Does anyone here actually understand broadband internet?

I usually get about 6MB/s when I run speedtest.net

From time to time it goes down to 1MB/s or less and judging from the needle on the speedtest dial, it looks as if it is not simply contention on the line, but that they have limited the speed to a certain figure. It was 0.5 MB/s last week.

If it was contention on the line surely there would be bursts of good speed and not a steady low maximum?

I am not a heavy downloader so I can't think of why my ISP would do this to me.

I have complained and they only say that they have checked the line and it's ok.

Anyone shed any light on this for me?

Cheers

Mark

the differences will be to do with how busy the ISP are (it will be low at busy times, 8am, and between 5pm and 11pm for example)

but remember whatever speed the ISP tell you that you get (for example 10Mb/s etc and remember thats mega bit, not mega byte) is UP TO 10 Mb/s, and thats 10mb/s uplad and download, so 5 each way as a rough guide.

thats how i understand it anyway. so if you try the speed test at like 4am, i'll be a lot faster

[Edited on 10/1/10 by blakep82]

I find the BBC I Player speed test one of the best HERE
That does streaming, upload & download tests, but dont forget you ISP will say UP TO 10Mb/s, but not in very big writing.
It also depends on your exchange, distance from it, fibre or copper technology etc.

I used to get this all the time when using newsleecher. I changed my subscription with newsleecher to SSL which uses a different port and I haven't gone under 700kb/s for months.

I just put it down to the fact the my ISP was limiting the speed of certain ports to stop leechers sapping up all the bandwidth lol.

Shaun

Who is your ISP? I was with Sky (Connect) and they employed bandwidth throttling from 5pm each weekday and all weekend when competition for the line was highest.

It doesn't always depend on what you download, its how many people in your area use the exchange.

If you want faster speeds you may need to change service provider. I went to Virgin on cable and get close to the 20Mb I'm paying for.

I used to get broadband through my bt line which hit 6mb/s tops when I was paying for 8. It's normal speed was about 1.5mb/s

I have now swapped to virgin, pay for 10 and get 8 to 9

Yep, most isp use bandwidth management these days at peak times but some do it better than other, sky connect package is by far the worse.

Read the contract terms and there is probably bugger all you can do about it as they will each blame each other (line carrier & isp)

To55ers the lot of em!

Cheers

R

Cheers

Rich

Mookaloid,

RichardK and Worzey pretty much have it spot on - it'll depend on their policy rather than whether you've been naughty

Bear in mind also that your web traffic normally goes through the ISP's proxy servers so if these are heavily loaded then your perceived speed will appear to slow down.

S

PS iPlayer works best when you're in the same building as the servers...

[Edited on 10/1/10 by stevebubs]

I had some problems when I was with Pipex, it was dropping out and slowing right down and after much complaining about it managed to speak to a BT tech over the phone.... I was amazed to hear his explanation.. basically he asked if i had seen anyone in the green box at the end of the street recently, then he said he would check inside it on his way home, more surprises, later on he knocked on the door, said he's found some loose connections in the box, gave me his mobile number and told me to ring him next time I had a problem.

Turns out he lives in the estate next to me and when I was complaining to Pipex they put me through to him when he was in the exchange.

Since then my broadband has remained at a rock solid 8mb. The weak link is the twin bit of copper between you and the exchange and all the block connectors it has to go through. Loose connections make it drop due to noise interference.

Bring on the wall! err I mean fibre optic cable

quote:

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Originally posted by RichardK
Yep, most isp use bandwidth management these days at peak times but some do it better than other, sky connect package is by far the worse.

Read the contract terms and there is probably bugger all you can do about it as they will each blame each other (line carrier & isp)

To55ers the lot of em!

Cheers

R

Cheers

Rich

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another vote for Virgin here - you almost always get the speed you pay for and although they do throttle your connection occasionally you have to be REALLY taking the p*ss for that to happen in my experience but being able to download 1 gig in 20 minutes is pretty damn cool

quote:

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Originally posted by D Beddows
another vote for Virgin here - you almost always get the speed you pay for and although they do throttle your connection occasionally you have to be REALLY taking the p*ss for that to happen in my experience but being able to download 1 gig in 20 minutes is pretty damn cool

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With ADSL you don't pay for a certain bandwidth, you pay for a service that has a bandwidth capped at a maximum limit, and what you actually get depends on your line loss. If you are a long way from the exchange or have a generally lossy line then you won't get very high speeds.

I never understand why people moan about this so much, it's a very simple concept and is described by all ISP's.

However, your sync speed and throughput are entirely different things, a lot (most) ISPs are now using "traffic shaping" to control bandwidth usage, i.e. effectively throttling traffic. This is a different matter and one that has the most impact.

What has slightly annoyed me is that I don't get the maximum speed my line can support any more; my router used to sync at 5200kbs and recently Sky has capped it to about 3000kbs, despite no changes in line loss. They are also traffic shaping at peak times, so my connection can get extremely slow.

[Edited on 11/1/10 by MikeRJ]

My line synchs up at 8MB/s as I only live about 50 Yards from the exchange. around 6MB/s or so is therefore just about the theoretical maximum which I can get anyway

It is a small village and I can't believe that there is huge contention in the village for the service so it must be the traffic shaping which is doing it.

I thought I understood that the only restriction on speed was the quality of the line to the exchange which in my case appears to be very good however it seems this is not the only issue.

What I would really like to know is who is doing this? is it the ISP or BT who owns the line?

also my ping times vary considerably from about 65ms (which is pretty good) to 180ms and even over 1 second on a few tests recently.

I wish I could get cable but I don't think it will ever come to our village

Cheers

Mark

ISP 99% but it can be a card in the exchange, we had poor performance at work erratically and an engineer first tried resetting this card, then we had to replace this card whatever it was, apparently the exchange have decent logs buts they only look at them when somebody logs a call and it gets escalated to a tech that actually has to go to the exchange.

Maybe a fault with BT but BT will give you the frightener that if no fault is found you'll get charged, so nobody bothers.

More likely that it bandwidth management, load balancing, traffic shaping it all the same thing with respect to broadband in which case its the ISP.

You have of course checked that your pc isn't an open relay or a warez p2p server!!!!

Cheers

R

[Edited on 11/1/10 by RichardK]