Is bt speedtester totally broken?

[SSK]

Over the last couple of days while my ADSL2+ has been settling in I've been getting crazy results from the bt speedtester (see below). Is this just me? If so, what might be the problem.

e.g.  Last night it told me:
Download speed - 8251 Kbps
DSL Connection Rate - 3456 Kbps
IP Profile - 5000 Kbps
Upload speed - 714 Kbps
Upstream IP profile - 448 Kbps

Can download speed really be about twice the connection speed??

less than a minute later my router was telling me:
Up speed - 12755000
Down speed - 1106000
SNR (down) - 14
Loop Att - 29

Today, a few mins ago it gave me:
Download speed - 9998 Kbps
DSL Connection Rate - no number given
IP Profile - 38717 Kbps
Upload speed - 629 Kbps
Upstream IP profile - 10000 Kbps

The router is still giving the same stats as above except SNR is now 15.

Of course, bearing in mind the almost incoherently abysmal standard of English on the site, the lack of functionality isn't too surprising.
(although I was amused by "represent the ratio while sententiously passing...").

Sean

[Rik]

It's a bit bent out of shape, Sean - it reported that I was downloading faster than my profile, and that my sync speed was 1.5M lower than my actual sync speed last time I used it. I generally ignore it unless there seems to be a line problem, when it's the only test that counts.

[Lance]

I've just run a test and the results look completely normal (and correct). It seems its not completely broken for everyone!

[Ray]

Works OK for me as well.

Download speedachieved during the test was - 5153 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 1200-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :8128 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 832 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 7150 Kbps

[SSK]

I generally ignore it unless there seems to be a line problem, when it's the only test that counts.

Yes,  it's the only test that bt will accept if there is a line problem, so it's rather sad that the results it gives can be pretty meaningless.

As a follow-on question...
Sometimes (as on the two occasions above) it gives me the choice of going on to a third test which requires changing the login settings on the router. However, I've not gone on to do that as I'm concerned it will cause a disconnect and might mess up the the 10 day "training period" of my ADSL2+ connection. Is my concern valid?

Thanks,

Sean

[Rik]

It is, imo. It usually only offers that test if there's an error count on the line. The only time I've seen it was this week with the Stepney Green outage, which was causing massive packet loss across the country.

No-one has ever given me a definitive answer on whether there is one BT tester, or several sites which you may be routed to for geographical or network reasons. I suspect the latter because, in the past, I've had a perfect result when others have been seeing anomalies.

[pctech]

Not sure whether this helps but an IP lookup resolves to BTnet OSS (Operational Support System) so might be in London

[Rik]

Is that constant, Mitch. I suppose the other possibility is that there's a bunch of servers and they're not all running the same version of the tester. 

[pctech]

When I've run it yes but you are right it could just mean an IP range

[Baz]

theres some thing wrong with it isnt there.I just tried and D/L showed as less than half what I normally get and U/L was the same.actual speed was slightly down.Router is showing as normal and I also got the option for a third test.


Try any other speed tester and I get the normal results for me



  good old BT  

[Rik]

The only people who say that, Baz, are those who don't know the company.

[pctech]

Who wants to start the BT Eradication Society?

[Baz]

it may have come over wrong then Rik,also I couldnt find the sarcastic smilie

[Rik]

 

[SSK]

[oops! - I think I probably put this in the wrong forum and it should be in Brodband New & Discussion - sorry, slip of the mouse!]

Anyway, just done another bt test....
Download speed - 9973 Kbps
DSL Connection Rate - 12752 Kbps
IP Profile - 2500 Kbps
Upload speed - 697 Kbps
Upstream IP profile - 1104 Kbps

Apart from the IP Profile, it's not quite so silly now. (I think IP profile is a random number generator!)
Router says I'm connected at 12755 Kbps, with SNR = 15 and Att 29, Pretty much as it has been for the last 36 hours.

Don't get me going about BT - with my previous ISP I was off line completely for 17 days and 22 hours because for 10 days BT wouldn't accept there was a fault at the exchange. Even then it took a couple more days to send an engineer to the exchange. When he found the card was faulty it took them some more days to fix because (they said) they had no spare cards in stock.

Sean

[Rik]

You have now.

I know how you feel about BT, I was offline for 10 days because they swore I was in sync when I didn't even have a router connected to the line. Turned out to be a faulty line card. 

[Baz]

so if you thought you had a bad fault or simliar and told your ISP,gave them the only test result that BT will accept....their own, would you benefit     

[Rik]

Ultimately, Baz. How ultimately depends on BT.

[Baz]

   sounds right 

[Bill]

the only test result that BT will accept....their own, would you benefit     

It gives them one less thing to argue about

[SSK]

People sometimes complain that their IP profile doesn't change quickly enough to match increased connection rate. Well, in the past 24 hours the bt tester has given me the following values:
download speed     connection rate    IP Profile
11452                   576                    11000
9999                    12444                 13000
10884                  12444                 10000
9434                    12444                  3000

From these stats and those in my first post in this thread (for the 24 hours before that), the IP profile seems to be changing in both directions pretty quickly. I thought it wasn't possible to get download speeds greater than connection rates or download speeds three times the IP profile?

The router has been rock solid for about 3 days with connection rates between 12444 and 12755,  SNR around 15, and Loop Att between 29 and 31. The only disconnects (according to my router) have been at around 6.30am , which I was told was the BT equipment doing a re-synch.

Now obviously the speeds are good (though I'm sure I could get better if the SNR hadn't been stuck at 15) but I'm a bit concerned that the occasional silly values for IP profile and connection rate might indicate a fault with the card in the exchange and maybe that fault, rather than any real noise, made my SNR jump from 7 to 27 overnight just a few hours after being upgraded to ADSL2+

The 10 day 'training period' will be over on Sunday morning. Will it then be okay to temporarlily disconnect while I upgrade my router firmware? If the SNR is still stuck on 15 at that time, will that be its default position unless I can get it changed manually?

Sean

[Rik]

Hi Sean

The BT tester does sometimes appear to be a work of fantasy rather than a useful tool, but rapid changes in profile should follow a major change in sync rate.

You'll be safe to upgrade the firmware tomorrow. Target noise margin will only reset if IDNet can do it manually, or you wait 14 days with a constant, error-free connection, when it will drop by 3db, repeating every 14 days until you reach 6db or the line becomes unstable.

[Bill]

when it will should drop by 3db

Corrected that for you

[Rik]

 

Thanks, Bill.

[Bill]

The BT tester does sometimes appear to be a work of fantasy rather than a useful tool

It's a pity, because if BT were to put a bit of effort into it, it could easily be a very useful diagnostic tool.

First job of course would be to give it to a proper programmer instead of a 16 year old kiddie on work experience, but as it's the easiest way to find out your IP profile it shouldn't be too much problem to provide other information as well. Target SNR, whether you're on a banded profile (and why), maybe a bit of connection history and some sort of comment about line quality (eg what sort of percentage the error rate is of the value where the DLM will take action).

Could save a lot of BT's time if those figures were available, and sites like this and tbb (not to mention the ISP) had a useful basis to help users with problems.

I can understand they don't want their servers taken up with speed tests, so if they got it working properly I wouldn't even mind if they increased the current one hour between tests to two hours!