One for the Tech Guys - Broadband speed

[bluewolf]

I'm having a few difficulties with my broadband speeds. It's never really been a massive problem, but after connecting up to Sky On Demand and realizing that it took over an hour to download 1 episode of Spongebob (for the kids obviously), I realized there was a problem.

I've checked the download speeds using several online testers and never got above 0.5Mb/s download speed. I've checked this speed on both phone points in the house and also checked it using an ethernet connection rather than wi fi, just to make sure that the card isn't the problem.

I live in a semi rural area but I'm sure I should be getting more from my connection than 0.5Mb/s. So, any ideas? Is it likely to be the provider (Orange), the phoneline or is there something else I can do to improve it?

Thanks in advance

 

[fundy]

Not a tech guy but if you go to this page and pop in your phone number it should tell you the max capability that you can receive where you are. At least then you'll know if its just that you cant get better at your location currently or that your service is poor

https://broadband.ee.co.uk/home.do#linechecker

 

[bluewolf]

Not a tech guy but if you go to this page and pop in your phone number it should tell you the max capability that you can receive where you are. At least then you'll know if its just that you cant get better at your location currently or that your service is poor

https://broadband.ee.co.uk/home.do#linechecker

Cheers mate. Just run the test and it came back with a max speed of 17mb/s and an expected speed of between 10 and 15 mb/s. The amusing thing is that EE is part of the same group as Orange. Might be time for a phone call to orange to remind them that they have a responsibility to their customers....

 

[Fish]

I've just changed to EE and my speed has more than tripled at the low end in comparison to my BT Infinity so I'm really pleased. My lowest average is 43.5 but I can be much higher than that dependent on the time of day/night.

I've had no problems at all since the swap and now have multiple tabs open with immediate connections when before all I could do was watch the hamster on the wheel almost die trying to keep the power wheel going

 

[philly169]

could be the connection/distance to the exchange or it could just be the provider.

When you signed up you would have been given a "you can get this quick in your area". If you log into your home router you should be able to see the download and upload speed, most routers show these stats. if the speed its coming in on your router is pretty poor its a problem with the provider, if you router shows your connection is around the mark you were quoted then its an issue on the other side (home side), network cables, home plugs or network cards.

 

[bluewolf]

could be the connection/distance to the exchange or it could just be the provider.

When you signed up you would have been given a "you can get this quick in your area". If you log into your home router you should be able to see the download and upload speed, most routers show these stats. if the speed its coming in on your router is pretty poor its a problem with the provider, if you router shows your connection is around the mark you were quoted then its an issue on the other side (home side), network cables, home plugs or network cards.

Cheers mate, the router homepage is showing 8096 kbps downstream and 448 kbps upstream... The other settings look OK.. I'm still only getting 0.5mbps on all the tests i'm running.. So it looks like it's a problem at this end... Now I'm struggling..

 

[Khamelion]

With broadband ADSL, the further away from the exchange you are the weaker the signal will be, if you then add in contention with other users in the same street or exchange then your BW will drop.

If you run the speed test at tea time (16:00 to 18:00) chances are your BW will be quite poor, do the same test again at 03:00hrs in the morning or around 11:00hrs your speed will be better, no kids playing online games

Of course your provider could be at fault, your router/modem may have issues

 

[LeeTurner]

Also don't confuse the connection speed that your router shows you with the actual speed. The router displays the sync speed which is different than the throughput. For instance my router shows a sync speed of 24Mbps but a realistic line speed for me is around 12Mbps.
There are lots of factors that can contribute to slow speed - distance to exchange, congestion, throttling of the speed by the ISP, aluminium cabling ( a real killer). Is your router plugged straight into the main socket? One factor that can significantly affect speed is the use of extension sockets, especially if it's carrying a bell wire. This introduces a resistance on the line. You can get a special plate called an interstitial plate that removes this issue (BT call theirs the I-Plate - more info here: http://www.shop.bt.com/products/bt-iplate---bt-broadband-accelerator-58LT.html).

If your router is showing a sync speed of around 8Mbps then you should have an ADSL2+ connection which can offer decent speeds - .5 Mbps is pitifully slow. Get your ISP to run a line test and if they say that nothing is wrong then phone another ISP to get a line test off them. Your ISP should be able to run a loop test against your router.

I've worked in the Telecomms industry for many years and there is a lot of bs around broadband speeds.

 

[bluewolf]

Also don't confuse the connection speed that your router shows you with the actual speed. The router displays the sync speed which is different than the throughput. For instance my router shows a sync speed of 24Mbps but a realistic line speed for me is around 12Mbps.
There are lots of factors that can contribute to slow speed - distance to exchange, congestion, throttling of the speed by the ISP, aluminium cabling ( a real killer). Is your router plugged straight into the main socket? One factor that can significantly affect speed is the use of extension sockets, especially if it's carrying a bell wire. This introduces a resistance on the line. You can get a special plate called an interstitial plate that removes this issue (BT call theirs the I-Plate - more info here: http://www.shop.bt.com/products/bt-iplate---bt-broadband-accelerator-58LT.html).

If your router is showing a sync speed of around 8Mbps then you should have an ADSL2+ connection which can offer decent speeds - .5 Mbps is pitifully slow. Get your ISP to run a line test and if they say that nothing is wrong then phone another ISP to get a line test off them. Your ISP should be able to run a loop test against your router.

I've worked in the Telecomms industry for many years and there is a lot of bs around broadband speeds.

Good write up mate. Ties in with the stuff I've researched today. I've spent all day looking into possible faults. I've tested the speed on 3 different computers, connected through 3 different phone sockets, wired and wireless, on 3 different channels. Every time I got the same result - 0.469 Mbps. After a bit more research I phoned them up and asked if they had accidentally capped my speed to 0.5Mbps. The guy at Orange swore blind that they hadn't. he made me jump through a few hoops before asking me to change to channel 11 (had already done this before), then he asked us to give it 24 hours and ring them back if there was no improvement. Magically, within 10 minutes, the average speed had increased to 5Mbps. Its a good job I'm not cynical...

Not to worry, the contract is up in 2 weeks and I've got the MAC so I'll be moving my business elsewhere....

Thanks for all the help guys. It's been an interesting day and I now know more about broadband than I did this morning. So that's good then....

 

[G1BB0]

okey dokey, as an Openreach Broadband engineer I can tell you that there is probably a cap on your profile

if your router is sync'd at 8mb then you should be getting around 7 - 7.5 (theres always a little overhead). You will need to speak to Orange as they will need to reset your profile. It could be due to a fault on the line causing hec/crc errors wjhich will cause your profile speed to drop to try and stabilise the line.

Give them a bell and see what they say

***ignore I missed the last bit about your cap

also Lee, there is no ali in the ground (its our biggest nightmare tbh and kills bband above 2mb)

I would say that 80% of bband speed/sync issues I go on are due to poor internal wiring or star wiring (single point of entry going onto multiple extensions), cheap extension cables are a killer, older type sockets also cause errors and speed issues.

Britian is not as super fast bband ready as we are led to believe

 

[LeeTurner]

To back up what Gibbo said most ISPs run a system called DLM which is dynamic line management. This will automatically adjust your line speed to give the best performance/reliability. If you are having line issues then the line speed will be reduced by DLM and I would think that EE reset the profile when you phoned them.
If you want to see who is available for your exchange then have a look at SamKnows - http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search . This will not only tell you the suppliers but also the type of service available.
Orange did move their broadband network to a BT managed operation a couple of years ago (2010).

 

[Smiffy]

I'm just swapping out from Sky to Plusnets unlimited fibre optic.
Doing a deal at the moment for half price for 6 months so quite good.
Getting fed up with Sky. Had no broadband at all yesterday, tried phoning Sky last night to get some answers, spent 15 minutes hanging on the phone listening to music, music then went and I thought "Bingo!".....then the line went dead.
Spent yet another 10 minutes on the second call listening to the same music only to be told that they couldn't do anything there and then and a technical bod would call me back. He still hasn't.
At the moment with Sky I'm getting just on 10Mb. Plusnet say I should easily exceed this, and may (may) get up to 76Mb...yeah right!

 

[Scouser]

Check you have a filter on all your telephone lines...the sky bloke left one of on ours after a repair took me ages to realize lol