Rubbish Speed Tonight

Getting fed up with PN now.

Rubbish speed all over the place

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14397...

100% agree!

my speed tests are fine but browsing is rubbish, like wading through treacle.... more often than not. I wondered if it was latency (42ms at the moment but been above 150 at times...) but I've been told that shouldn't be an issue ~ so what I want to know is why? no one seems to have an answer ?.

oh! and no I haven't got loads of things going at the same time and it doesn't make any difference whether i'm wireless or wired ~ I had a bad problem with dropped connections etc a couple of months back but that was eventually found to be a problem up the pole I can stream video no problem but can't play solitaire blitz with my 83 yr old aunt....

Edited by deleted (Sun 16-Aug-15 22:33:16)

Don't get fed up just think of all that money you are saving with that great retention deal you got for the next 24 months with PN and what you can do with those savings

I've been with plus net for over 6 years, so well out of contract... originally plus net suggested my connection problems were potentially a router issue ~ they wanted me to take out a new contract before they would send a new router even if it turned out that the original one was faulty ~ I was not impressed. .... frankly, seriously considering moving on.

but I would still like to know what the problem is ~ I've had internet since dial up so although i'm pretty dumb about how it all works I do know when things just aren't working as well as they should.

xD

In reply to a post by nonny:

I've been with plus net for over 6 years, so well out of contract... originally plus net suggested my connection problems were potentially a router issue ~ they wanted me to take out a new contract before they would send a new router even if it turned out that the original one was faulty ~ I was not impressed. .... frankly, seriously considering moving on

.
No surprise there then, plusnet casting the blame on your router wasn't supplied by them earlier was it, one of those technicolor branded ones they used to supply? and they seriously think that their latest POS would fare any better do they?
Taking the urine is what they are doing yes time to move on , i doubt it could get a lot worse with another ISP , do a bit of research and if you make a wise choice you may be presently surprised regarding the quality of your connection , but cheap isnt always the best option

Edited by tommy45 (Mon 17-Aug-15 00:08:40)

yep, the original Thomson.... I can't get fibre yet, so reluctant to take on a new contract with anyone. thinking pulse 8 as they're only 5/6 miles away, I can always nip round if I've got a problem & no contract.... just a lot of family hospital stuff going on at the moment so not much time for anything.....

Plusnet certainly are meddling in the cookie jar at the moment...

I'm still stuck with them until I've found out where I'm moving too, theres no point in me flying off and ordering something else when it may not be suitable for new location...

I've just setup some monitors to find out where some packet loss I've been seeing on a Constant Quality Monitor served by Rapidswitch in Maidenhead is coming from... I've got ThinkBroadband monitoring a couple of the CQM IP's that ping my connection and I have the CQM in question monitoring a couple of IP's that come off of Plusnet's gateways and links.

Will be interesting to see if I find anything!

The browsing issues currently are driving me up the wall... specially with all the hype about how far broadband has come and home much better its supposedly is these days.... I remember back in the days of 10meg cable when Broadband was kicking [censored].... browsing was so much faster... everything worked... now everything is on its [censored] dying and being excused by excuse after excuse...

The other thing that annoys me too is the rubber banding I get when trying to play games on PS3 and other consoles and PC's.... my pings are pretty good but I'm assuming that if browsing has such a lag then why wouldn't gaming too.

Anyway, I'm satisfied anyway... I've had a few wins with Plusnet up to now, and they more a less laughed at me when i told them it wasn't over... .... It is now

for heavens sake, should it really be incumbent on the customer to learn all this tech stuff to try and get the service we are paying for.

as for how far bb has come, I was with virgin on dial up & remember being upgraded to bb (a whole 1 Mb) and it was better than I get now with over 11Mb

I know, it has got a bit silly really...

so why didnt you leave?

Yep, I think I may have made a bad choice going to Plusnet, but then i doubt anywhere else is any better.
I chatted to some people online today and they are all complaining about their broadband, one have Sky, one have BT, the other is on Talk Talk and one is on Virgin.

Unfortunately its hard to distinguish if their issues are even remotely related to the one most of us Plusnet customers "on here" are complaining about...

Those on Sky, BT and TalkTalk might have issues with their individual lines, cabinets/exchanges and as for Virgin that adds the (IMO) popular over-subscribing of there networks capacity.

To Be Clear:
"the one most of us Plusnet customers "on here" are complaining about..."

Mean's that, Plusnet customer's (Current & Past) have complained on "ThinkBroadband's Forum's" about a issues relating too...

Edited by mlmclaren (Mon 17-Aug-15 16:33:48)

most of us Plusnet customers are complaining about...

Correction please. SOME customers. There are Plusnet customers such as myself who have no problems and as a result have never needed to contact Plusnet or raise a ticket since moving to Plusnet other than a ticket requesting a fixed IP the day I was connected.

Appologies, that was meant to read..

"most of us Plusnet customer on here are complaining about..."

Edit will follow!

Most = nonsense

Thats your opinion!

However I wouldn't say it if I didn't have good reason too...

Are you saying:

Most PlusNet customers here are complaining about...

or

Most PlusNet customers complaining here are complaining about...

In reply to a post by ian72:

Are you saying:

Most PlusNet customers here* are complaining about...

As above!

*ThinkBroadband Forums.

OK, so that suggests you know how many PlusNet customers are here. I can understand saying most of the complaints are about a specific subject but saying most of the customers are complaining about it seems like you would need to know how many customers are on the TBB forums and therefore gauge what percentage of them are complaining.

I would suspect most of the PlusNet customers on this forum are saying very little.

the statement was based on seeing a "majority" of "known" Plusnet customers, complaining of the speed related issues recently... while a maybe 4 people (of the top of my head) have said they have said they have no issues but have then said they have had an issue....

I must also note that actually it isn't a majority as I first typed... mainly because a few or more people have "switched to alternative" providers, But I will still say that those I know of and myself still using Plusnet, are still having issues...

Now I'm not going to argue wether 10%... 25%... 90% of customers are affected in one day by the issues, but it's fair to say that it varies day by day... and also based on what links and gateways are being used to communicate with Plusnet... and from observation, I have picked up that Plusnet are more consistently (these days) kicking customers from gateways... Maybe thats their idea of fair for all customers.

In fact, I was kicked from a good gateway just an hour ago... I'm now back in the bad zone... however I've not yet picked up on any issues apart form the generally slow browsing speeds...

So tonight I might be the lucky one... and I won't be affected by a speed decrease, but someone will... maybe you, maybe someone else... it's more a game of roulette.... one thing I also k ow for sure is that those that have left have reported better connectivity results... Some of which I've seen for myself...

Another note on the issue is, it don't seem to affect ADSL customers.... but then I've not come across anyone on an ADSL line syncing about 10000kbps and most of the ADSL lines I've seen on this very forum have been rural ADSLMax lines.

That is because we don't want to spam the threads with
"I don't have any problems"
as that just causes aggro

your right, but there has been threads whre discussions regarding performances if various providers has been discussed and very few people have ever turned up and said, my Plusnet is alright.

I have to say this.... Do you have SKY as a possible provider for your service. I moved several years ago to ADSL+ & then in 2013 to FTTC. I have never had any speed issues with their service. In fact I have stopped running speed tests. I am just waiting on them activating IPV6.

Some may not like SKY, and I went to them because of the original cost saving. I have looked at moving away, but each time the cost is around the same as I am paying and I have been chugging along nicely for the last 3 years so I am still here. If I were to move away it would be to PlusNet, but given the intermittent speed issues on PlusNet I am staying put on SKY for now.

sky's network is a lot better than BT wholesale's.
BT retail is better than plusnet.
I also believe talktalk business is better as well.

People do complain but take the nature of the complaints 90% is due to people having dodgy wifi, sky will suffer from this a lot due to their CPE been poor, alot of the rest is due to DLM/crosstalk. Its when technically competent people complain who have ruled those out you take notice.

well sadly due to BT been "no comment" we can only guess how many are affected.

But the defenders of plusnet will always claim a silent customer has no problems. Defenders of any isp claim that also.

All i can say is everyone I know personally who was/is on plusnet was/is affected, a few of them didnt notice until I ran tests tho as they were only using their connections during office hours. But all these people are near me, in the same city. If its regional it may explain it. Plusnet said they could see the problem in sheffield which isnt near me, which could suggest its quite a big region affected.

We also have people who have moved to other BTw shared WBMC isp's and say their problems have cleared up. This suggests to me although there possibly is still ongoing BTw issues they are not as severe as we may have thought (which may explain aaisp's silence) and plusnet are happy for people to speculate and blame BTw when plusnet is the problem.

I also wouldnt be surprised if there is people in the know having a laugh at these posts, thinking its funny that all the information is NDA etc.

Yes I forgot to mention that also, the issues are not noticeable to most until tests are run.... I only noticed as I was running tests frequently, and the only affect I've found related to the speed decreases in the evenings has been the a major delay Full HD streams starting.

Many will argue that if its not affecting the use of a connection, there's not an issue but that isn't the way it works.

Now if ISP's where to say in the terms and conditions and in its sales process that its expected that in the evenings restrictions would be put on speeds in order to aid the usability of the service for everyone then that would be fair.

That would be like Traffic Management but not the overall speed would drop... just restrictions on single threads downloads... so Youtube could grab 15mbps while Netflix grabs up to 15 mbps also but then a multi thread download could make the most of the 70mbps available.

I know not many wll be a fan of such a thing but it may well be the future if the talk of lack of bandwidth at cores keeps on going the way it is!

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Unfortunately its hard to distinguish if their issues are even remotely related to the one most of us Plusnet customers "on here" are complaining about...

Those on Sky, BT and TalkTalk might have issues with their individual lines, cabinets/exchanges and as for Virgin that adds the (IMO) popular over-subscribing of there networks capacity.

To Be Clear:
"the one most of us Plusnet customers "on here" are complaining about..."

Mean's that, Plusnet customer's (Current & Past) have complained on "ThinkBroadband's Forum's" about a issues relating too...

The one on Sky is not happy at all, he was trying to play some games this evening and pings was 140ish, saying that mine is not much better, which may while i am not playing games will certainly make a difference to browsing as it takes longer for pages to change.

I am nto sure what the problem is with plusnet, but I wish they would sort things out, I am starting to think I should have stayed where I was and wait for them to sort out their problems.,

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

The one on Sky is not happy at all, he was trying to play some games this evening and pings was 140ish, saying that mine is not much better, which may while i am not playing games will certainly make a difference to browsing as it takes longer for pages to change.

Interesting, I have a friend on Sky ADSL and a friend on Sky FTTC in two separate towns near me (one in Fleet, one in Bracknell) and they never have any issues. Guess they're not online gamers though.

I am nto sure what the problem is with plusnet, but I wish they would sort things out, I am starting to think I should have stayed where I was and wait for them to sort out their problems.,

Not much wrong tonight from here (plusnet FTTC - Farnborough, hants):
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4589853034
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

I can ping bbc.co.uk in 11 to 50ms tonight, but I can ping my hosted server in Rapidswitch, Maidenhead, in 11ms constantly.

My BQM is in my sig but it looks normal.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I also believe talktalk business is better as well.

I have a FTTC service provided by Ethernet and it's on the TTB backhaul and it works fantastic.

All the good plusnet staffs have gone! I don't like all the new PN staffs now as they don't seem bother to explain of why is PN slow speed continue.

In reply to a post by iand:

I have to say this.... Do you have SKY as a possible provider for your service. I moved several years ago to ADSL+ & then in 2013 to FTTC. I have never had any speed issues with their service. In fact I have stopped running speed tests. I am just waiting on them activating IPV6.

Quite - as much as I don't like promoting Sky per-se, I do have to recommend them - when it comes to FTTC and my previous ADSL service, it's just worked all the time. I get full 80/20 sync where I am, and Sky does let me use that whenever I want, however long I want, and I do REGULARLY flatline the capacity of the line.

They aren't allowed to Max. They would need to start looking for a new job, as although PN might find it difficult to sack them they wouldn't be going anywhere upwards.

You can see it every day in the Community forums. On trivial things they still act and get results. On all the major problems they churn out pre-written platitudes from their instructions, whereas before the new CEO they were the movers and shakers with the power to kick backsides.

It must be almost as horrible for them as the problems are for the customers. In themselves they are good, and care.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

The one on Sky is not happy at all, he was trying to play some games this evening and pings was 140ish, saying that mine is not much better, which may while i am not playing games will certainly make a difference to browsing as it takes longer for pages to change.

I am nto sure what the problem is with plusnet, but I wish they would sort things out, I am starting to think I should have stayed where I was and wait for them to sort out their problems.,

I was just playing GTA Online on the Xbox One... not done it in a while due to lag issues, rubber banding was very bad for me, yet my pings to most parts of the world are rather good with my pings to BBC and Google always between 9-12ms throughout the day, yet my browsing has been rubbish since not long after joining Plusnet.

It's assumed to be something to do with a system Plusnet uses to mange are connections and priorities traffic (like gaming) but its suspected it can't cope with the heavy load and may also be struggling as it is being run in a very tight (bandwidth allowance) environment..

But I only get this information from another post on this forum (somewhere) though it makes the most sense.

My xbox's (both One and 360 ) report a ping of 150-155ms to Microsoft (I assume) which don't seem to good to me... but after so much fighting with them and routers and direct connections and whatever else they have never improved...

I blame it on whatever server or gateways the xbox's connect to in my region, when before I moved from Birmingham to the South East my xbox gaming was brilliant and then I was on cable with a higher ping (never checked ping on xbox) only since moving have I had issues.

The problems at Plusnet have been ongoing for me since connection at End of February, but others have reported having the same issues since before Christmas and its only got worse since... commonly its put down to Plusnet's surge of customers last year and not upgrading their network to capacitate.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Not much wrong tonight from here (plusnet FTTC - Farnborough, hants):
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4589853034
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Both the speed tests you have provided are multithread tests, and the speed issue on most users lips here is single thread related....

Edited by mlmclaren (Mon 17-Aug-15 23:24:56)

But you got it really cheap, and that's what matters.

So who you thinking of moving to then?

I haven't decided yet who I moving to!

for me it broke streaming, made web browsing painful amongst other things.

The reason they didnt notice was simply they were not using the connections in the evening, as they office connections.

Yes it was streaming issues (Radio) that prompted further investigating into the issues....

I found the obvious single thread speed reduction, which wasn't much of an issue at the time (20Mb/s instead of normal 60Mb/s) but found that when running more than one stream or trying to do something else like Gaming through an Xbox would knock the Radio/Video streams sideways...

That's when I started blaming Plusnets priorities system for the issues, as well as the lack of single thread bandwidth.

I can't say I've ever had much of an issue with the latency on my connection, its pretty solid 9-11ms on BQM's depending on what gateway location I'm connected too...

or of course rising when uploading (which I've noticed is more sensitive now compared to when I first joined in February) I remember this particularly as I had transfer from cable and uploading on that could lead to my connection being unusable... I even found it affected my neighbours connection for a while.

Is this geographic? Not sure, but I don't experience a lot of the problems you regulars talk about.

I tend to work strange hours, but my connection is usually OK most of the day through to about midnight. e.g. I pulled 5.5GB for Yosemite last night, and it downloaded at line speed (~55Mbps) at around 10PM.

If I watch TV around late at night, chances are it'll buffer in the middle and then it's time to reset the connection - so far, every time I've attempted to gateway hop, my modem is offline or in the process of retraining.

I'm currently on "ptw-ag04" and it's OK. The PCL one's seem to be the most problematic.

Latency has never been spectacular here (Norfolk). Never better than 14ms to Google or BBC, day or night - but it's not much better on a VM leased line in Norwich tbh.

14ms is better than what BTw gives me from Leicester at half the distance, got to love BT wholesale routing.

In reply to a post by MCM:

most of us Plusnet customers are complaining about...

Correction please. SOME customers. There are Plusnet customers such as myself who have no problems and as a result have never needed to contact Plusnet or raise a ticket since moving to Plusnet other than a ticket requesting a fixed IP the day I was connected.

This is very true. I am affected so am jumping ship but for those unaffected Plusnet remains a great option, no question. Given the low price they are great value for money.

the statement was based on seeing a "majority" of "known" Plusnet customers

You don't have the slightest clue as to the number of Plusnet customers reading these forums and therefore cannot make such an assertion.

In reply to a post by MCM:

the statement was based on seeing a "majority" of "known" Plusnet customers

You don't have the slightest clue as to the number of Plusnet customers reading these forums and therefore cannot make such an assertion.

Well no not reading but I did say complaining.... and last time I checked, a complaint either had to made by text or speech...

So unless I said, most Plusnet users "on this forum" are having issues, I still believe my statement "most Plusnet users on this forum have complained of having issues"

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Interesting, I have a friend on Sky ADSL and a friend on Sky FTTC in two separate towns near me (one in Fleet, one in Bracknell) and they never have any issues. Guess they're not online gamers though.

That is the difference.

Not much wrong tonight from here (plusnet FTTC - Farnborough, hants):
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4589853034
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

I can ping bbc.co.uk in 11 to 50ms tonight, but I can ping my hosted server in Rapidswitch, Maidenhead, in 11ms constantly.

My BQM is in my sig but it looks normal.

I will see if it is better tonight, I am going to watch something on netflix

In reply to a post by adslmax:

I haven't decided yet who I moving to!

i thought you would have run out of providers by now, Vodafone have just started up again, try them.

Ooooh would you lookey at this, its failing again!

For those who give a [censored], the gateway i'm currently on it Telehouse West's ptw-bng01... so not just the CityLifeline gateways/endpoints/links that are useless!

I'm supposed to get 60meg BTW!

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Ooooh would you lookey at this, its failing again!

For those who give a [censored], the gateway i'm currently on it Telehouse West's ptw-bng01... so not just the CityLifeline gateways/endpoints/links that are useless!

I'm supposed to get 60meg BTW!

it never was, But there could also be BTW issues at play affecting your connection, but regardless of who's networking is to blame it is the ISP who are BTW's customer and therefore they have a duty to fight the end users corner, and do what ever pushing of BTW is required to get a satisfactory solution, But sadly BTW seem to think if your throughput doesn't drop below 40mbps on their inaccurate speedtest then you don't have a problem, talk about morons, if i had wanted throughput less than 40mbps i would of chosen a 40/10 product , i'm paying for an upto (sync rate ) adaptive service , my sync is the headline 80/20 i therefore expect speeds of 75/76mbps regardless of time of day, that is what they have sold

In reply to a post by tommy45:

But there could also be BTW issues at play affecting your connection, but regardless of who's networking is to blame it is the ISP who are BTW's customer and therefore they have a duty to fight the end users corner, and do what ever pushing of BTW is required to get a satisfactory solution,

Agreed... and I'm glad to that somebody agree's with me on that... I mentioned this before somewhere and I was disagreed with!

seems that my issues where somewhat worse than just a speed loss tonight....

this is on all my BQM's... never seen packet loss this bad... even when i was on the super congested Virgin network that took 160Mbps from the day to 2mbps on the night!

My Broadband Ping

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

seems that my issues where somewhat worse than just a speed loss tonight....

this is on all my BQM's... never seen packet loss this bad... even when i was on the super congested Virgin network that took 160Mbps from the day to 2mbps on the night!

My Broadband Ping

oh yes a certain visual sign of congestion , but finding out where it lies is the real issue, as BT's monitoring is not as good as you might expect , their S/CVLAN reports are often incorrect or out of date, so don't reflect real time situations, this is what happens when BT and isp's oversell, loading their networks with [censored] tv content as well as giving bb away

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 21-Aug-15 01:10:42)

So basically, were subsidising cheapskates broadband connections!

and as well as subsidising them were also taking a performance degradation too!

Damn this country...

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

So basically, were subsidising cheapskates broadband connections!

and as well as subsidising them were also taking a performance degradation too!

Damn this country...

Sadly that how the muppets that run BT think quantity before quality
If BT don't do some serious upgrading of their core network and other parts of it , it will only get worse , got help us if the roll out vectoring if they don't BT couldn't support higher transfer rates as things are now, of course they will never admit to this, and their loyal disciples will disagree no end

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 21-Aug-15 01:30:00)

All providers are the same... all companies even are the same...

I believe that if something is worth xx amount then it should be sold for its worth... no promotions... I don't see electric companies saying we can have 6 months free electric!

But hey, there we go, no tough regulation... and broadband isn't taken seriously enough as a utility... until its classified a utility and regulated as such we will continue to see these crazy numbers games and leaving others to pick up the bills and flack.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

All providers are the same... all companies even are the same...

I believe that if something is worth xx amount then it should be sold for its worth... no promotions... I don't see electric companies saying we can have 6 months free electric!

But hey, there we go, no tough regulation... and broadband isn't taken seriously enough as a utility... until its classified a utility and regulated as such we will continue to see these crazy numbers games and leaving others to pick up the bills and flack.

Some of the smaller providers don't over sell ,and don't do cheap half priced or free months ect deals, but they are mostly reliant on 3rd parties like BT for data transfer BTW ect
But yes these or some of them like BTW don't give a """" about quality it's profit,greed and nothing else

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 21-Aug-15 01:36:11)

given tommy's and roberto's experiences after leaving I now believe the issues are plusnet side. BTw may well have its own congestion issues but it appears the severe congestion is plusnet's network.

As proven in the past 6 months, complaining to plusnet will get you nowhere, the only solution is to change isp.