Evening Slow Speeds

[PUDtheAncient]

I upgraded to fibre back in February and up until July had a rock solid connection, syncing at just over 46mb and getting just over 43mb. Since July nothing but problems which after 5 engineer visits have mostly been sorted. All hardware on my premises have been replaced including the wall socket and faceplate ( rewired by BT engineer), billion 8800nl router all the cat 6 cable and gigabit switches. Anyway the engineers tell me the line is rock solid with no problems now.

So the current ongoing problem is that my sync speed is still just over 46mb and during the day I am getting 43mb but in the evenings this is generally between 16mb and 22mb but does go as low as 8mb on busy evenings (Fri/Sat).

BT wholesale test says for my connection speeds should be between 32mb and 45mb which is reasonable. Clearly this is not what I am getting and at times I am losing 75% of my speed. Clearly this is a congestion issue and probably at the exchange as my cabinet is virtually empty and IDNET tell me they have no congestion issues.

I have been with IDNET for many years and have always found them very good. That said I spoke to support regarding this issue on Monday and the person I spoke to essentially said that raising the issue with BT was a waste of time and I should just put up with until BT decide to fix it in a few years.

That is not acceptable to me. I am paying a lot for my connection including traffic priority and frankly if these are the speeds I can expect I may as well just go with some low cost provider and pay less than half the price for the same speeds.

So I pretty much insisted it was raised with BT and have done some speed tests for IDNET tonight for them to progress the issue.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Can BT just refuse to do anything when the speeds are clearly way outside acceptable tolerances.

Thanks

Paul

[zappaDPJ]

Does anyone have any thoughts? Can BT just refuse to do anything when the speeds are clearly way outside acceptable tolerances.

It seems so. My FTTC connection regularly loses sync, on average around 2-5 times a day. IDNet line tests report a fault and the constant disconnections slow my downstream to a crawl, 0.46 mb/s this morning. I also have high latency 46ms and near constant packet loss at around 5%. The OpenReach fibre engineer was able to see all of this from BT/OpenReach logs but said it's not enough to warrant further action.

Case closed.

[PUDtheAncient]

Pretty much a law unto themselves then, no needing to provide any sort of reasonable service to customers then. Makes a mockery of the supposed government push for everyone to get fibre broadband. What a joke, not much point having fibre if it does not work.

[mervl]

There seems to be a common misapprehension that if you pay more to a "quality" ISP you get a better service on the local loop and connection to the ISP handover point. You don't. Traffic priority is only once it reaches IDNet's network. OpenReach get the standard £10/£5 or so out of your monthly phone and internet subscriptions, however much or little you pay to any ISP. And DSL broadband is, and always has been, a "reasonable efforts" service, the speed estimate is just that, not a guarantee. You can leave a new subscription promptly if it doesn't come up to estimate. That's your remedy. Your choice is to change service, Virgin and certain local altnets (Gigaclear come to mind) provide services (not using BTOR) which provide a "what we say is what you get service" (or should, with Virgin at least it doesn't always work, again because of congestion); or tweak or try different hardware at your end (IDNet might loan you some). Are you using the latest modem firmware (though make sure you can revert if it doesn't work for any reason)?

If you need the guaranteed speed you have to pay for it, through FTTP or business ethernet services. If we all want the estimated speeds (and for some people they are very low too), then we'll all have to pay for it, with subscriptions much higher than they are now. And if OR are split off that's what we may end up with, with or without any improvement. And we have to ask, (and I do too with an underperforming service, worse than yours) why should everyone else (including much poorer people) subsidise me? Yes the advertisers and politicians do mislead, but if any of us haven't realised that by now one has to wonder what planet we've been living on. And I have to ask, what do you need the speed for? If we can't live with and work around the issues, then it becomes a question of priorities and if broadband is number one we have to move to the broadband not expect it the other way around. It's just life, most other people don't get everything in life they want or think they deserve, either.

IDNet are right. BT do get "round tuit" eventually. They have a national network to look after. The magic wand is for Harry Potter.

[PUDtheAncient]

Unfortunately I live in a small village and the only supplier available to me is BT. Obviously I can change my provider in the near future if I deem it necessary. I don't mind paying the current fifty quid a month or more if it would improve my connection but at the moment the outlay cannot be justified. I could probably change provider and get the same sort of speeds for half the price.

As with many other people in this country we all have to deal with BT's very poor ageing network and especially if you do not live in a major city. Many years of under investment as with many other things in the country.

I guess my frustration is more that there is nothing I can do to improve matters. And yes all firmwares have been updated and tested as well as new routers and pretty much all the related
hardware in my property.

Oh and I was told by IDNET that traffic priority is a BT wholesale product and does apply to their network.

[nowster]

Oh and I was told by IDNET that traffic priority is a BT wholesale product and does apply to their network.

All DSL is provided as a contended service (BT circuits definitely -- LLU may be different). What you're paying for with "traffic priority" is to be placed on a different virtual circuit between the exchange and BT's central concentrators which takes priority over the normal service (when ADSL first launched the business product was 20:1 contention and the ordinary product was 50:1 contention).

If your circuit is on LLU (ie. not Openreach/BTW) the likelihood is that IDNet's (or that of the carrier they subcontract with you) virtual circuit out of your exchange is running "hot" during the evenings, or it's sharing a bearer with a very busy BT circuit. This would be their problem. Getting it fixed would take a lot of coordination between many different companies, most of which won't understand the problem or even be interested in fixing it. It all depends on the various contracts in force between them.