Fiber optic: Down slower than Up

tiibor · Sep 15, 2016

Fiber optic: Down slower than Up

Hello everyone

Unfortunately, I’m still “struggling” with problems when gaming online and before I contact official Swisscom support and pay, I ask here.

As written in the title, the download is slower for me than the upload. The results are as follows:

From PC: Down ~ 70Mbps / Up ~ 99.07 Mbps / Ping 3 ms (Connected via cable, test on http://www.speedtest.net/)

Directly from the Internet Box Plus: Down ~ 100.05 Mbps / Up ~ 109.30 Mpbs / Ping 3.00 ms

My measurements:
Fiber optic transmission level: 6,311 dBm

Fiber optic reception level: 3,275 dBm

I think all in all it looks great. But I still have extreme lags when playing online (especially Fifa Ultimate Team 16 from EA on the XBOX One).

Further information:

- Internet Box Plus

- Everything that is possible is connected via cable (PC as well as console, iPhones via WLAN booster (WLAN on Internet Box Plus is deactivated)

- Subscription: Vivo M, surfing speed with max. 100 Mbit/s download & 100 Mbit/s upload

- IPv6 disabled

Does anyone have another tip for me?

realGoliath · Sep 15, 2016

Nat is open on the XBox?

tiibor · Sep 15, 2016

Yes, it’s open

altair · Sep 15, 2016

Then I would say that your opponents have lags and you suffer from it 🙂

tiibor · Sep 15, 2016

I agree with you on that. But I think it’s particularly due to the EA servers that “participate” in FUT mode. Unfortunately EA points to the ISP and MS and so it goes in circles. I hope that things get better with Fifa 17 and that my setup is really ideal.

altair · Sep 15, 2016

When I play Fifa 16 (No Ultimate Team) online, I get lags every now and then, and they’re almost certainly caused by my opponents’ slow connection.
I don’t know if this is really due to the EA servers. The Battlefield 4 ones always run very well, but of course other servers do too…

tiibor · Sep 15, 2016

In FUT online mode, the servers are running for “some” reason. In other online modes there are pure peer-to-peer connections.

I’m working with Microsoft and EA at the same time, but I’ll try everything. I will also clarify with Swisscom Support (paid) about routing to the EA servers. Apparently there was already a situation in the past where something could/had to be optimized.

tiibor · Sep 19, 2016

In the meantime I was “somewhat” busy with support from EA and MS.

\=> The MS servers for Xbox Live are in America… so that doesn’t surprise me so much.

What I have now seen is that downloading from servers in the USA is massively slower than uploading. I would imagine this indicates problems or limitations?

http://www.speedtest.net (Server in Washington)

Ping: 99 ms

Down: 12.46 Mbits

Up: 98.66 Mbps

https://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest (server not selectable)

Ping:?

Down: 11.22 Mbits

Up: 94.44 Mbps

http://www.cnet.com/internet-speed-test (Server not selectable)

“speed”: 2.70 Mbps

http://www.bandwidthplace.com (Server in Washington)

Ping: 102 ms

Down: 1.84 Mbits

Up: 18.98 Mbps

Who can or do I have to watch this with at Swisscom? Do you have similar or identical results?

GrandDixence · Sep 19, 2016

The measurements were distorted by the TCP receive window:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_Receive_Window

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_window_scale_option

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth-delay_product

https://www.switch.ch/network/tools/tcp_throughput/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_congestion_control

The Bandwith Delay Product “artificially” limits the maximum data transfer rate because the receiving computer chooses the TCP receive window to be either not fast enough or large enough. => The measurements were too short to be meaningful. It is better to make significantly longer measurements with IPerf3 or to measure the download transfer rate of very large DVD image downloads (> 2 Gigabytes) with a fast, close mirror, such as:

http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/

http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/info/

In order to achieve TCP communication with a data transfer rate of 100 Mbit/s from a server located on the east coast of the USA (RTT approx. 200 milliseconds), the client located in Europe must have a TCP reception window according to the Bandwith Delay Product (TCP Receive Window) of over 2.5 MegaByte. My test with www.speedtest.net (server in Boston) showed that at the end of the measurements my PC had a TCP receive window of 500 KiloBytes, which is the data transfer rate of TCP -Communication was pushed to below < 20 MBit/s.

You can test whether the TCP receive window on your own PC is large enough using data transfers from Japanese servers:

http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/

http://ftp.iij.ad.jp/

tiibor · Sep 20, 2016

GrandDixence

Hello GrandDixence

Thank you for your detailed answer. It sounds very interesting, but the differences are still too big for me. I find this an atypical picture.

That’s why I asked two colleagues to carry out the tests for you:

It seems to me as if Swisscom (and possibly Cablecom too) still have potential for optimization. Of course that’s not statistically meaningful and and and: But I think it’s evidence enough that Swisscom should optimize here.

And I still have hope that I can still improve my online experience on the Xbox One. (Even if MS and EA are essentially to blame with their servers).

Greetings Marc

Edit: Tried from here in the office with speedtest.net to the server in Washington:

Ping: 108ms / Down: 88.70 / Up: 99.09

\=> So it’s not my laptop’s fault. Or there are simply more factors at play.

tiibor · Sep 21, 2016

Hello everyone

If anyone else could test it, including Swisscom or other providers, I would very much welcome it. I’m working with support at the same time, but apparently it’s still taking some time.

hed · Sep 21, 2016

Unfortunately I don’t have any glass, but in tests with Washington and Shanghai I was able to fully utilize my profile of 25/5 with speedtest.net.

Only the delay is 111ms or 203ms, a lot higher than in Switzerland.

tiibor · Sep 22, 2016

Hello V hed

Thank you for your answer, interesting. I would have thought that the problem was somewhere in the backend and not so close to the customer that Gals vs. DSL would make a difference. Let’s see, my ticket at Swissom has been open since Monday, so far I haven’t heard anything.

I just tested again (at home):

speedtest.net server in Washington: Ping: 98ms / Down: 11.54 Mpbs / Up: 97.60 Mpbs

Edit: I now also tested the server in Shanghai: Ping: 187ms / Down: 5.97 Mpbs / Up: 19.59 Mpbs

The individual measurements for China vary quite a bit. But what remains constant is that Down is always much lower than Up.

Greetings Marc

CHnuschti · Sep 22, 2016

I am a happy NON-Swisscom customer at iway.ch with fiber optic 30/30

Test at http://www.speedtest.net with server in Philadelphia shows full speed with ping 90ms.

So it seems to be of the order of magnitude, regardless of which provider.

tiibor · Sep 22, 2016

Hello everyone

What I also noticed: on the Xbox One I now have a ping / latency of 163 - 166ms in the extended network test. It used to be around 100ms. I think and (hope) that this is also related to this and will therefore be solved in a case.

hed · Sep 22, 2016

@tiibor

Have you tested with another PC?

You may also just have a problem with the WinSize that only becomes noticeable with larger delays.

Or you have a speed duplex mismatch, which produces a lot of retrans, which in turn becomes very noticeable at longer running times.

tiibor · Sep 22, 2016

Hello V hed

Yes, I also tried it from the laptop (via cable and WLAN), same behavior.

\=> The fact that the ticket is still open (and they couldn’t give me an exact status today) makes me think that it’s not a problem with my setup.

\=> I just tested it again from the laptop:

Ping: 99ms / Down: 6.49 / Up: 94.88

tiibor · Sep 23, 2016

Oh dear… Swisscom support isn’t what it used to be either… Very fast, but the communication skills leave a lot to be desired.

After it was confirmed to me yesterday Thursday that the problem was in the Swisscom backend, I was called again today and informed that everything was OK with my Anschluss. The problem will be forwarded to My Service. About an hour later my ticket was simply closed.

Now when I asked why the ticket was closed, they said there was nothing they could do. They are not trained to deal with problems with servers in the USA. I then asked if she could please forward the ticket to another team who could resolve the issue. Answer: That is My Service and only they can do it. And My Service is subject to a fee.

What bothers me about the whole thing:

1. The ticket was simply closed.

2. When I first called today, I was promised a call back from My Service. It was not mentioned that this service costs

3. Swisscom apparently has a problem with servers that are “further away”. Why exactly should I pay for it? I don’t think other customers have this problem? If not, what can I do about it?

I’ll call again on Monday and hope that more trained colleagues will be working on the hotline again.

CHnuschti · Sep 23, 2016

Wonder what you want to hear. The situation with a ping of approx. 100ms to the USA affects everyone to the same extent, whether at Swisscom, UPC or other providers. It was like this a year ago: https://community.swisscom.ch/t5/Archiv-Internet/Internet-Box-und-online-Gaming-Xbox-One-FIFA-15/m-p/373440#M384 04, with support that, contrary to the facts, gave the impression that something could be done.

And the same thing 8 years ago: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=677246

Do you seriously expect Swisscom to pull a new transatlantic cable?

Or to put it another way: can you name anyone who has fantastic pings of 10-20ms overseas?

PowerMac · Sep 23, 2016

At least the following could be said about the third point:

In fact, Swisscom has high latency times for servers located further away. Just like Cablecom and the Seldwyla community network. And many, even 100% of all other customers have the same problem. The reason for this is physics: If, for example, I ping a server in Redmond, Washington from Switzerland, then this request goes through perhaps a dozen routers and 11,000km of fiber optic cable at a speed of around 200,000km/s briefly processed by the server and sent back the (usually) same way. The light alone takes around 110 milliseconds for this route, plus the processing times of the router and the target server. The resulting ping times are then in the region of 160-180ms. These times won’t change too much in the foreseeable future, at least not until Cisco (or Huawei?) launches a Hyperdrive router onto the market. The provider, whether Swiss, Cable or Seldwylacom, has little influence on the first and last 10ms at best. And the peerings *g*, but they are not the problem in this case.