citrix server. 

When working from home you should really be using ethernet anyway whether you do remote access work or just conference calls. Almost all WFH jobs include an element which suffers if you have poor latency.