[deanhills]

Yesterday I learned about one of our VPSs "leaking" and couldn't figure out what that meant until it happened to me tonight.  Packet loss!  So thought I would study what packet loss is about and write a summary here for in case this should happen to any one else.

What is packet loss?
This is when data you send and receive fail to reach its destination.  Technically it means slow downs, disruptions, or even a total loss of connectivity.  Worst affected by packet loss are real time audio or video, and gaming.  So can imagine this has to be really bad for Game servers and other audio applications on VPSs.  In my case it was my VestaCP Panel.  Something happened to the database.  It got fixed.  And then next there was total loss of connectivity.

Causes of Packet Loss

Network Congestion
Could be that some of the connections are at their maximum capacity so that when packets arrive they have to wait their turn before they get passed on.  If the connections fall behind in processing the packets there may not be enough memory to hold on to them and they get lost.

Faulty or Outdated Networking Hardware
Outdated network switches can't keep up with demand, particularly when the Internet connections become faster relative to what the switches have been designed for.  Traffic may then exceed the capacity of the device resulting in packet loss.

Software bugs
This often gets fixed with rebooting the VPS.

So who knows.  Maybe the Phoenix network has become congested and maybe hardware can't keep up with Internet connections.

[Manal]

I may not be right in this case, but packet loss can be sometimes caused by DDoS attacks too.

But after having a quite good inspection over their network, they seem to have good protection so chances of your network issues can be caused because of the above-mentioned reasons too.

[deanhills]

I may not be right in this case, but packet loss can be sometimes caused by DDoS attacks too.

But after having a quite good inspection over their network, they seem to have good protection so chances of your network issues can be caused because of the above-mentioned reasons too.

Thanks for the response @Manal. If I may ask - exactly what is meant when someone says a VPS is leaking? Like how would you as a technical VPS specialist look at a VPS that is known to "leak"?

I Googled this last night and couldn't find anything on VPS leaks. So I thought maybe this has to do with packet loss, but maybe you could explain it better for me?

[Mashiro]

A VPS or generally a server doesn't leak. There is no such thing. Such expressions, in the IT world, don't exist in relation to the subject of packet loss. It's a misuse of the word leak.

A server leak would be data that shouldn't be available to visitors, strangers or other unauthorized third parties gets into the public by means of security holes, misconfiguration, viruses or malicious actors such as hackers and in same cases even by authorized actors.

Like Wikileaks releases documents that people leak from agencies to make bad things happening being known in the public. Most of the leaked documents are from whistleblowers that are or have worked in the agencies and had access to documents. Others are from open holes in system where private information and data has been available to the public and someone clever discovered it (like the Panama papers if I'm not wrong).

Anyway. Packet loss is simply a sign of network issues that could be cause by a lot of factors like a bad connection (physical wires broken, switch components broken, NIC broken, etc..), overloaded or congested connection (overloaded bandwidth carriers, edge routers, all kind of attacks and such), or misconfiguration of software/hardware. Sometimes also on purpose by simply setting up a firewall that blocks connections that at your end will look like packet loss.

[rudra]

totally as HR said... leak is not loss in this area and never seen used to mean that.
Also you could test connectivity and have an idea of what is causing it by running traceroute and ping using various protocols. From multiple locations.... and checking and comparing the times and routes. you need chart or need to have idea on standard routes taken by data flow from those points to those destinations.

I remember how once we had some cable broken below Arabian sea which caused some major outage and slowdowns of internet to the areas serviced by those lines. Data took way longer and throughput came to a crawling amount. haha.

So basically you need a map of normal data flow and then you check and compare test results to find where it is not matching those maps to detect the issues.