Slow internet, ping spikes and packet loss

[SJCB]

Context:

Despite living in central London, I can only get 'normal' broadband as my flat does not have access to fibre or anything else. The promised speed I was given was 8-11mbs. (And it was same for all other ISPs)

History:

For the past several months I have had issues and have had 3 visits from BT open reach to try and fix the problem. First 2 visits it was determined there was a loop fault (which was fixed). Third visit, the engineer and his supervisor told me that at this point there is nothing more they can do and that it is an issue with my ISP (Sky). I have already had my router replaced as well as the wall socket.

The Problems

The 2 main issues I have is that repeatedly throughout the day, my speed will drop below 1 mbs. Images below shows speed tests to various servers at different times of the day for past few months (and by different times I mean literally normal working hours as well as times like 3am). As you can see it is abysmal.

My computer has an ethernet cable directly to the router (less than 40cm away) and so it is not an issue with wireless signals. When I do a Sky broadband service checker I get told that everything is fine (which it clearly isn't) when I have called Sky (several times now) and they check the line, they say that everything is ok on their end.

The second issue I have is that when I play any game (LoL, Battlefield, Valorant. Literally ANY game) very frequently (every 10-30mins) I will get huge ping spikes (over 2000) for about 5-15 seconds that very often disconnects me from the game. Also when I try to make Zoom calls for work, these spikes can cause me disconnect from the call.

These spikes occur regardless of when the issue mentioned above is happening. When I use PingPlotter it seems there is quite a bit of packet loss occuring.regardless of the website I ping.

Aside from editing registry files, I have tried pretty much every sort of guide online that attempts to remedy these sort of issues (Flushing DNS, disabling IPV4, etc). I am fairly technically savvy but at this point I am just stuck. The only thought I have is that Sky is for some reason throttling my connection.

Any suggestions as to how best to proceed?

Thanks

Moderator note: image removed - personally identifiable information

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[Chrisee]

@SJCB there are a number of lines still limited to ADSL broadband for various reasons but as your predicted speeds are over 10Mb/s which is the current USO you cannot oblige Openreach to improve the offering. However in London there are often alternative networks and mobile services which might be a better option. At some point Openreach are likely to install fibre to your building but when that happens is up to them not you.. Sky are quite likely to release you from contract if you can find a better service they cannot match but it may take some persuation.

I suspect the Openreach engineers were feeding you a line by blaming Sky - its a univesal issue of "honest guv its not us its the other lots fault".  It would help forum members to diagnose the issue if you posted your Sky hub's connection stats see Find your Sky Broadband router statistics

There is no evidence that Sky intentionally throttle connections.  Why would they throttle an ADSL connection?  Given they currently sell connections up to 550Mb/s  over fibre the data saved by throttling your connection is trivial. However there can be network problems which do not show up on Sky's diagnostics.

Do you notice a difference if you power down your hub for a few minutes? This can switch the physical unit you connect through, these units can go faulty and cause issues. I would also set your devices to use public. DNS as Sky's DNS the hub is hard wired to use can be troubleome. I use Google's at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 but there are others.

Have you discounted other devices using the connection as given your minimal bandwidth a device like a phone saving to the cloud could easily saturate the upload bandwidth and many devices use downtime for this activity? Zoom over ADSL is going to be painful even without any network issues just due to the very limited upload bandwidth. ADSL was designed way before modern two way apps or online gaming. Wre thought of.

[SJCB]

I have already looked at all possible alternative suppliers and there is nothing avaiable or even in the process of being installed at the moment. I have registered interest with several of them but who knows how long that will take (or how long Openreach will take).

Yes, I've tried powering down the hub and have already set the DNS to 8.8.8.8/4.4.4.4 as well.

Here are my router stats. (I know uptime is high but these issues have been occuring for months)

I have also done a BT Wholesale speed test

 

The only other device that connects to the router is my phone, but even when I disconnect that from the wifi, the ping spikes still happen.

I have tried disabling pretty much everything I can before playing a game, but the spikes still occur. I understand that the ADSL is old tech, but the fact is that my gaming experience is fine 90% of the time, it's just these seeminly random spikes that occur that make it painful. If it were a consistent bad latency/ping then I would understand but during the 'good' 90%, my ping is between 20-50ms and everything runs fine.

[jamesn123]

@SJCB 

ADSL in such a dense area like London is never going to end up being reliable especially with the newer technology taking over. 

Have you considered just going for a 4g/5g system instead? You will almost certainly get a faster and more reliable connection.

[jamesn123]

@SJCB 

Oh and looking at your router stats something was using your connection at 9mbps at the time so looks like something is using your bandwidth?