Slower than expected speeds on 80/20 service

[MattBeale]

Hi guys n'gals,

I don't post much here, but I still think of this as my first port of call when ever I have problems (that exist purely in my head or otherwise) with IDNet. Is that a bad thing?

I've been on the 80/20 service since the second round of trials began back in February, but I've never felt like that's the service I'm actually getting. Switching from the 40/10 service my download speeds didn't actually increase at all (stayed at 38Mbit / sec or 4.4MB/sec) but my uploads went up by about 50% (to approx 12Mbit / sec or 1.2MB / sec).

Obligatory speedtest.net image follows:



When I queried the speeds with James at IDNet Support, he told me they didn't actually have any tools available for them to diagnose problems and that I'd have to wait until the service officially launched to get any issues looked at. At the time I accepted what he was saying, but in retrospect that seems odd that they wouldn't be able to perform diagnostics and send that data to BT?

Anyway, now that the service is well and truly officially available and has been given some time to bed in, I'm thinking it's about time I should make some enquiries with IDNet, but I don't want to waste their and my time if I've got nothing to gain from doing so. So I thought I'd unlock the Huawei modem and see if it revealed anything useful. It did, sort of.

This is what it currently shows:

	Downstream	Upstream
Attainable rate (kbit/s)	60564	16336
SNR margin (dB)	6.2	5.9
Line attenuation (dB)	0	0
Output power (dBmV)	13.4	6.8

The BT Speedtest says my profile is currently at 57.97 Mbps.

Those of you in the know, does that look right for 4.5MB/sec downloads or should I be getting more? By my maths (shoddy at the best of times) I should be getting at least another 2.5MB/sec out that sync speed, but alas I am not. Is it worth chasing this with IDNet, could my profile be capped somehow or somewhere, either at the cabinet, BT or at IDNet, or in the community's opinion is that about all I'm likely to get?

(What's really encouraged me to ask this is a friend who is also on 80/20 and he gets 9MB/sec on mother flipping TalkTalk of all ISPs!)

Thanks.

[Glenn]

Matt it looks very similar to my 80/20 line, I'm approx 650m from the cabinet.

[Steve]

My first questions are  which router are using and how are you connected just in case they're not capable of giving you the full throughput?

[Bald_Eagle1]

Those of you in the know, does that look right for 4.5MB/sec downloads or should I be getting more? By my maths (shoddy at the best of times) I should be getting at least another 2.5MB/sec out that sync speed, but alas I am not. Is it worth chasing this with IDNet, could my profile be capped somehow or somewhere, either at the cabinet, BT or at IDNet, or in the community's opinion is that about all I'm likely to get?

Hi MattBeale,

The figures you have quoted are the theoretical Attainable Rates that your connection should be able to achieve subject to it being uncapped.

The actual sync speed is shown as Line rate:-
e.g. Line rate (kbit/s) 33387  1997 for my connection (up to 1000m from the cabinet).

As BT's IP Profile is approximately 96.79% of sync speed for VDSL2/FTTC connections, your IP Profile of 57.97Mb suggests an actual sync speed (Line rate) of around 59893 k.

As your SNRM levels are around 6dB, that also suggests that your connection has synced at more or less its maximum speed, based on physical line conditions, noise levels & attenuation over the distance from the cabinet.

At a very rough guess, it looks like around 600m or so from the cabinet (unless there are major physical line issues/aluminium cabling etc).

If that is the case, then it would appear that your THROUGHPUT is still capped at 40Mb.
This may be a setting that your ISP needs to adjust to allow you the maximum available throughput in relation to your sync speed.

However, as speedtest.net usually reports around 37.5Mb as maximum throughput from a 40Mb connection & it is reporting 38.12Mb for your connection (a shade high), there may be other factors restricting your throughput.

[MattBeale]

Hi everyone,

Glenn, there are what look like 2 FTTC style cabinets reasonably close by. If I'm connected to the one I think I am, it's ~500 meters away. The other cabinet is actually closer to me, but is stood next to a BT cabinet that was installed for the newer part of the housing estate ("newer" because it's still 50 years old, just not as old as the part I live on), so presumably that one provides FTTC services for houses on that part of the estate.

Steve, I'm using a Billion 7800n, with the Huawei modem connected to the WAN socket on it. I'm then using Homeplug AV 200 adaptors through out the house to connect PCs, Sky boxes, etc., I did wonder if the Homeplug adaptors were at fault, but I have the very same download speeds if I use Cat5e cable directly between my PC and the router, and I have no problem obtaining 100MBit/sec speeds transferring files between PCs on the Windows network when using the Homeplug adaptors.

Bald_Eagle1, thanks for the information, very useful. I will try to get in touch with IDNet sometime during the week to see if they can check my line to see if it is capped.

Thanks all, you're a great help!