Speed drop all of a sudden?

[andrue]

Instead of my usual 55/14 I'm getting 33/12 using speedtest.net (to London/Namesco) and http://mcslhr.visualware.com/myspeed/admin.

This is on the Brackley/Banbury exchange. BT Speedtester seems to be dead at the moment so can't see my profile but there's no sign of a drop on the TBBQM.

[lozcart]

Everything is fine here, perhaps give your router and modem a reboot and see if that helps.

[andrue]

Everything is fine here, perhaps give your router and modem a reboot and see if that helps.

You were right. Everything is back to normal now.



Does that happen often?

[lozcart]

Ive never had it happen, just a lucky guess, if technology fails restart it!! 

[andrue]

Ive never had it happen, just a lucky guess, if technology fails restart it!! 

Damn, seems to have gone again. I am seeming some high speeds as the test runs but it's very unreliable throughput.

[andrue]

Damn, seems to have gone again. I am seeming some high speeds as the test runs but it's very unreliable throughput.

Hmmm. I just noticed there's a football match on tonight with England as one of the teams. Could that be an issue? i rather hope not 

[Rik]

Always likely, the Olympics will tell you...

[Glenn]

Tennis from next week too.

[Simon]

[andrue]

Unfortunately I never could get the bt speedtester to tell me the results so I don't know if my profile has changed. However during the Speedtest results it did sometimes hit the higher speeds (and did once give a normal reading) so I'm fairly sure it's not my connection. Maybe there's some dirt somewhere. I'm going to upload 8GB to Minneapolis when I get home tonight so that'll blow the line out 

[Rik]

Use a Dyson.

[Simon]

They suck. 

[Rik]

 

[andrue]

Hmmm. I reckon there's been a routing change. My ping to the Namesco server is now hugely improved (15ms as opposed to the 35ms it's been ever since I got connected) however the throughput is still variable. Speed results much like yesterday.

[mervl]

Anything possibly to do with the report of issues with Faraday POP (quote from TBB on Thursday: "In London, BT's Faraday PoP, one of BT's 20 core network point's of presence on it's 21st Century Network (21CN) has also seen an unrelated equipment failure which has caused the loss of service for some broadband users serviced through this site. Multiple ISP's are reporting problems with broadband lines in London and the South of England being down, and this could also be affecting capacity generally through the network".

My experience is no issues with my local exchange or the IDNet network, but all the problems seem to be based on the red6 PoP I'm connected to at Stepney Green (from north -east of London), as I can get details from the modem. Latency, profile, and throughputs are all consistent, though recently the upload has risen to around the 85% of the reported attainable speed, similar to that always achieved by downloads and was formerly stuck on about 60%.

Unlocking the modem seems good for detective work, at least on the local loop if that's where you suspect the problem.

[andrue]

It might be but my issue started on Tuesday. I've been away all weekend and it appears to be okay now. We'll see. To be honest I've been less than impressed with Support on this one. I sent email including the rest of a BT speedtest and it was ignored (at least - sent on Wednesday and still not had a reply). I called Friday and had to leave my details (after being asked a load of inane questions like 'is the router light flashing?'. Sadly I got called away Friday pm but a message was left on my answer phone saying that...


<wait for it>


..I should send an email with the results of a speedtest 

But I don't think it's anything local. Here's the speedtest result I sent to Support for them to ignore:

"Download speedachieved during the test was - 30.17 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 12 Mbps-76.76 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 76.76 Mbps

2. Upstream Test:  -provides background information.

Upload Speed
7.01 Mbps
   
0 Mbps 20 Mbps
Max Achievable Speed

Upload speed achieved during the test was - 7.01Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps"

[andrue]

Huh. Dropped to 20Mb/s today. Interestingly as before the Speedtest.net graphs had been rough for the last week or so. It's a bit surprising if it's capacity issues on BT's network yet again. It's only a few months since the last ones.

[mervl]

Did you ever get round to unlocking and getting data (preferably logging via the graphing scripts) from the modem? Some line faults (in their early stages) do seem to manifest themselves in dry, hot weather, and damp or using the analogue phone seems to effect a temporary improvement in the circuit. EDIT: it's not uncommon for some faceplates to be defective apparently (though that might manifest itself by drops rather than just erratic speeds) - but presumably your problem is intermittent rather than ongoing?

My IDNet FTTC service has now been boringly consistent and reliable for 115 days and counting (and for 6 months before that was only affected by occasional BTW issues at Stepney Green).

[Steve]

I agree I see very little variation in downstream throughput, the only variations I see are due to WiFi variable throughput.



btw it's 20mbps - we'd all be extremely happy with 20Mb/s

[andrue]

Did you ever get round to unlocking and getting data (preferably logging via the graphing scripts) from the modem? Some line faults (in their early stages) do seem to manifest themselves in dry, hot weather, and damp or using the analogue phone seems to effect a temporary improvement in the circuit. EDIT: it's not uncommon for some faceplates to be defective apparently (though that might manifest itself by drops rather than just erratic speeds) - but presumably your problem is intermittent rather than ongoing?

Yes I did. Well - I unlocked it but I haven't been graphing it. It's normally so consistent (54Mb/s from Speedtest.net, 74Mb/s from mchs and TBB) that there seems to be no point. I check throughput once a day (usually the evening but also sometimes early morning before leaving for work as today) I check the modem roughly once a week and it's usually syncd in the high 70s. I checked it this morning because of the poor speed and it was syncd at 789xxx (don't remember the exact figure but remember it was damn' near 79Mb/s).

I might run a BT test tonight but if it's anything like last time it'll just magically bounce straight back up in a week or so.

btw it's 20mbps - we'd all be extremely happy with 20Mb/s

By the way - no it isn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

You might be happy with 20 millibits a second but no-one else would be

[Odos]

By the way - no it isn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

You might be happy with 20 millibits a second but no-one else would be

Afraid I agree with Steve,,,, it is 20mbps or 20mb/s ( mega-BITs) and not 20Mbps or 20Mb/s ( mega-BYTES )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

[andrue]

Afraid I agree with Steve,,,, it is 20mbps or 20mb/s ( mega-BITs) and not 20Mbps or 20Mb/s ( mega-BYTES )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

And I'm afraid you are also wrong. The two letters are separate things not one single 'word'. The first letter is the multiplier and capitalising it makes it 'mega', lower case is 'milli'. The second letter is the unit and although it's a bit confusing the general convention is 'b' for bit and 'B' for byte. From the link you posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Unit_symbol

Mb/s = megabits per second.
mb/s = millibits per second.
MB/s = megabytes per second.
mB/s = millibytes per second.

Connection speed is given in 'megabits per second'. A lower case 'm' makes no sense in either case.

You could be forgiven for confusion over exactly what the prefix multiple is. I am rigidly SI so M is a million, and k is a 1,000 but software engineers often use powers of 2 especially for k which they treat as 1,024. But thinking that the capital 'M' changes the meaning of 'b' is just bad.



Any how that's a side issue and it just remains to be seen if/when my connection goes back to normal

[Odos]

Connection speed is given in 'megabits per second'. A lower case 'm' makes no sense in either case.

You could be forgiven for confusion over exactly what the prefix multiple is. I am rigidly SI so M is a million, and k is a 1,000 but software engineers often use powers of 2 especially for k which they treat as 1,024. But thinking that the capital 'M' changes the meaning of 'b' is just bad.

I assume neither of you are familiar with the metric system nor SI units in general. That's rather sad in this day and age 

Agreed A lower case 'm' makes no sense in either case. I used to be a software programmer then moved onto hard ware. In either case in the computer sense there is no such thing as a millbit or millibyte. As you say everything is binary or hexadecimal which makes a mockery out of trying to force the use of metric notation.

My point being that any "m" notation when referring to computer speed or storage is by default Mega not milli.

[andrue]

And of course the BT speedtester is not compatible with Chrome. How does a company as large as BT come up with such a cr*p test?


Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.

Download Speed
25.03 Mbps
   
0 Mbps 75.77 Mbps
Max Achievable Speed

Download speedachieved during the test was - 25.03 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 12 Mbps-75.77 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 75.77 Mbps

2. Upstream Test:  -provides background information.

Upload Speed
10.27 Mbps
   
0 Mbps 20 Mbps
Max Achievable Speed

Upload speed achieved during the test was - 10.27Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps


So as before - it's just getting throttled somewhere in their system again.

[Steve]

I wish I'd not said anything.