FTTC now available, want to move from SKY, few questions....

[Rik]

Probably. Any changes in exchange loading seem to be magnified by fibre.

[.Griff.]

Presumably the drop in speed is going to be down to the time of day.

Not to that extent. Tried another location? What does Maidstone or Milton Keynes give you?

For example -



Compared with -

[Anton]

I have a feeling that the apps may just not been that good at reading the speed.

I'm pretty sure you're right - I've never had what I feel is an accurate answer out of an iPhone bandwidth application.

Don't get too hung up on this for now - as others have pointed out you're testing a whole chain of IP connections and pipes, and the result you get will only ever be as good as the slowest point (hence Sittingbourne versus Milton Keynes).

Why not watch a few movie trailers on Apple TV and feel the speed ;-)

I hardly ever test anymore, as the speed is now always more than "adequate" to stream some HD, do some downloading and surf too without everything slowing to a jittery crawl.

That said, I'd strongly suggest using istumbler:

http://www.istumbler.net/

to check out what's around you and move to a nice non-congested area of the 2.4 band. That should tidy up your iPhone connnection I hope.

[Bill]

Its just that there is still a bit difference between 25 and 35 down!

My experience of FTTC is that a speed variation like that is nothing unusual, it seems to be much more sensitive to congestion.

I've also got doubts about the tbb speedtester on FTTC, it usually gives me results that are well down from the "real life" speeds, eg from iTunes. The Broadband Quality meter is very useful though, albeit occasionally frightening

[.Griff.]

Just to echo what Bill said about the speedtester on Thinkbroadband.. Namely the fact it's absolutely useless.

All other testers reflect real world experiences but TBB speedtester is wildly inaccurate in my experience and it's a shame they refuse to acknowledge it's less than perfect.

[Bill]

it's a shame they refuse to acknowledge it's less than perfect.

To be fair, I don't think it's the speedtester itself... when I first got FTTC it was fine, then it gradually tailed off. When BT "deleted" IDNet from the system it was fine again for a few days then slowed down, same happened when they repeated the the performance, same again when one of IDNet's core routers (?) fell over, and on other odd occasions when there's been some sort of "event" on the 'net that would affect routing.

I'm as convinced as I can be that BT do something different to data coming in via FTTC...

[Rik]

It all comes to Milton Keynes, where they employ an army of otherwise unemployable geeks to randomly select bytes to discard, Bill. 

[Glenn]

So that's what you do all day? 

[.Griff.]

I've spoken to both Seb and Andrew in the past with an idea to find out what the issue was/is but their simple response was "it's fine.. Must be your fault" rather than accept there's some issue with IDNet/FTTC and the test.

[Bill]

For general info, a graph since I first got FTTC:

[Rik]

So that's what you do all day? 

Actually, I didn't like to own up for fear of being lynched.

[Bill]

I've spoken to both Seb and Andrew in the past with an idea to find out what the issue was/is but their simple response was "it's fine.. Must be your fault" rather than accept there's some issue with IDNet/FTTC and the test.

Yeah, I've noticed

Not many on FTTC yet though, hopefully if/when they get enough complaints they'll have to look into it

[Rik]

So some time in the next decade then, to judge by BT's progress to date.

[Bill]

Probably

But if it is BT messing about, tbb likely won't be able to do much about it... which would be a pity, 'cos basically it's a good tester.

[shorn]

As has been mentioned, I think I'm not going to worry to much about speed tests. In real world uses it seems great. I just bought the complete Alan Partridge off iTunes. I think there was about 6.7Gb worth in total. Started it off, watched a 40 minute episode of the US Office, and by the time it was finished the download was done! Thats amazing! That would have normally taken about 10 hours!!

[Bill]

Sounds about right

Provided I don't get stuck with a badly congested link, I usually reckon about 5-6 minutes/GB.

It's one of the potential problems with fibre- it makes it far too easy to spend money with iTunes

[Anton]

It's one of the potential problems with fibre- it makes it far too easy to spend money with iTunes

And indeed urinate your data cap up the wall at an alarming rate... ;-)

I have found though, 4 months in, that data usage passes through an alarming bump and then settles down once the red mist of connection has worn off!

[Bill]

And indeed urinate your data cap up the wall at an alarming rate... ;-)

Yup- given a link that allowed me to max out the line, I could go through a month's (peak hours) usage allowance in a little under 2 hours

[shorn]

OK well its been 8 days now since it was installed. So it's getting close to the recommended 10 days for the speed to settle. I'm getting around 20mb down and 8 up.



This is about the best I can get from the Speedtest site. (And this is the best from all the servers.)

I would have to say that I'm a tad disappointed that its not really close to the minimum 27mb down that was predicted. Don't get me wrong, the extra speed is great over the 1.5mb I was getting, however I am paying over £25 more a month than I was before!

I also find that I am getting some sites that load quite slowly. Most sites are fine, things like the BBC news site is up in no time, however sites like MacRumours seem to load 90% then hang for 5 seconds or so (where I get the beachball and cannot use it), and then finish loading.

I'm pleased, but not quite as stoked as I thought I would be.

[Bill]

I also find that I am getting some sites that load quite slowly. Most sites are fine, things like the BBC news site is up in no time, however sites like MacRumours seem to load 90% then hang for 5 seconds or so (where I get the beachball and cannot use it), and then finish loading.

Can be an MTU problem... make sure it's set to at least 8 less on the computer than on the router, eg 1492/1500.

PPPoE overhead.

[shorn]

Last Few....


Date         Time                  Down        Up     Latencey
1/24/2011 9:23 AM   GMT   25.07           7.76   20   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 9:25 AM   GMT   23.22           7.85   20   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 9:35 AM   GMT   30.11    7.83   20   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 11:00 AM   GMT   32.5           7.87   23   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 11:14 AM   GMT   32.49           7.87   21   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 2:28 PM   GMT   25.71           7.85   21   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 4:58 PM   GMT   11.01           7.91   21   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 5:54 PM   GMT   18.33           5.13   20   Sittingbourne   0
1/24/2011 5:55 PM   GMT   4.59           1.23   421   Newbury           100
1/29/2011 11:44 PM   GMT   19.03           7.17   21   Sittingbourne   0
1/29/2011 11:45 PM   GMT   24.32           6.85   40   London           50
1/29/2011 11:45 PM   GMT   21.69           7.22   28   Aubervilliers   200
1/29/2011 11:46 PM   GMT   24.53           7.36   22   Ashford           50
02/01/2011 21:07           GMT   20.75     7.35   42   Maidstone           50
02/01/2011 21:07           GMT   15.28           4.98   21   Sittingbourne   0
02/01/2011 21:10           GMT   21.88           7.96   31   Coventry           100

[.Griff.]

The Sittingbourne server gives me awful results as well but I see you've tried Maidstone once and that generally gives me the most accurate results.

What result do you get from this ? - http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

That has always been reliable for me.

[shorn]

What result do you get from this ? - http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

[Anton]

How have things panned out Shorn? Has the rate recovered any?

[pctech]

I've spoken to both Seb and Andrew in the past with an idea to find out what the issue was/is but their simple response was "it's fine.. Must be your fault" rather than accept there's some issue with IDNet/FTTC and the test.

They aren't BT employees are thay?