Ultra weird problem

[charlesr]

Almost everything works perfectly at full speed (browsing, email, facebook apps etc.) and a speed test on any device shows it maxing out.

Something changed yesterday though: a very specific issue has arisen: now the only things that do not work are Android and Apple devices and ONLY when I am trying to download an app from either Apple Store or Google Play Store. Browsing the stores is fine though. Actually trying to download an app results in either 4KB/s speed or zero speed. So that's odd right? (Note: downloading via the amazon app store app on the android is fine, no problem there!)

This only happens on wifi. If I use the mobile network, it zips along at normal speed ~1MB/s
So you'd think "problem with the wifi router".

So I found an old router, plugged it in, rebooted the phone. Same problem. I even tried turning off the encryption on the wifi. I tried lots of different channels and ensured I was far away from the neighbour's channel with a visual overlap checker I have. No joy.

So you'd think "problem with play store app on phone" (although odd that it should happen on a Nexus 7, a Nexus 5, a Galaxy Ace2 and an iPad mini all on the same day), so just in case, I wiped my phone and installed a fresh ROM with fresh store. Same problem.

So I thought, seems unlikely, but it could be a problem with Vivaciti or their upstream. So I went to the neighbour's house and logged on to their BT Home Hub. Immediately everything works fine at full speed.
Came back home, logged back on to my wireless (vivaciti) and the problem came straight back. Incredibly weird.

Any ideas?

[eastyy]

what happens when you run speed test on android ?

What do you have connected to your router ?

[briareos_kerensky]

Any ideas?

Have you contacted your provider? Maybe the issue is not just yours or they are throttling a very specific kind of internet traffic for some strange reason.

[charlesr]

speed test maxes out on the phones and tablets.

I spoke to the provider this morning and an engineer said they couldn't see a problem. I've raised a ticket though. Convinced it's throttling. Now it's running at about 20k/s, but the speed is so consistent it has to be throttling. However, I'm with Vivaciti who pride themselve on being non throttling etc.

Could be coincidence, but it all started yesterday very shortly after I sent them the "please change me to FTTC" email and they sent me a new contract and invoice. Sure they've done something at their end, but they claim there have been no changes yet due to the FTTC request.

[VR46]

Would they really throttle that severely though?

Virgin used to throttle me back to 2MB down daily before they waivered all that sh*t a couple of years back thank God.

Bizarre situation Charles.

[QualityChimp]

Unusual, perhaps, but not what I'd call "ultra weird".

Maybe if you said you'd fallen through a time hole to 1917 where you'd saved the life of dashing Royal Flying Corps pilot James "Biggles" Bigglesworth after his photo recon mission where he got shot down. Before you could work out what had happened, you were zapped back to today. With assistance from Biggles' former commanding officer Raymond (Peter Cushing) who lives in the Tower Bridge in London, you learned that you and Biggles are "time twins", spontaneously travelling through time when one or the other is in mortal danger. Together, you and Biggles fought across time and against the odds to stop the Germans changing the course of history by destroying a "Sound Weapon" with a Metropolitan Police helicopter that was stolen by Biggles while escaping a SWAT Team in present-day London.

I'd probably say that was ultra weird.

[charlesr]

?? I thought that happened to everyone.

[QualityChimp]

Don't be utterly ridiculous!

We can't all be Biggles' time twin!

[k0pp0]

speed test maxes out on the phones and tablets.

I spoke to the provider this morning and an engineer said they couldn't see a problem. I've raised a ticket though. Convinced it's throttling. Now it's running at about 20k/s, but the speed is so consistent it has to be throttling. However, I'm with Vivaciti who pride themselve on being non throttling etc.

Could be coincidence, but it all started yesterday very shortly after I sent them the "please change me to FTTC" email and they sent me a new contract and invoice. Sure they've done something at their end, but they claim there have been no changes yet due to the FTTC request.

Don't think they'd throttle that sort of traffic, but their routing to the services might be toss. Only reason I can think for throttling would be to minimise traffic through updates and the like?

[Lebowski]

logged on to their BT Home Hub. Immediately everything works fine at full speed.

It's not just this though is it, you where having connection issues on your xbox one the other day too. Battlefield four fine, Titanfall nope, So yeah id blame the isp

Ive never heard of them but Vivaciti sounds like your problem, id change isp's if you can, if your neighbors bt fibre works fine why not go with them? a quick google dose not paint them in a good light, but that could be said for all ips quite surprised by these though they seem to have virgin media levels of customer satisfaction . As a long suffering virgin media customer i know what bad customer service and wonky broadband can be like, ive been so close to leaving virgin on many an occasion but they seem to be alright at the moment.

[charlesr]

BT don't offer a static IP. Vivaciti are normally great (rock solid at all times, with no shaping and unlimited on my nonfibre copper) but apparently, they've ditched Daisy due to reliability issued and gone with BT as their upstream supplier last week. Out the frying pan and into the fire.

But yes, today it's apparent it's an ISP issue, with everything going wrong - 250ms ping, upload almost non-existent and I can no longer download updated to XboxOne games (Forza 5) and that's over ethernet, so clearly nothing to do with wifi. They have raised the problem with BT.