On and off-peak speed issues

[PatJW]

Recently migrated from Namesco after suffering their horrible peak time ping problems when playing games such as WoW etc.

Anyway, been online for over a week and since I migrated and still got my 7.5mb line sync speed, I am assuming that BT Wholesale don't do the whole ten day trial thing again?

While I am mostly happy with my game ping times, I find my download speeds have gone down the crapper compared to what I got with my previous ISP.

It doesn't matter what time of day or night I try downloads, I have yet to achieve even marginally comparable speeds considering my sync rate.

If you're downloading at 2am on a weekday and getting 200kbs on a near 8meg line, there's something not right. I was assured that there was no traffic shaping or capping before I migrated here so my mind is boggling at the reasons for this. Apart from the obvious answer being a multitude of heavy users saturating the available bandwidth prety much 24/7.

Had I known contention was going to be such an issue, I'd have looked elsewhere.

Why can't I find an ISP that lets me play games and get decent speeds on the odd occasion I want to download something?

I have tried resetting my router multiple times to try find a less saturated pipe, but that doesn't seem to help. Is this an ongoing issue?

[James]

If you're downloading at 2am on a weekday and getting 200kbs on a near 8meg line, there's something not right. I was assured that there was no traffic shaping or capping before I migrated here so my mind is boggling at the reasons for this. Apart from the obvious answer being a multitude of heavy users saturating the available bandwidth prety much 24/7.

Had I known contention was going to be such an issue, I'd have looked elsewhere

We do not do any capping, as per advertised. You will be on the 10 day trial again which means BT have probably capped the line at 2000 Kbps for this period as they seem to do with most these days.

Please post the test results from http://speedtester.bt.com

If it says "IP profile for your line is 2000 kbps" then the cap is from BT, not us. After the 10 day training period, we can log a fault with BT to get it uncapped. But be assured we do no capping or throttling as others will gladly tell you :)

Thanks

James

[Ircsum]

Why not use the BT speed tester to check what your profile is before assuming it's the ISP that's at fault? Your profile may well be stuck at 2000 kbps (a BT problem).

Ircsum.

[PatJW]

I don't have a stuck profile.

I have only suffered these speed issues since I migrated to this ISP.

I checked everything out prior to making my post and there is no problem at my end, nor with BT. Latest result from checker anyway:

IP profile for your line is - 6500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 7616 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 2527 kbps

I have been trying to download a 680mb file for over two hours now. 150kbps is the best I have got so far, it averages 90kbps. Saying it's the weekend doesn't cut it, it was never an issue with Namesco. I was also getting the same speeds at 2:30 am this morning.

This has remained true since I connected. I think I actually got 700kbps for about 2 minutes on thursday morning last week before it dropped dramatically again.

I have rebooted my router mutliple times in the hope of getting assigned to a less congested pipe with no result. This seems to be the result of heavy contention and it looks like I'll be yet again requesting a MAC at the end of my contract month :(

[staticshock]

You are the first person I have seen who says he has this many issues I am sure james Or paul will try and sort it if they can.

Normally there is a bit of a slow at 10pm but not any later.

Hope you get it sorted soon;)

[James]

It's certainly not contention on our network. If your exchange is overloaded, you won't get better speeds on ANY isp.

Here is a speedtest result from a customer just now:

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/results.php?t=1177276687&v=1181100

So as you can see, there is plently of capacity. Have you tried other routers/pc's? (even if you think it's fine, components can fail and strange things can happen) Have you also made sure your MTU is optimal?

Thanks

James

[PatJW]

Just checked.

VP capacity at this exchange is currently showing as Green.
Click here for further details

I am on an exchange where contention has never been an issue. I was the original campaigner that got the three exchanges in my area enabled and I do still keep an eye on exchange capacity etc and still help others with problems.

My MTU has been hard-set on my router to 1492, as per the suggestion in another thread.

I have even tried my backup USB modem with the same results.

The only common denominator since the start of these download speed issues has been my change to this ISP. Do you traffic shape on newsgroup downloads at all? As that is where I do most of my downloading from.

I am unable to ascertain what central pipe I am on as the tool doesn't seem to be working. Any suggestions for resolution would be greatly appreciated as this is driving me nuts at the moment.

[James]

We don't traffic shape no.

Any improvement today?

[Jack91]

Its definately not ADSL24, superb all round for me.

[yorkie]

I have run two speedtests this morning,

1st Thinkbroadband / 6299.56Kbps (6.2 Mbps) at 09-43 am

2cnd BT speedtest / 6428 kbps 09-59 am

My speeds are good this morning in fact they are improving,

yorkie.

[PatJW]

IP profile for your line is - 6500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 7616 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 6132 kbps

Much better than yesterday so it seems contention/congestion is responsible for the bad performance.

Going to attempt to dl a 300mb file and see how that goes.

[James]

Thats a lot better!

James