FTTC capped at 40Mbps?

Just had my fibre installed today and what a difference it is compared to the 2.5Mbps that I had on ADSL. To my surprise the line was rated and has connected at full 80/20 speed even though the initial guestimate from BT was 55/16.
Running speed tests I am only getting around 40/16 is there something that Plusnet need to change at their end to enable the full 80Mb download speed? The fastest speed test I have had is 42Mbps download.
On the portal it is showing line speed as 78Mb.
This is on a wired conection so wireless is not an issue. Speed test was http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk. I also have the pro add-on so less likely that it should be throttled.

Anyone got any ideas of what needs done.

Almost seems a bit odd asking for more speed having just moved from 2.5 to 40Mbps but would rather have the full 80Mbps now I know the line can take it.

Thanks
Fraser

Please can you post the contents of the two text boxes of results from the BT Performance Test. The Diagnostic option is what you need to run.

Speedtester results

Download speedachieved during the test was - 71.22 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 16 Mbps-0 Mbps.
IP Profile for your line is - 77.43 Mbps

Upload speed achieved during the test was - 15.34Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps

So this is showing more what I would have expected.

I suggest you read the little box at the top of mybroadbandspeed which begins "Sorry".

It is known that particularly for fibre users the results are dubious.

I read that but the thinkbroadband tester is not giving good results and neither is the file download from thinkbroadband test files.

Our flash tester is perfectly capable of going well beyond the FTTC speeds in the UK. We will be 5% slower than most other testers due to the use of 1024.
Also we monitor our network and know that the download file server is not maxing out its capacity or any of the links where the data leaves our network.

Some people if their RWIN is set lot or is very slow to ramp up may get slower results from our tester, which our display of an average value can make things look worse. Hence the display of the graph so you can see if your throughput is all over the place.

I thought it was capable of showing the speeds of FTTC which is why when your tester and the mybroadband speed tester were showing low it may be something on my profile at Plusnet side.

Fraser

The tbb java speed test gives rubbish upstream results, but the downstream should be fine. The tbb Flash tester should be comparable with speedtest.net results.

"Our flash tester is perfectly capable of going well beyond the FTTC speeds in the UK"

Which is what i said, we tend to give slightly slower results sometimes, but for well understood reasons. We have no capacity problems, and are in the middle of upgrades to ensure that even if 330 Meg products become popular we would be ok.

I will keep an eye on this and see if things improve. The general improvement from ADSL to FTTC is great but I would like closer to the line speed especially given I have the pro add-on. If it doesnt improve over a few days then I think I will drop this as no use paying the extra £5 if you cant get near to the line speed.

How does the BT speedtester work now? I assume it cannot miss out the plusnet side of things now and give yo uan unthrottled speed, or can it?

Thanks
Fraser

In reply to a post by wintersf:

How does the BT speedtester work now? I assume it cannot miss out the plusnet side of things now and give yo uan unthrottled speed, or can it?

Not in Test 1 it can't. Which is what you just used. I should ditch that dodgy tester and use tbb Flash or speedtest.net.

The advantage of the BT one is that it gives the IP Profile, which is the actual speed limiter unless the ISP sets a slightly lower figure based on that. That's why I wanted you to run it, so as well as the speeds, (perfect), we could see the IP Profile and check it agreed with your pN Current Line Speed. Which it does.

wintersf,

I'm sorry to hear you're speeds have been slower than originally expected. Feel free to drop me a PM with an account identifier (postcode or username etc) and I'll make sure we check for any obvious causes.

I just wanted to mention with regards to the pro add-on is that it doesn't have any affect on line speed itself, it's intended to improve the experience for gamers and home workers: http://www.plus.net/addons/pro/

Thanks,

PM sent

Thanks for the suggestion on the speedtest.net one. Just tried that and it is the first that shows more like what I had expected given the line stats. Maybe I have just been unlucky with the rest or something has changed?

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/2367496168.png[/IMG]

And the BT one .

In reply to a post by wintersf:

I will keep an eye on this and see if things improve. The general improvement from ADSL to FTTC is great but I would like closer to the line speed especially given I have the pro add-on. If it doesnt improve over a few days then I think I will drop this as no use paying the extra £5 if you cant get near to the line speed.

I can almost guarantee you don't need the Pro add-on. What did you think it did? It will remove throttling on P2P and Usenet between 8-10pm and some traffic prioritisation which, TBH, you are never likely to notice, and that is all.

Edited by kasg (Wed 12-Dec-12 12:23:05)

But the Pro add-on is only on monthly contract, so he can get rid if he wants, and get it back again if he decides he wants it.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But the Pro add-on is only on monthly contract, so he can get rid if he wants, and get it back again if he decides he wants it.

Indeed, I would always suggest starting without it and putting it on only if absolutely necessary, but OP seems to have been under the misapprehension that the Pro add-on affects download speeds which, apart from 8-10pm P2P/Usenet it basically doesn't.

I know there are limited cases where Pro adds value but depending on how the speed testers work having pro in theory could make a difference according to the information that PN release about their traffic management. By default Pro should put anything it doesn't recognise into the highest priority bucket. I dont know whether all of the speed testers use standard port 80 for testing or custom ports and protocols. Hence my comments about pro.
Pro also gives advantages in theory to VPN connections if the network is busy and at times I use a VPN into the office. My general point was that if Pro is not giving any noticeable advantage now I have moved to fibre then I will drop this from my package as the Fibre upgrade on its own is likely enough of an upgrade from where I was with ADSL especially given that some of the prioritisation on Fibre is better than standard ADSL.

Fraser

Maybe that is true now but back when I first got it there were differences (noticeable) by having it. As I use VPN to work I did not suffer from any congestion that may have been present on the Plusnet network. Maybe this is less of an issue now as they appear to be able to be more generous in how they provision the bandwidth on the centrals (or equiv).

Fraser

MSILs .

That will be the one thanks; not kept up to date with the latest architecture since the move to 21CN and what if any limits now apply on that compared to what there was on the old centrals with 20CN.

I've just been running a number of diagnostic checks and can't see any obvious causes for this I'm afraid, on the plus side I can see that the line profile rate and a few other technicalities are working as intended.

I can see you've raised a fault which is what I'd recommend next, however it looks like you might not have completed all the questions on the faults troubleshooter so you might want to head back to http://faults.plus.net to check that just to make sure.

Looking at the thread I can't see that there is a fault, just that earlier speed tests were using inaccurate testers, the later ones seem fine.

That really comes down to what are considered the accurate ones. Andrew suggests that the one on here should be accurate and should handle 80/20 links easily. Given that then the following which I have just run

Speed Down 21278.91 Kbps ( 20.8 Mbps )
Speed Up 5517.57 Kbps ( 5.4 Mbps )

This would suggest that it is not performing as expected. This was taken using the java based tester. The flash one showed about 21/16, still much below the expected download level.

I ran the speedtest.net one just before this and it showed 52 and 16 which is closer.

So I dont think anything has shown a consistent value yet so for this minute and from my viewpoint the Jury is still out.

Thanks for checking Adam.

I had started to raise a fault but it was getting late and it asked to connect the PC straight to the modem, I wasn't going to start doing this at that point but will hopefully do it later if I get a chance and complete the raise a fault process.

Thanks
Fraser

tbb java:-
Speed Down 38980.82 Kbps ( 38.1 Mbps )
Speed Up 4263.52 Kbps ( 4.2 Mbps )

tbb Flash
Speed Down 39.47Mbps
Speed Up 11.84Mbps

speedtest.net (Maidenhead)
Speed Down 41.08Mbps
Speed Up 12.08Mbps