Thinking about BT Infinity. What are throttled speeds?

Reading these forums, seems like BT does a lot of shaping on p2p transfers but only during certain hours.

I'm on a 6.5Mb sync with Be* right now. Only get 6.5 when I'm lucky tbh. Usually around 5.

I have been told I can get around 33Mbps down from the checkers if I switch to infinity and I'm really thinking about it a lot.

After being miles away from my exchange, having to deal with ~5Mb for the ~6 years I've had broadband and living in a no virgin cable/fiber area......I need some speed dammit! My green box is maybe 100m away from my property so hopefully I'll get something nice. Even 20Mb would be a massive increase to me.

Only reservations I'm having is that there seems to be all manner of "BT is throttling x" discussions most places I look but I never seem to find actual throttled speeds.

If I was to attempt to download a p2p hosted file in peak times, what kind of speed drop would I be looking at if my sync is 33Mbps? If its lower than the 500Kbps average I get now, then maybe it could be problematic.

Then again, I could just schedule all my downloads for non-peak times.

What about other things though? I've seen things like skype, flash, and even gaming being problematic during peak hours?

I switched from Be to Infinity two weeks ago and can't praise it enough so far. Not dropped once since day 1 (apart from when I removed the HomeHub3 and replaced it with a Netgear WNR3500L - personal choice as the Hub has at least one port locked open by BT). The speeds seem constant throughout the day and night (in my case 37.5 Down and 8.2 up).

I've downloaded flash at various times and each time it's been lightening - even compared to Be.

I don't do P2P but my lad does and he tells me that Infinity is far faster than the previous Be connection at all times of the day.

Don't know about Skype as I don't use it.

My lad games a bit and again he tells me that it's fast at all times.

Hope that helps a bit - others may have more info. The problem will probably be that some others will have had different experiences to mine and tell you that it's rubbish!. The problem always of course is that the setup and equipment in different peoples homes can make a heck of a difference - you have to decide whether to make the jump or not. I'm very glad I did.............

Your reply is much appreciated man.

As far as p2p transfers go, scheduling for off peak times is something I can do without problem as I find myself using it less than I used to anyway.and most of my downloads arent p2p.

I'm pretty sure I will be making the jump, just want to hear some opinions.

The majority of success stories wont be posted on the net anyway so its not problem to hear a few bad reviews here and there.

In reply to a post by Drop_6:

Reading these forums, seems like BT does a lot of shaping on p2p transfers but only during certain hours.

I'm on a 6.5Mb sync with Be* right now. Only get 6.5 when I'm lucky tbh. Usually around 5.

I have been told I can get around 33Mbps down from the checkers if I switch to infinity and I'm really thinking about it a lot.

After being miles away from my exchange, having to deal with ~5Mb for the ~6 years I've had broadband and living in a no virgin cable/fiber area......I need some speed dammit! My green box is maybe 100m away from my property so hopefully I'll get something nice. Even 20Mb would be a massive increase to me.

Only reservations I'm having is that there seems to be all manner of "BT is throttling x" discussions most places I look but I never seem to find actual throttled speeds.

If I was to attempt to download a p2p hosted file in peak times, what kind of speed drop would I be looking at if my sync is 33Mbps? If its lower than the 500Kbps average I get now, then maybe it could be problematic.

Then again, I could just schedule all my downloads for non-peak times.

What about other things though? I've seen things like skype, flash, and even gaming being problematic during peak hours?

Hi there,

I've had Infinity since October last year and it's been pretty stable, with the exception of about 3 weeks, where some dimwit engineer "knocked" my cable loose in the cabinet, which made me lose my dial tone, which BT's DLM interpreted as a noisy line and throttled me back by about half of my original speed. Thankfully this was sorted (but only after me jumping through more hoops than Bozo the clown) by getting a profile reset, once the line was sorted.

One thing that I would suggest to you if you're having Infinity installed is get the engineer to wall mount your white modem! as they're a lot more stable when they're wall mounted, as opposed to lying flat on a surface, due to overheating issues.

WRT to P2P on Infinity, I'm afraid I can't offer an opinion there, as I don't use it.

Sorry I can't be more help.

You're right about the modem for sure, although when the engineer came to me he left the ADSL Nation faceplate that I already had fitted (by me some time ago) as it was at least as good as the Openreach one and at the same time told me that they now HAD to wall mount the modems as standard. Seems they learned the lesson the hard way!!

newsgroups fly.

Going from 3-4Mbit to even the 25Mbit we get was comical. You start downloading stuff just to laugh at how quick it goes.

This is why option 2 is necessary.

In reply to a post by Drop_6:

Reading these forums, seems like BT does a lot of shaping on p2p transfers but only during certain hours.

I'm on a 6.5Mb sync with Be* right now. Only get 6.5 when I'm lucky tbh. Usually around 5.

I have been told I can get around 33Mbps down from the checkers if I switch to infinity and I'm really thinking about it a lot.

After being miles away from my exchange, having to deal with ~5Mb for the ~6 years I've had broadband and living in a no virgin cable/fiber area......I need some speed dammit! My green box is maybe 100m away from my property so hopefully I'll get something nice. Even 20Mb would be a massive increase to me.

Only reservations I'm having is that there seems to be all manner of "BT is throttling x" discussions most places I look but I never seem to find actual throttled speeds.

If I was to attempt to download a p2p hosted file in peak times, what kind of speed drop would I be looking at if my sync is 33Mbps? If its lower than the 500Kbps average I get now, then maybe it could be problematic.

Then again, I could just schedule all my downloads for non-peak times.

What about other things though? I've seen things like skype, flash, and even gaming being problematic during peak hours?

Well, I took the plunge......

Engineer came round Friday morning and did the usual "the engineer did this" stuff. He didn't wall mount the modem though.....infact he simply put in on the table and then put the HH3 on top of it! I didn't want to be rude (nor did I want a nuclear explosion in my house) so I waited for him to leave and immediately mounted it myself!

First sync was 27Mbps down and 7Mbps up.

Was happy to see my first ever sync of over 6.5Mbps, but it just wasn't the 33.1Mbps II was promised and hoped for, especially after all the talk of the promised speed being lower than real life speeds.

By the end of the day, the upload speed had dropped to 5Mbps.

Saturday morning, I did a speed test before I left to compare the non peak times vs the peak times of last night.

I was shocked as (insert foul word) to see 9Mb down and 0.23Mb up!!!

Went to work looking like ¬_¬.

Got calls from home that the net had been down for hours and it seemed like I'd have to call BT to sort it out.

When I got home, I immediately checked my speed and was shocked once more..........


37.5 down and 5.5. up!!!

That was what I was waiting for! Since I got home yesterday, my upload has been increasing very very slowly and is now up to 6Mbps. Downloads dont seem to be able to push past 37.6xMbps.

Hopefully it will continue to rise as my line stabilises itself.

I am very very happy with this service so far and I seriously hope it will stay this way.

No problems with Bad Company 2 server lists, no high ping, no throttled downloads. I had already come to terms with torrents no longer being my main option for urgent downloads so its not a problem. Tbh, at this point in time, I've pretty much given up on torrents and have found other means for obtaining my obtainables.

I have indeed started to DL stuff, just to laugh at how fast it goes and how long it used to take (as a previous poster predicted I would do). Almost eight times faster than before.

If BT can manage to keep up this service, they will have made me a long term customer.

I have a feeling Be*there, as fantastic an ISP as they are, will be losing many many customers to BT (as they have me) unless they get their FTTC shoes on in a hurry.


/wall of text

OP,

If you run a speed test from BT on speedtester.bt.com you will see that your sync speed is set to 37k to 38k

For me it's 38717 so even though it's a 40Mbps service that's the max for me.

I get around 8Mb up.

In reply to a post by tim1964:

OP,

If you run a speed test from BT on speedtester.bt.com you will see that your sync speed is set to 37k to 38k

For me it's 38717 so even though it's a 40Mbps service that's the max for me.

I get around 8Mb up.

The 38717 is not the sync speed it is the BT profile, you cannot find out what the sync speed is from the BT modem. If you had a sync speed of 40000kbps then the profile would still be 38717 (this is also the current maximum profile).