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cyrus360
Getting Freaky With It
Premium Member
join:2003-02-16
Sedro Woolley, WA

cyrus360

Premium Member

[FiOS] High latency and jitter issues in WA

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The for last few months I have had latency and jitter issues at exactly 8pm every night. It goes on into the wee hours of the night way after I've gone to bed.

I went through their basically useless tech support line multiple times. The first time they had me send them my traceroutes. They responded back a few days later saying yes, they are very high, but there is nothing they can do about it.

Then I called again, this time the guy told me the problem was due to the many massive blizzards my town had experienced the last few months. Keep in mind, it only snowed once, about 1 inch worth. When I told him that, he went back to the, "Well there's nothing we can do about it, it's not on our end."

The third call resulted in them once again agreeing the latency was way too high and his only answer was that this is a serious problem in the midwest. How does that apply to someone in Washington I asked him, and he said there's nothing they can do about it.

A few months back I had a saga with them where my speeds dropped to nothing every night at 8pm. After a billion phone calls and multiple techs coming out, I got all the people in my HOA involved. One of the guys works for Frontier and forwarded our rants to management. They finally agreed it was a problem on their end requiring massive upgrades which took several months to get in place. One of the executives I spoke with was nice enough to credit my account during that time frame.

This time around I got directly involved with the local district manager. She has been nice and very prompt in getting back to me but again told me that any solution is several months away at best and they no longer issue any credits for service unless you have downtime for 24 hours straight. So basically I am stuck paying full price for sub-par service. They even hinted that it's probably not on their end and it's other servers that the connections run through that is causing the latency.

I am pretty sure it's on their end though. What do you guys think?

wesm
Premium Member
join:1999-07-29
Seattle, WA

wesm

Premium Member

Considering every hop you posted has a Frontier-allocated IP address, yeah, it's their problem. The ultimate question becomes...now what? If Frontier says that the solution is "months away" (probably overloaded transit through the local access router), you're stuck unless you can switch providers. Since you're in Washington, I assume you're just like the rest of us and are stuck with whatever local provider happens to serve your area. At least some suburbs like Redmond and Kirkland can choose between Frontier FiOS and Comcast but that's the exception instead of the rule.

cyrus360
Getting Freaky With It
Premium Member
join:2003-02-16
Sedro Woolley, WA

cyrus360

Premium Member

Yeah Comcast is the only other option. The crazy thing is, this problem starts right at 8pm exactly every night. They keep blaming congestion in the lines at "prime time" hours. I asked how is 11:30pm on a Tuesday prime time because I would think any time on Saturday and Sunday would be a lot busier than Tuesday at midnight, but they had no answer. They don't think to seem it's weird that a traceroute at 7:55pm is 30ms a hop and right at 8:01pm it jumps to 150 to 200+ms per hop with lots of time outs.

The last email I sent them was to tell them how ridiculous it is that they don't offer credits for this and are ok with customers paying full price for a service that's only usable half the day. She said she understands my frustration and will "see about making things right" once the issue is resolved in approximately 60 days.

I had Verizon FIOS before Frontier took over. I never had service problems with them, only billing issues. Then the first few years of Frontier were fine. The last year has been total shit with problems constantly. It wouldn't bother me so much if they actually looked into stuff right away as opposed to racking up thousands of complaints after 3 months, then rolling out a plan to fix it over another 3 months.

Ben J
My spoon is too big
Premium Member
join:2011-09-16
Elk Grove, CA

Ben J to cyrus360

Premium Member

to cyrus360
said by cyrus360:

...the problem was due to the many massive blizzards my town had experienced the last few months...

...a serious problem in the midwest...

...a problem on their end requiring massive upgrades which took several months to get in place...

All incorrect.

I am pretty sure it's on their end though. What do you guys think?

Yes, the problem is on Frontier's side. There is significant congestion on the circuits that feed your office from the state aggregation pop during peak usage hours.

The crazy thing is, this problem starts right at 8pm exactly every night. They keep blaming congestion in the lines at "prime time" hours. I asked how is 11:30pm on a Tuesday prime time because I would think any time on Saturday and Sunday would be a lot busier than Tuesday at midnight, but they had no answer. They don't think to seem it's weird that a traceroute at 7:55pm is 30ms a hop and right at 8:01pm it jumps to 150 to 200+ms per hop with lots of time outs.

Here they are correct, and it is not necessarily weird to see that pattern. Internet congestion these days is primarily caused by streaming video services demanding concurrent constant bit-rate bandwidth, and peak streaming video times now closely match those of regular TV viewing times. The weekends see more total traffic volume of traffic, but the extra volume is spread out throughout the day, meaning more people watch streaming video over the course of the day, but there are fewer people trying to watch at the exact same time. The evenings are different from the daytime. M-F see the volume all within the 6pm to 12am timeframe, and there isn't that much of a difference in traffic patterns between a Saturday night and a Tuesday night anymore these days. Internet is the new TV.

The last email I sent them was to tell them how ridiculous it is that they don't offer credits for this and are ok with customers paying full price for a service that's only usable half the day.

I can't really help you here, but FWIW, I agree with you.

I had Verizon FIOS before Frontier took over. I never had service problems with them, only billing issues. Then the first few years of Frontier were fine. The last year has been total shit with problems constantly. It wouldn't bother me so much if they actually looked into stuff right away as opposed to racking up thousands of complaints after 3 months, then rolling out a plan to fix it over another 3 months.

That is Frontier's business model. They are very cost conscious. FiOS came to Frontier "well engineered" with plenty of excess capacity and engineering rules that ensured that capacity was never fully consumed. Frontier's business rules changed that. Frontier saw this excess capacity and high spend on future predictive upgrades as wasted capital (money spent on capacity that just sat there unused for weeks/months/years/etc.) that could be better used elsewhere on areas that were further behind. Over the first 3 years, the excess capacity of the FiOS network was slowly consumed as other places got the upgrades instead. After it was consumed, Frontier allowed it to remain congested until the pain point was seen in the revenue (e.g., customers started complaining, then leaving). Then upgrades started to happen, which various folks are starting to see now. Taking a look at the history of complaints in these forums and others, you'll find this to be their standard operating model. Reactive cost conscious, rarely proactive. Unlike companies such as Windstream (if you think we have it bad, go browse their forum), Frontier does actually do upgrades. They just have to see customer churn first.

I won't argue one way or the other on the merit or lack of merit of such a business model (it is obviously not a very pro-consumer one), but it is what they have historically chosen to do, and it does not seem to be hurting their financials any. Enough customers stick around to keep their shareholders happy.
MDrules
join:2014-02-24
Fort Wayne, IN

MDrules

Member

I'm not familiar with how WA is, but in Fort Wayne FiOS has been losing customers for the past 3 years. Recently started to see growth, and now putting capital into it.

wesm
Premium Member
join:1999-07-29
Seattle, WA

wesm to Ben J

Premium Member

to Ben J
said by Ben J:

Frontier saw this excess capacity and high spend on future predictive upgrades as wasted capital (money spent on capacity that just sat there unused for weeks/months/years/etc.) that could be better used elsewhere on areas that were further behind. Over the first 3 years, the excess capacity of the FiOS network was slowly consumed as other places got the upgrades instead.

The thing is, they're not wrong, exactly. That's a reasonable stance to take when some areas are way behind. Frontier's problem is your second part:
said by Ben J:

After it was consumed, Frontier allowed it to remain congested until the pain point was seen in the revenue (e.g., customers started complaining, then leaving).

That's the part that is crappy to do to customers. Running a network at 85% or 97% makes no difference to the people paying the bills. Running it at 99% versus 100% has a major impact.