Poor speeds

I have recently returned to PN from O2 and I am regretting it.

On O2, using the TBB speedtester, I was on average getting 12716 Kbps downstream and 1022 Kbps upstream on PN it is more like 10221 Kbps downstream and 371 Kbps upstream. I understand why the upstream speeds are so different but the downstream speeds are not that far apart. Irrespective of what those speeds are, on O2 I remember on occasion getting over 1mB/s but I am struggling to get 200kB/s on PN. I appreciate this is not a scientific test but after you have downloaded a few files you get a general feeling as to how fast it is going and O2 seemed to zing along but PN is crawling.

At the weekend (around midnight) I downloaded Win7 SP1 from www.softpedia.com (on PN) and as I say struggled to get 200kB/s and it failed half way through a couple of times so I searched for a download manager (Internet Download Accelerator) and it worked well and got me up to about 450kB/s - and worked first time!

Is this simply traffic shapng or is there something else at play?

Your router stats and which Plusnet package you're on will help a little.

I am on PN Extra which is an upto 20meg product - the same as the O2 (LLU) product I was on

I am not aware of any traffic management by either O2 or PN that would adversely effect a HTTP download from www.softpedia.com yet on O2 I could get upto 1mB/s and on PN it was approx 200kB/s.
My house wiring is the same, the line to the exchange is the same, the router is the same. The only things that I can think of that are different are the VPI/VCI settings and the ISP.

Concentrating on the download speeds with O2 it was approx 12716 Kbps downstream and on PN it is approx 10221 Kbps downstream so that is the same as 2 20cm pipes one with 12716 litres of water per hour flowing through it and one with 10221 litres of water per hour - not wildly different! The problem is that is that the O2 pipe gave me 1000 litres in an hour while the PN pipe only gave me 200 litres in an hour.

I have downloaded quite a few VirtualBox updates from FileHippo recently so, similiar sized downloads from the same servers although at different times of the day - possibly all around the same time, with O2 it was fast, with PN it chugs along.

I tried a 30 Meg download from Softpedia and it was choppy but the average was around 4 Meg.

0/38 for the VPI/VCI

Suggest you keep testing at different times of the day to see if speeds are consistent or not.

I'd be very, very surprised if softpedia wasn't regarded as a download server or download site and hence subject to traffic management.

See http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...

According to the PN website here are the sites/servers regarded as download sites/servers

Websites

* Adult bouncer
* Bangbros Online
* Kingdom.com
* Rapidshare
* ImageShack
* Megaupload
* TerraSpace (Rapidshare again)
* badonga.com
* guba.com
* metainterfaces.com
* narrowstep.com
* sendspace.com
* wildrose.net

Servers

* German Mirror site
* Ireland Mirror site
* Kent Mirror site

Content Distribution Networks (CDN)

* Akamai
* Limelight Networks
* Level 3

No mention of Softpedia

What you don't know is if Softpedia use a CDN - that is distinctly possible.

No mention of Microsoft either. But they use Akamai.

In reply to a post by tallseabird:

According to the PN website here are the sites/servers regarded as download sites/servers

Websites

* Adult bouncer
* Bangbros Online
* Kingdom.com
* Rapidshare
* ImageShack
* Megaupload
* TerraSpace (Rapidshare again)
* badonga.com
* guba.com
* metainterfaces.com
* narrowstep.com
* sendspace.com
* wildrose.net

Servers

* German Mirror site
* Ireland Mirror site
* Kent Mirror site

Content Distribution Networks (CDN)

* Akamai
* Limelight Networks
* Level 3

No mention of Softpedia

All these are not affect on Plusnet Pro package