Help with terrible download speeds

Hi, hope someone can help me with this, I work from home and need a reasonable connection to do my job.

A couple of months ago I started getting very frequent disconnects from the internet, lasting only a couple of minutes but dozens and dozens of times per day. But, the speed was totally acceptable, about 4MB download which was fine for what I needed.

I called BT broadband help and after trying the usual things, master socket, new microfilters, ethernet cable instead of wireless etc etc they said they would do something at the exchange to try and fix it (i have no idea what they did, i just know it didnt involve someone coming to my house)

That seems to have fixed the disconnects, only getting 1-2 per day now but the speed has dropped so the connection is no longer usable for work, it takes minutes just to load a webpage sometimes... in a speedtest I am getting about 0.1mb download but strangely my upload speed is still totally fine at 0.9 mb. Think it was about that before but wouldnt swear it...

Checking my line stats I see something which looks quite alarming:

Noise margin (Down/Up) 8.7 dB / 6.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 50.8 dB / 28.6 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 7.8 dBm / 1.6 dBm

Surely this line attenuation is ridiculously high but the speed was absolutely fine from January until last week so I dont see how their can suddenly be a fault on the line. Whatever they did on the exchange seems to have messed things up.

Anyone got a suggestion for how to fix this, or is there someone from bt on the forum who can help??

Nothing alarming about those stats - unless you live next door to the exchange. And 4Mb is broadly in line with the attenuation.

What are the full stats including sync speed?

What does the BT speedtester report? http://speedtest.btcentralplus.com/

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1168 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 2000-7150 Kbps.
IP Profile for your line is - 4551 Kbps


This test was not conclusive and further testing is required.This might be useful for your ISP to investigate the fault.

Note: An Upstream test was not conducted on this line due to a technical issue. If your concern is related to upstream performance then please retry
the performance test again in 1 hours time.

Im not sure what a sync speed is, here is everything from that tab on the homehub advanced settings page:

Line state Connected
Connection time 0 days, 01:03:50
Downstream 5,379 Kbps
Upstream 1,067 Kbps

ADSL Settings
VPI/VCI 0/38
Type PPPoA
Modulation G.992.5 Annex A
Latency type Fast
Noise margin (Down/Up) 8.5 dB / 6.2 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 50.8 dB / 28.6 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 7.9 dBm / 1.6 dBm
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote) 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote) 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote) 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Down/Up) 0 / 0
CRC Errors (Down/Up) 15635 / 0
HEC Errors (Down/Up) 142348 / 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote) 2080 / 0

Edited by deleted (Fri 07-Oct-11 13:21:50)

The sync speeds are there:

Downstream 5,379 Kbps
Upstream 1,067 Kbps

Those are reasonable ... at a guess you are maybe 5km from the exchange by road?

The error figures are extremely high for the 1 hour connection time ... First thing to try is a reboot of the modem, but not a quick off/on.

Power down teh modem/hub and then disconnect the 'phone cable and PC. Leave it powered down for 15 to 20 minutes - allows it to completely cool down, and any session at the exchange will be killed. Then reboot your PC by going through a full shut down and power up.

Restart the modem/hub and allow it to fully boot, say 3 minutes. Connect the PC, and finally connect the phone cable, allow it to sync and then get teh stats again, repeat that at 2 and 4 minutes.

Put the first set here, and add the last 4 lines showing the number of errors from the next two. Then try a BT speedtest and grab the stats again afterwards - what are te erro figures then?

Errors might be due to running in ADSL2+ mode, dropping to ADSL2 or ADSL might be part of a solution.

As for 1Meg throughput from a higher IP Profile, possibly nothing to do with the line, and more to do with network from exchange to where the test server and internet is.

May well be, but a nice cold, clean reboot can (almost) eliminate the modem side.

In the original post the OP said about pages taking a long time to load too.

In reply to a post by MWraith:

Downstream 5,379 Kbps

= Sync/Connection Speed!

Router stats are mostly good, but Output Power readings are low (would expect about 20 Down/ 10 Up).

Throughput of 1168 Kbps is low, prob due to congestion in exchange/network.

I actually tried powering down the router like MHC suggested this morning. It was terribly slow so I turned the router off while I went in the shower and nipped to the shops, so those stats are 'post shutdown'.

I can try it again if you think it will be likely to show something different?

Will changing to ADSL2 or ADSL fix the speed, I just want my 4mb/s back that I've had for 9 months until last weekend

In reply to a post by MHC:

May well be, but a nice cold, clean reboot can (almost) eliminate the modem side.

In the original post the OP said about pages taking a long time to load too.

Yes, the speed is *Slow*

I'm not complaining just because a speedtest says its slow, I ran the speedtest because I could barely do anything on the internet anymore.

But I already rebooted the BT Home Hub like you suggested

I doubt they will fix the speed.

To be honest looks like exchange or ISP network congestion, slow web browsing if download of files feel faster points at the ISP DNS servers being slow, you can specify any open DNS server, you are not tied to using your providers.

Downloading of files is slow as well, sometimes around 20kb/sec

I don't understand why the speed isn't fixable when it worked fine for 9 months until I complained about disconnections, then they did something at the exchange which fixed the disconnections but made the speed unusable. I can't see how it was necessary to slash my speeds by a factor of 20+ to fix the disconnections.

Is there a BT contact person on the forum?

Edited by deleted (Fri 07-Oct-11 15:10:42)

Important listen to what people are saying.

The evidence is pointing to it not being an ADSL issue, but other factors such as congestion.

Is it slow at all times of the day, or just specific periods?

There is BT_Care who post on the bbs

Hi,

I wasn't trying to be argumentative but I'm not sure you're listening to what I'm saying either. Until last weekend, the speed was absolutely fine for 9 months. Then, something was done to fix my disconnection issue, allegedly at the exchange.

I cannot understand how it can be a congestion issue in that case, the speed was fine, some work was done last weekend, now it's not fine. If it was a congestion issue then surely it would never have been fine, I live in Canary Wharf, I doubt the number of people using the service has changed drastically over the course of a few days.

It is slow at all times of the day, equally slow at 4am and 4pm. Prior to last weekend it was not slow at any time of the day, not once in 9 months. If I am being thick then I apologise but I cannot see how this can be congestion related.

I have PM'd BT_Care, thanks for pointing him out

From my experience with Orange, I can recommend elevating your problem with your ISP. Next time you call BT support, request a call back from a senior manager.

Thanks, I will try that too, I have been trying to get through to BT for the past two days on the phone but without success so far, seems they are very busy.

Question: Was your upstream speed 448Kbps or around the 1000Kbps area before they did the changes at the exchange?

If 448, then they've moved you onto WBC which is different backhaul, and does sometimes have problems.

From what we can see the ADSL looks ok, there are errors which might be enough to slow throughput, but hard to say. What BT might have done:

1. Slowed line down slightly by increasing target noise margin, i.e. dropping sync speed from around 5800 to the current 5300
2. Done a lift and shift, i.e. same type of hardware at exchange but different port
3. In addition to (2) you might be using different backhaul link, and gone from the good one to the bad.

The ball would appear to be in BT court, nothing you can do other than chase them. Without historical connection data hard to figure out what may have happened, i.e. we are guessing.

You complained off speeds being 20 times slower, but the data I've seen shows 1168Kbps from a 4551 IP Profile, so only a drop of four times. Still not good obviously, but keeping the story as accurate as possible will help in progressing it, as over state one aspect and if people find out that was overstated the normal behaviour is to assume other things are.

I really don't remember what the upload speed was, I never had cause to pay attention to it before, I do upload files sometimes for my work but can't really tell the difference because they are usually relatively small text files. I never log in when I use the speedtester so I can't get the historic results.

I will keep trying to get through to BT but don't seem to be answering their phones over the last two days.

I complain of speeds being 20 times slower because that is the practical result that I am getting. The thinkbroadband speedtester gives ~200kb/sec on average now, previously it gave 4mb/sec. When I download a file from a website I typically get 20-30kb/sec now, previously I got around 600kb/sec. I appreciate that the bt speedtester shows 1168 kbps but that doesn't seem to be of any practical use to me, I can't download anything at 1168 kbps from anywhere. BT could say my speed was 1gb/sec, but if I only get 20kbps/sec download I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it

As XRaySpex pointed out earlier, the power levels are very suspect.

Post deleted by geordiekris