Low download speeds over past 24hrs

[spring88]

My router consistently syncs at 8128 (the maximum on this line) with an IP profile of 7150. Whenever I run speed tests I normally get download speeds of just below 7mb.
However, since yesterday, my download speeds have been considerably lower and fluctuating between 2.6mb and 4.3mb when running various speed tests. Throughout this time my router has been syncing at  8128 and, having run a diagnostic test, my IP profile is still 7150.

stats below:

My router is a Netgear dg834v4 connected directly to an adsl faceplate. I tried rebooting it to see if that made any difference.

BT Speed test:
The Download Speed achieved during the test was - 3.84 Mbps
Your DSL Connection Rate :8.13 Mbps(DOWN-STREAM), 0.45 Mbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 7.15 Mbps

Router Stats
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream Connection Speed 8128 kbps 448 kbps Line Attenuation 36.0 db 20.5 db Noise Margin 9.8 db 24.0 db

Although running ping tests give the same results as normal (about 40ms) online games seem to be affected as well; I had a couple of goes yesterday and today and it took me much longer to connect to a game server and my connection was rated worse than normal.
The drop in download speed also seems to be the difference between being able to stream HD videos without problems like usual and having some videos keep freezing and buffering.

Does anyone have any idea as to what the problem might be?

Thanks in advance.

[Simon]

Until someone more technical comes along, a few thoughts:

1.  Is this a wired or wireless connection?  If wireless, is it secured, and are there other devices using the home network?

2.  Could something like a P2P application, or similar, be hogging your bandwidth?

3.  Have you done a virus / malware scan to check that there's nothing nefarious using your connection?

[Steve]

In addition to what Simon has said

My guess would be local exchange or IDNet congestion, since no one else at present seems to be suffering that suggest the former.

If you've had some disconnects recently , Interleave may have been applied even with that profile but it usually manifests itself with an increase in latency which you may be seeing with the online games.

Congestion usually has a pattern with periods of normality , if you run something like ping monitor from ThinkBroadband it may show itself.

Customer support may be able to shed some light.

Your router although one could say old model , I wouldn't change without good evidence.

[Simon]

Just a further thought, have you had any bad storms in the area over the last 24-48 hours?

[spring88]

Until someone more technical comes along, a few thoughts:

1. Is this a wired or wireless connection? If wireless, is it secured, and are there other devices using the home network?

Wired

2. Could something like a P2P application, or similar, be hogging your bandwidth?

I don't use P2P and I can't think of anything else that could be hogging bandwidth- the video games I play are on an xbox so anything nasty in my computer shouldn't have an impact.

3. Have you done a virus / malware scan to check that there's nothing nefarious using your connection?

Virus and malware checks came up fine.

My guess would be local exchange or IDNet congestion, since no one else at present seems to be suffering that suggest the former.

Is there any way to find out whether the exchange is congested and, if it is, can anything be done about it?

If you'v had some disconnects recently , Interleave may have been applied even with that profile but it usually manifests itself with an increase in latency which you may be seeing with the online games.

I think I already have interleaving on the line.
I used to be on fastpath but got switched back about 18 months- at the time I assumed the switch back was caused by a problem at my local exchange which had left me without internet for several days. I noticed that I was getting higher pings, logged into my router and it said interleaving was on. Although the results from ping tests went up from about 20ms to 40ms it didn't make that much difference to online gaming so I didn't request for it be switched back.

Congestion usually has a pattern with periods of normality , if you run something like ping monitor from ThinkBroadband it may show itself.

Does the ping monitor record pings in the same way as the various speedtets/ping test sites? If so, I have noticed no difference in the pings whenever I have run ping tests either today or before the problem started-the pings are always approximately 40ms.

Your router although one could say old model , I wouldn't change without good evidence

I do have another router,a Netgear dg834v3- I was thinking of maybe giving it a go before e-mailing customer service.

Just a further thought, have you had any bad storms in the area over the last 24-48 hours?

No.

Thanks for all the feedback.

[Simon]

Is there any way to find out whether the exchange is congested and, if it is, can anything be done about it?

http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

[spring88]

Is there any way to find out whether the exchange is congested and, if it is, can anything be done about it?

http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

I had tried that earlier but it didn't seem to give much detail. I couldn't find anything on my exchanges page that would indicate whether it was congested or not. There were no problems that I could see mentioned.

I did notice that on the right of the screen there was orange question mark next to broadband saying "the service has a problem"- However this comes up regardless of what exchange I look up. I assume that this refers to Plusnets internet service and has nothing to do with my exchange or IDNET.

I just tried playing an online game again a little while and one thing I noticed was that the poor connection rating only lasted during the first 10-20 seconds of the 2 games I played before returning to normal levels- I had previously been quitting early when i saw a bad connection. I suppose its possible that it has always been like this but I assume I would have noticed. The delays I am experiencing in connecting to the servers had not happened before though.

Since the most obvious and easy to explain issue is the lowered download speeds I'll proabably ignore the online gaming aspect when I contact IDNET so as to avoid complicating the issue.

[Steve]

The Thinkbroadband ping monitor is an automated continuous graphical record, it will give you the broader picture with no effort from yourself , apart from allowing the router to respond.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

[spring88]

I ran a speed test first thing this morning and was pleased to find my download speeds had returned to just below 7mb (6.97mb). After running the same test later in the morning and early afternoon and getting pretty much the same results I assumed the problem had resolved itself.

I was playing a video game a bit later on and, midway through the session, I suddenly found it very difficult to connect to a game server with just the loading symbol on the screen. I turned on my computer,  ran a speed test and......my download speeds are now down to *1.29mb*.  Logged into my router and everything was the same (8128 sync, no disconnects/re-syncs recorded in logs etc))-

I'll try running the ping monitor for a couple of days and see what that shows.

[Simon]

I had a similar issue myself earlier today.  A router reboot cured it, but I don't know how long for.  Would be interesting to find the cause. 

[spring88]

I just tried rebooting but it doesn't seem to have worked for me- still got really poor download speeds (1.72mb).

[Simon]

Mine seems to be holding at the moment.  Coincidental, but different issue, perhaps? 

[spring88]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/f6ed854d9b8fd8e393dd92f78e65dee0-31-07-2014.html

This is my ping monitor graph since I started it last night- pretty sure its not meant to be one massive block of red (dropped packets)- can someone have a look at it and give me feedback on what this means? Thanks.

[Steve]

It doesn't look to me that you've allowed your router to respond to a ping on wan input.

[spring88]

It doesn't look to me that you've allowed your router to respond to a ping on wan input.

Thanks- I should have read thinkbroadband's FAQ

[spring88]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/f6ed854d9b8fd8e393dd92f78e65dee0-31-07-2014.html

Here is the working graph now I have set up my router correctly. Is there anything in that graph that would indicate a major problem or the cause of my sudden poor download speeds?

So far this morning my download speeds are even worse than before- between 1.21mb and 1.28mb.

[Steve]

So far you've got fairly persistent packet loss even when quiet, my guess is congestion somewhere between your router and IDNet,have you spoken to support yet?

[spring88]

I was going to contact them this afternoon. Is it worth trying a different router first, or is the type of problem I have definitely not router related?

[Gary]

You could try a different router to rule it out although, it could be a line fault like a battery fault possibly but you would hear noise on your phone normally. It does look like it could be a congestion issue between as Steve said you and IDnet. Have you had your line tested by IDNet? Also have you tried plugging your router into the master socket as well?

[spring88]

You could try a different router to rule it out although, it could be a line fault like a battery fault possibly but you would hear noise on your phone normally. It does look like it could be a congestion issue between as Steve said you and IDnet. Have you had your line tested by IDNet? Also have you tried plugging your router into the master socket as well?

I tried using a different Router, changing cables, and also plugging direct into the test socket.

IDNET logged a report to BT but they didn't find a specific fault. BT are sending out an engineer to our house tomorrow-apparently they seem to think the problem might be interference.

My question is if is it possible it could be interference bearing in mind my router is not losing sync, my sync speed is still 8128 and my IP profile is still 7150 and, according to Router Stats, my noise margin is extremely stable with no drops, spikes etc etc (after monitoring for an hour the upstream noise margin was steady at 24db and the downstream varied from 9.9db-10.3db)?
My download speeds haven't been above 1.7mb since Wednesday and have gone as low as 0.8mb.

[Steve]

Surely with interference you'd see variations in noise margins which you're not.

[spring88]

A BT engineer came round yesterday and, as I was expecting, couldn't find any problem or fault on the line with his equipment. He suggested there was likely to be a problem at the exchange and would arrange for a broadband engineer to come out.

One other thing I have noticed is that whilst my download speeds on speedtests are about 1/5th of what they were it seems my speeds when downloading files are even worse.
To confirm this I tried using the download test feature on thinkbroadbands website- according to the site it should take 5 seconds to download their 5MB test file on a 8mbps connection (like i used to have) and 20 seconds to download the file on a 2mbps connection which is much closer to what I have now; it actually took me over 1 minute 45 seconds!

The actual speed that the file was beign downloaded at was around 45 kB/s which is probably about 1/18th of what I used to get..

[Steve]

I agree I wasn't expecting him to find anything either, what's the performance like early AM?

[spring88]

I agree I wasn't expecting him to find anything either, what's the performance like early AM?

No different. I've been running speedtests from about 6:30am to 10pm at night with no pattern in terms of speeds improving or deteriorating. No download speeds of above 1.72mbs had been recorded since Wednesday afternoon.

I ran a speedtest at 7am this mornign and got 1.18mbs download speed. Downloaded a file and was gettign 45-50KB/s.
Just ran another speed test (8:45am) and got a speed of 1.41mb/s. Downloaded a file and got speeds of 45-50KB/s./

Then something bizarre happened.

I went to download.cnet.com and downloaded a program that was about 23MB. I was getting consistent speeds of over 600KB/s and the file downloaded almost as quickly as it would have done in the past.

I then went back and ran the usual speed test and my speed was 1.28mb/s. Went to update my Malwarebytes database and a small download that should have took seconds to download took minutes (as it has done every time since this problem started). Looking at my bandwidth monitor in the taskbar the speed varied from 70kbits/s(about 9KB/s?) to 500kbit/s(about 60KB/s?). Downloaded another file which downloaded at around 45-55KB/s.

Since I have been using only my regular speed test site (speedtest.net) and the BT speedtest I tried running 4 different speed tests to see what results I'd get:
The 4 I tried recorded my download speed at 2.82mb/s, 2.79mb/s, 1.1mb/s and 1.08mb/s. Went back and ran a speed test again on the site that gave me 2.82mb/s 5 minutes earlier and this time got a speed of 1.00mb/s.

Went back to download.com and tried downloading another program. This one, once again, started downloading at 600KB/s and the download seemed like it would be over in seconds. However the speed began dropping rapidly, the time to download increased and, by the time it was 60% downloaded, speeds were around 65-70KB/s and stayed like that until the download was completed.

No idea what any of this means.

[Simon]

I've had a couple of issues with the new Malwarebytes, such as high CPU load, and 'stuck' updates.  Just as an experiment, perhaps try turning that off and see if anything improves?

[spring88]

I've had a couple of issues with the new Malwarebytes, such as high CPU load, and 'stuck' updates.  Just as an experiment, perhaps try turning that off and see if anything improves

Malwarebytes is off 99% of the time unless I load it up to run a virus check/update. No sign of it or anything else causing a high cpu load in the Task Manager.

[Simon]

OK, it was just a thought.

[spring88]

Just to rule out for myself the possibility of a problem with my computer causing an issue I ran another speed test on a second computer and got 1.26mb/s with files also downloading at around 35KB/s. 

Thanks for everyone who has replied; hopefully the broadband engineer can fix this next week. 

[spring88]

Turns out there was a fault at the exchange which has now been fixed. Speeds back to normal since Tuesday.

Thanks again for the help.

[Lance]

Glad you've got it fixed.

[Simon]