Trying to resolve throughput issue

[lozcart]

Mine is slightly warmer by the lights but is overall temperature is not very high in fact my Airport Extreme router runs warmer than the BT modem. The 3B version should be fine however I expect some can still fail, do you know anyone who could lend you their modem?

[psp83]

My modem failed within 1 month of FTTC install.

Mine failed to keep or get a connection when it got hot.

Try powering down the modem over night and let it cool, then plug it back in and retest your speeds.

[andrue]

Turning the modem off for half an hour didn't have any affect. I'm pretty sure it's something external. Something in BT's network. The graphs that speedtest.net and the Visualware test produce are curious.

Speedtest.net nearly always shows a large 'hump' somewhere during the test. I get the feeling that the hump might be far higher than the average 30Mb/s it reports. It's as if the network can deliver higher speeds...but only for a short while.

The Visualware test is just a mass of 'jaggies'. Looks like a seismograph on a bad day. VW also keeps showing a red light saying that consistency is poor. Typically it says something low like 20%.

Thinking about this further though there are some other interesting points:

• I've always had a good profile (always been 76.76 I think). However my throughput has generally stated at or below 60Mb/s.
• The Visualware test has flagged consistency as an issue on occasion before this all began.
  Sometimes the Speedtest.net test was poor - as low 40Mb/s albeit not often.

I'm beginning to think that perhaps Brackley does have some kind of congestion problem although it's still hard to believe that it could have it at 6:38am like it did today.

[Glenn]

Ask on Thinkbroadband if others in the area are having similar issues.

[mervl]

Would it help to unlock the modem, to get the stats from the Cab DSLAM? I believe it will give you more stats than IDNet have access to, and you can then start to negotiate with them to get OR out. Or it might indicate that the problem isn't with the local loop but on, presumably, the BTw link (see the FTTC stats and graphs threads here or Kitz forums). BT speedtester has always shown the 12Mbps-38Mbps range on my line but tests and actual downloads are always close to the 38Mbps - and the modem stats are consistent.

I get stats from a Fritz! which are more basic but it gives the reported attainable, Noise Margin, attenuation to the cab, and errors, and the graphing is particularly useful. Your BT modem will give you more details.

[andrue]

I'm going to unlock the modem at the weekend although after switching it off for fifteen minutes last night it came back and the profile is the same so I don't think there's a problem there. I went round to the neighbour's last night but they weren't in. I'm expecting them to say that they are seeing poor speeds as well but if not it opens up some more investigation possibilities. They are quite friendly so hopefully they'll let me attach my laptop to their network and do a speed test. If that gives 'proper' results it will eliminate a lot of possibilities.

Unfortunately the elephant in the room is that damn 12Mb/s minimum speed and persuading BT that something needs to be fixed 

[andrue]

And then...


it was fixed.


Speedtest is now slightly pessimistic. A download of the Win 8 ISOs gave me 7.4MB/s. TBB says 68Mb/s. Even the upload has improved a bit (although TBB still claims it's 8Mb/s that seems to be a TBB specific fault). This time around the latency is still low as well.