Truly abysmal internet speeds

wack61

wack61

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For a while I've thought my internet was slow so I've just downloaded speedtest for the iPad

I just ran it and these are the results

Ping 433ms
Download 0.36 Mbps
Upload 0.17 Mbps

I'm on bt Internet , when I ran the checker on their website it said download speeds up to 8mbps, I suppose 0.36 Mbps falls into the up to statement though.

I binned their router as it was rubbish and bought one , it's N capable, is it likely to be a router problem ?
 
A better router would always help but as its wireless many factors impact the speeds of the Internet such as walls other electrical appliances. Try the speed test stood next to the router.

Also times of the day affect the speeds but even with all that taken into consideration your speeds should be that bad, who is your broadband with?
 
Happy Snapper said:
A better router would always help but as its wireless many factors impact the speeds of the Internet such as walls other electrical appliances. Try the speed test stood next to the router.

Also times of the day affect the speeds but even with all that taken into consideration your speeds shouldn't be that bad, who is your broadband with?
Click to expand...
 
Just run a test using broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk

download 7557Kbps upload 679Kbps

Using BT homehub. My homehub version is N capable
 
Download 1446Kbps Upload 350KBps.

That's on a 3 wireless dongle connected to a TP-Link router with 2 dongles (n) plugged into the computers.

Not as fast as a wired broadband connection but it's the cheapest I could find - £16.00 a month for 15Gb a month.

.
 
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it might be labelled as upto 8mb but they should have given you an estimated line speed before install?

how far from the exchange are you (samknows.co.uk), are you plugged into the master socket, have you changed your microfilters?
 
In order to do a speed test, you really need to be connected to the router via a physical cable. Any manner of things can be messing up the connection between ipad and router.
 
We're getting 1.9 Mb/s download and 0.36 Mb/s upload in a rural area with copper wire ADSL only. I'm quite happy with this, I don't need anything faster.
 
I'm with bt broadband and it's not plugged into the master socket as the wireless wouldn't work upstairs when it was

I've just found a firmware upgrade for the modem so I'll give that a go tomorrow and see if it improves things
 
Wouldn't expect a firmware update to improve speeds. It's either noise and/or an issue on the line, poor quality phone cabling or distance from exchange.

Does your router give you signal to noise and attenuation stats?

Also might be worth a call to bt to see if they can do one of their magic line tests that sometimes correct issues..
 
My Girlfriend changed from TalkTalk to Sky on the guaranteed minimum speed of 7.2meg lower end with the upper end at 14.3meg....We have had the engineers out 4 times as the max we can achieve is 2.4meg....

I've asked them to send a letter stating that they cannot provide the minimum that they said they could....We are still waiting....and also paying for the ficticious speeds they said we would get....

Time for me to get on the fone again ..

The worst thing is the Curb side box is outside her house and right next to it is the new fibre box....Sky dont have access to the fibre in her area.... To make things worse Talk Talk do !!! Doh ...
 
Tugster said:
My Girlfriend changed from TalkTalk to Sky on the guaranteed minimum speed of 7.2meg lower end with the upper end at 14.3meg....We have had the engineers out 4 times as the max we can achieve is 2.4meg....

I've asked them to send a letter stating that they cannot provide the minimum that they said they could....We are still waiting....and also paying for the ficticious speeds they said we would get....

Time for me to get on the fone again ..

The worst thing is the Curb side box is outside her house and right next to it is the new fibre box....Sky dont have access to the fibre in her area.... To make things worse Talk Talk do !!! Doh ...
Click to expand...

have you been on the sky user forum - they have some good little tools and suggestions on how to max out your speed, plus tips on how to get through to the proper techs and not just the customer service monkeys? I got mine sorted by one of the forum members who pm'd me as he was a sky employee, and had a look at my settings next time he was in work. I trust it's not just the dlm in action?

Your best bet is to download the mossywell tool from their forum, run it, post your stats and get some help off some nice people, just like you would on here!
 
wack61 said:
For a while I've thought my internet was slow so I've just downloaded speedtest for the iPad

I just ran it and these are the results

Ping 433ms
Download 0.36 Mbps
Upload 0.17 Mbps

I'm on bt Internet , when I ran the checker on their website it said download speeds up to 8mbps, I suppose 0.36 Mbps falls into the up to statement though.

I binned their router as it was rubbish and bought one , it's N capable, is it likely to be a router problem ?
Click to expand...

That is not good. sounds like you've been throttled or due to several disconnects your router decides to bring it down to a stable speed.

You should give BT a call and get them to check the line and bring the speed up.
 
dejongj said:
That is not good. sounds like you've been throttled or due to several disconnects your router decides to bring it down to a stable speed.

You should give BT a call and get them to check the line and bring the speed up.
Click to expand...

Hmmm

Does switching the router off every night affect the speed

Just ran speedtest again and it was
Ping 43ms
Download 5.06 Mbps
Upload 0.29 Mbps

I haven't changed anything yet
 
I wouldn't switch off the router every night, no. That is not necessary, but occasionally they do need to be restarted.

the figures you have now seem pretty standard I would have thought.
 
It's necessary when you have a 14 year old who'd be on Xbox live until 3am if it was on, :D does switching it off every night affect the speed
 
It can do as the router 'learns' the speed, and if it has to do it every time, the connect doesn't know it isn't a problem. It is supposed to be always on.

What I would do is configure the time it is available instead. On my router for example I could set per device, or as general policy, between what hours the internet is available and which websites, or what applications etc. Might be worth looking into :)
 
wack61 said:
Hmmm

Does switching the router off every night affect the speed

Just ran speedtest again and it was
Ping 43ms
Download 5.06 Mbps
Upload 0.29 Mbps

I haven't changed anything yet
Click to expand...

Mines goes off and on with my computer at least twice a day.

It will have no effect on your speeds.
 
Are you on BT ADSL Max?

There is a process called Dynamic Line Management running, that will adjust your speed down in order to get a stable speed. Especially if during the initial 10 days anyone was in this habit of switching off a 24/7 intended line the Maximum Stable Rate and Fault Tolerance Rates will have been identified inappropriately. Effectively is the MSR drops below the FTR for an 8 hour period during a 7 day period it will adjust the line speed. To me disconnecting it overnight seems plausible that it causes something like this.

Hence the advice to either contact BT Internet to get them to trigger a new calibration, or leave it on for at least 10 days and it may come back up by itself.

Now if you are not on ADSL MAX than this is not applicable ;)
 
dejongj said:
Are you on BT ADSL Max?

There is a process called Dynamic Line Management running, that will adjust your speed down in order to get a stable speed. Especially if during the initial 10 days anyone was in this habit of switching off a 24/7 intended line the Maximum Stable Rate and Fault Tolerance Rates will have been identified inappropriately. Effectively is the MSR drops below the FTR for an 8 hour period during a 7 day period it will adjust the line speed. To me disconnecting it overnight seems plausible that it causes something like this.

Hence the advice to either contact BT Internet to get them to trigger a new calibration, or leave it on for at least 10 days and it may come back up by itself.

Now if you are not on ADSL MAX than this is not applicable ;)
Click to expand...

i dont think its limited to BT customers, i believe the wholesale products also carry it. i know sky run it or similar in that if the line has too many errors theyll throttle to make it stable. if that is the case i imagine it would be on many many other wholesale customer ISP connection also.
 
Yes you are quite right. My, not so clear, point was not everyone is on adsl max. It only arrived in our village 1.5 years ago and the previous normal adsl was always connecting at 2mb stable. As our lines and exchange was not too stable I had to go through a lot of pain in order to get it sorted myself. It is stable ish now but every now and then it still dips right down when I check my router.
 
i kinda thought thats what you meant to be honest, just thought id clarify :)

so yeah to sum up, if you keep turning your router off the error checking may decided that it thinks there is noise/errors etc on the line causing the drops/instability and throttle it back.

there is no reason to need to turn routers off to be honest.
 
dejongj said:
It can do as the router 'learns' the speed, and if it has to do it every time, the connect doesn't know it isn't a problem. It is supposed to be always on.

What I would do is configure the time it is available instead. On my router for example I could set per device, or as general policy, between what hours the internet is available and which websites, or what applications etc. Might be worth looking into :)
Click to expand...

I will, thanks, I didn't realise they were that sophisticated, that'll come as a bit of a shock when Xbox live goes off at dot on 10pm every school night
 
wack61 said:
I will, thanks, I didn't realise they were that sophisticated, that'll come as a bit of a shock when Xbox live goes off at dot on 10pm every school night
Click to expand...

Yes if you go into the hub settings, you can set it to be active at certain periods etc. I know on our new hub 3 I can also disable the wireless connection after a set time, but the wired connection can remain live.
 
LOL Yes it will. I've restricted access for my daughters iMac as well. Not just for time, but also for the types of sites she can access from it. And we have a little chat when the box pops up so that I can explain to her what that site is about and how she should be aware. Some I'll open up, yet still monitor her activities (my house my rules, not a democracy :)) and others she agrees are best left closed.
 
If you're on copper DSL....make sure you have a microfilter on every connected phone socket in the house. Can really screw up your connection having a phone plugged in directly to a wall socket.
 
Good point forgot about that, the drawback of the current wires only installations opposed to the early installations where the extensions were separated by the installing engineer....
 
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