Slow Speeds since I got the 8meg Max service

[Simon]

Zen is the same price as IDNet, isn't it?

[Rik]

It is, same deal virtually.

[Sebby]

Tiscali not on your list, Rik?

[Den]

The last 24 hours my speeds are back up to normal or better has any thing changed, I have not had these speeds for over a month. 

[Sebby]

Good to hear, Den. Let's hope these speeds continue.

[Rik]

Tiscali not on your list, Rik?

Yes, but only for people I don't like. 

[Den]

Have not had speeds like these for a long while (the slowest last month was about 1500kbs) and this is the second highest since I joined Idnet.




Hope this continues 

[Sebby]

Yes, but only for people I don't like. 

[hairyman]

Hi All

Did a BT speedtest last night and got nearly a best ever ( at least since I was on 2meg broadband 3 years ago!!) at 1230kbps at IPprofile at 5000kbps. Its didnt last though. Back to 500k tonight. 

I am very pleased that  you guys can get 6854kbps down and 381Kbps up , last time I did a speedtest at speedtester.net I got 480kbps down and 112kbps up. I just want a little speedup here mostly it has gone down hill over three years. The Thinkbroadband graph prediction thing says I will be below 400kbps average by this Christmas based on tests over the last year or so. Up until the transfer to ID nearly a year ago it pointed to 2meg tps as being likely in early 2008.

Ref Tiscali they are not all bad my neighbour used them before he moved and his 2meg service ran three times faster than my 8meg. 

Yes I will look at Newnet as they look OK at a very good price. Its a shame to leave IDnet as they are very helpful but cannot help.

The "spell" has been put on BT so we can expect them to be taken over or go bankrupt or even see the share price collapse further. 

The main problem is I can get no direct contact with any one sensible at BT who will talk to me, thats the way the weird Openreach / BT setup goes. It was a con/fix to satisfy Ofcom ( ?) I seem to remember rather than help the consumer and break up a monopoly it created an Unreachable Openreach.

  BT only comment is that says its nothing to do with them and BT agent/subcontractor type ISPs  have no control of upstream or downstream hardware and connections and blame BT.

Latest masochistic speedtests below:-
THINKbroadband
Speed Test Results
Date 13/10/08 20:40:21
Speed Down 600.64 Kbps ( 0.6 Mbps )
Speed Up 368.14 Kbps ( 0.4 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk
IP Address

Link: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/122392675912149811390.html

SPEEDTEST.NET

[Sebby]

Sorry things aren't looking up for you.

The only thing I can suggest is that you move to LLU.

[jaydub]

Sorry things aren't looking up for you.

The only thing I can suggest is that you move to LLU.

In which case, NewNet would not be a particularly good choice, since they only have LLU in a handful of exchanges.

[Sebby]

Indeed. I'm not convinced that another IPStream ISP would help.

[Rik]

Unless it happened to result in a physical move within the exchange, I don't think it would.

[hairyman]

Hi Sebby/Rik/Jaydub


Yes I guess a move to LLU would help , but currently I am tied to a BT phone deal and all the LLus here are phone and bb deals combined.

That is why it seems sensible to save some cash with a lower cost ISP on the basis there is no point having a Lotus Elise type ISP ( Idnet) when I have a dirt track syle line and exchange to drive on. I can probably use any BT IPstream type ISP and get the same tps as the local loop and exchange is the limitation and has been for ages.

LLus here are Orange and TT with O2 rumoured to be adding gear early 2009 as they seem to have a big push to activate O2 at all larger exchanges around here that dont have Virgin ( there is no cable within 10miles around here).


Idnet have been brilliant , helpful , professional almost to a fault but obviously they have to rely on BT for the Ipstream local to me and on BT gear to connect in to the wider net at ID HQ .

I would like to stay I would be fairly happy to get back to the 2meg rate I had with 2meg broadband nearly three yrs ago. My local loop to the exchange is not good with less than 1km of cable giving 38db of noisy ( crosstalk I suspect with other bb lines in the underground ducts). I suspect the only way to improve this would be to order a new second  line then cancel the old one a bit later. They would have to dig up quite a bit of road for this ( at least 100mtrs to the nearest PO cast iron hole in the road) the system still seems to profile around 5meg which is acceptable. This seems a little pointless with the local exchange being so congested we all we seem to have  is 500kbps actual tput each.

I will do a few tests tonight.

PS Just been told by my household manager that Simon at IDnet called on my home number this morning he was going to call my mobile but I didnt get an incoming  call , guess he is a very busy man. I had my head in a very complicated bit of electronic/hydraulic test gear trying to solve what transpired to be a built in / design fault rather than a simple failure so we had our  own problems , the things we do to make F1 cars go quicker and aircraft fly better ( I am very glad I dont have to use aircraft any more).

Thanks for your concern and advice. I will call Simon tomorrow.

[Sebby]

Let us know how you get on.

You raise a key point that IDNet are, unfortunately, at the mercy of BT.

[davej99]

I have been following this thread with interest and a great deal of sympathy for Hairyman, who has been very reasonable and extremely patient. There but for the grace of the Great Gremlin of the Universe go any one of us, who one day, in spite of the best endeavors of IDNET, might experience the very same problem.

In view of what has been discovered, there seems little chance this is an IDNET issue and a very small chance there is a subtle user equipment or wiring problem. That only leaves exchange congestion or a line problem. Moving to an LLU service may address the former, but not the latter. Hairyman is not free to move to an LLU service at present, and moving to another BT Reseller offers no reassurance there will be a fix because the connection may not physically change and so congestion and line faults might remain.

The speeds being reported are falling below the 500kbps accepted by BT as a fault condition. In the normal course of events such speeds, when logged by the BT Speedtester, must be acted upon by the ISP and by BT. A BT Test 1 below 500kbps should initiate Tests 2 and 3, though these do not always run reliably. The outcome of all the tests should show IDNET and BT who is at fault, and if as we suspect it is a BT problem, then contractual arrangements ought to dictate BT put in a fix. At very least if they refuse, it seems reasonable to demand a release from all contractual obligations with BT in total that prevent Hairyman migrating to an LLU provider. My inclination in addition would be to seek compensation for the months where speeds were largely below 500kbps.

My pitch here is for Hairyman the reasonable consumer of Broadband services, who seems to have been let down badly by the BT Reseller broadband service. Unfair as it may seem, because the evidence points to this not being an IDNET problem, I do urge IDNET to come to the rescue here and do battle with BT Wholesale on behalf of Hairyman. If not, who will? It would also be unfair to raise a formal complaint with the ISPA, but if that helps highlight the issue and the responsibility that BT may carry, then so be it.

Today it is Hairyman; tomorrow it could be any one of IDNET's subscribers. So please lets hear it for Hairyman, Simon and Goliath.

[hairyman]

Hi dave

Thanks for the support, your post summarises the  situation very well. For two years I thought the slow net was down to my former ISP Eclipse Internet. The introduction of Max made the speeds drop although use of the net rocketed at around the same time. Our exchange supports about 6000 lines I think so is quite small by some standards, hence no LLus came in until recently. My line seems to IPprofile at 5meg which would be fine. I get no/few data errors when the line is noisy just disconnects , crazy for less than 1km of line all underground ( I am only 400mtrs from the exchange as the crow flies) .

The disconnects are few but when they happen I can get dozens in a day. I understand LLus dont use this kind of profiling presumably they have some sort of faster response profiling to set line sync rates etc.

I would be happy with a reliable 2meg rate 4meg would be wonderful , I understand that sometimes the rates will drop as other users do silly stuff like download movies/tv prog and other things they can get for free via other faster better quality media ( satellite/off air or via optical media). I just need to browse and download about 3gig a month at the rate I did three years ago ie the old reliable 2meg service.

I have just read that moneysupermarket have rated ISPs on actual download speeds.  Precise below.

"Many broadband providers are still not delivering the speeds they advertise according to the latest moneysupermarket.com quarterly speed test results. Their speed test, which looked at almost 60,000 internet connections and measured average speeds, shows that O2 remained the most consistent performer with an average speed of 4.95Mb on its 8Mb package. Sky took second place with actual speeds of 3.63Mb on its 8Mb deals, while Orange also entered the top three with its 8Mb offering posting an average speed of 3Mb."

I understand this  shows that even fast LLus get ( only) 5meg max actual average tps , its unreasonoble to expect much higher speeds with conventional cabling except on peaks. 

Ref trying to get out of a BT voice contract I suspect they would say that broadband was nothing to do with them ans I would guess that even if I used BTbroadband as my ISP they would say the same. Maybe I am being over cynical but I doubt it.

BT speedtest tonight showed IPprofile 5000k and sync at 6500k and actual tp at 600k . I have seen less than 500k on a BT test but never a Test 2 or 3 . It often takes over 5 minutes to complete a test and timeouts occur though.

I do thank IDnet for their help and fully understand a move within the BT subcontrator network will give similar rates but hey if its slow any way why use 5star petrol.

Can anyone suggest how I can proceed??
The buisness structure of the internet I access seems completley inaccessible to me the consumer. One provider blames the other even though basically they all own each other as one cannot exist without the other. 

PS just tried the moneysupermarket speedtest and got 460kbps downstream and 220k up with a 149ms ping,
this agrees with the BT test tonight and a speedtest.net test .

[Sebby]

I have just read that moneysupermarket have rated ISPs on actual download speeds.  Precise below.

"Many broadband providers are still not delivering the speeds they advertise according to the latest moneysupermarket.com quarterly speed test results. Their speed test, which looked at almost 60,000 internet connections and measured average speeds, shows that O2 remained the most consistent performer with an average speed of 4.95Mb on its 8Mb package. Sky took second place with actual speeds of 3.63Mb on its 8Mb deals, while Orange also entered the top three with its 8Mb offering posting an average speed of 3Mb."

As per most of these statistics, the information is absolutely meaningless and very misleading. They fail to take into consideration that, regardless of the ISP, there is the issue of sync rate. If everyone on O2 is sync'd at 8Mb, then the results are not good. If everyone on IDNet, for example, is sync'd at 5Mb and gets 5Mb throughput, that's great. See what I mean? Speeds of ISPs just can't be compared in the way that they are doing.

[hairyman]

Hi Sebby

Dont forget that if you share your bandwith with others , which we all do , you will always get speedtests way way below sync rates. IDnet stated to me and others have confirmed it, that BT provide 20mbps of bandwith for every 50 customers on an exchange ( I would guess LLus stats are very similar, well at least when customer takeup reaches the expected level) that gives us 400kbps at worst if everyone is on and active and all circuits ( VPs? ) are working.  I suspect the real tps during normal evening hours are between 1 and 2 meg for most people living in towns and cities with a nearby exchange.

It would be interesting to know the spread of Sync and IPprofile rates throughout the UK , actual tps are known from various surveys. Most users in England and Wales will be near an exchange as most of us live in towns or cities ( I live in a small town near a larger town near a small city Gloucester.) so I would guess most will sync at a high rate near the Max.

Thanks for yr help , time for some shut eye, goodnight

[Den]

My speeds are still keeping up and are registering the highest for some time 



Just noticed the comments about interleaving and checked my router, interleaving is set to on. Would it make any difference if this was turned off and would I see any benefit? 

[Rik]

It might give you a marginal improvement in speed, Den, or it could actually slow things down, depending on your error count. It would reduce latency, but that only really matters to gamers.

[hairyman]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7098992.stm


Just located this article ref average tps on bb around the world. Seems the UK gets around 3meg on average. The article is nearly a year old so I would guess the speeds have dropped since then as things like BBCi player has appeared since then and more houses are activated.

I would be very very happy to get 3meg anytime getting when I am awake would be even better.

I have been to busy at work to make calls on this bb problem, but I will call IDnet and ask them to initiate a ISPA deadlock . I do believe IDnet are not too much at fault as they make no claims as to the actual speed they can provide and seemed to have opted out of the Ofcom Guidelines  on Broadband speeds as being a BT user themselves they have little control of the service they provide.

What they do have is a working relationship with BT passing some of my / our money onto this company to use their internet connections in and out. I would expect IDnet to pressurise BT to get something sorted. I have no route to even contact BT/Openreach as they are shell companies that only deal with ISPs .

My last call to IDnet resulted in " we can do no more to help and didnt we tell you that last time or didnt you understand" not their exact words but that was the precis of it. Understandably I dont really want to call again and get a load of nothing.

Hoping to borrow a couple of 3G type mobile dongles to try over the next few weeks to see how they perform around here. They are cheaper than Newnet and certainly less than Idnet so if I have good/some  coverage that might be a solution and far more versatile as we can take it with us in our holidays out with the caravan etc.

[hairyman]

Results Image not loaded  BT speedtest

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
    Your DSL connection rate: 6464 kbps(DOWN-STREAM),  448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
    IP profile for your line is - 5000 kbps
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 786 kbps

If you wish to discuss these results please contact your ISP.

If you are experiencing problems with specific applications, servers or websites please contact your ISP for assistance.

Your test has completed please close this window to exit the performance tester



Two speed tests done tonight the thinkbroadband test below.

Date 15/10/08 22:52:45
Speed Down 831.31 Kbps ( 0.8 Mbps )
Speed Up 368.71 Kbps ( 0.4 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk

All seem to agree , the rate is actually quite good at least for me!!

Also if anyone can help ??

I have just done a test downloading largish file from known fast served sites and one gave 98kbytes a sec ie around 800kbps as the above speedtests confirm . I then started a simultaneous large download and that gave 89kbytes a sec speed. Meanwhile the first download carried on at 98kbytes a sec. Giving a total of 187kbytes a sec ie nearly twice the speed of one download at a time. The second download didn't slow the first one at all!!



Where I have seen this before is at work where when the internet and network is busy and when I was at Eclipse Internet where this was called traffic shaping. The downloads were not peer to peer and were direct served files. I suspect BT are doing the same as Eclipse were doing to me and others last year. I guess exchange congestion might have the same result/effect? Dont suspect IDnet do this but it is very funny as in peculiar not the Hah Hah type.

[Simon]

I'm sorry I can't comment on the technicalities, Hairy, but we do know that IDNet do not use traffic shaping within their networks.  I'm not aware that BT can traffic shape of their own volition, or that this can be done by them on an individual connection basis, but of course, if I was wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

[Sebby]

I don't really know what else I can say.

I would be inclined to complain to Ofcom and/or write an email to the BT CEO. I think they are the only options that may get you somewhere.