Odd download speeds

Hello, A bit of help needed, please.
Web pages "seem" slow to load, and when I used TBB 1gb file download my download speed shows just 1.6MB for most of the download: when it nears the end of the download, it appears to speed up to about 16-20MB. Does this seem right on an Infinity product? Were I to do a TBB speedtest immediately prior to the file download, it typically shows 30-34 down & 7-8 up.
If I try to record iPlayer for later viewing using Applian "Jaksta", it only downloads in "real time" i.e. 29 minutes for an half hour programme. YouTube downloads seem fast enough, but I don't time them.
Got off the phone a while ago from a BT BB guy. He went through all the usual suspects and "talked" me through changing my wireless channel from 6 to 11: he said "that is BT's fastest channel! I use an ethernet cable to connect! He said the change would improve both wireless & hard-wired: any thoughts?
Any help much appreciated.
XP SP2
Intel 3GB Dual-Core
4GB DDR2
HH3
BT supplied router
One socket in house/no extensions & Openreach socket not 3 feet from the PC
Cheers, Les.

What do you get from a BT speed test?

Forget the speedtests and such to start with.

Ensuure you are connected to te Router with a wired connection - 100Mbps or 1Gbps

Open up Task Manager with the Networking tab and also TBBmeter.

Use TBB meter to try downloading a 500MB file and watch the graphs - they may not be flat but will give an indication. On a 30-35 Mbps Infinity line you will see about 3% or 30% on Task Manager and 30-35 Mbps on tbbMeter. If you can take a screenshot and host it with a link we can comment, but that will be the first indication of whether you have a good/bad line or connection.

Once you have that - try a BT speedtest to get your sync speed and throughput - but don't waste the test you can only do 1 every hour.


And please, can you get your units correct ... M - Mega, b - bits (used for speeds) & B - Bytes (used for data volumes or file sizes). Everyone will understand those rather than trying to work out what you mean.

a BT BB guy. He went through all the usual suspects and "talked" me through changing my wireless channel from 6 to 11: he said "that is BT's fastest channel! I use an ethernet cable to connect! He said the change would improve both wireless & hard-wired: any thoughts?

Total, utter, and absolute rot.

First, the optimum wireless channel for any user depends almost entirely on what other wireless networks are around them. Whatever channel is in use, it spreads over about 4 channels, with the peak being the one you have set. The more that others overlap them the slower your actual transfer is likely to be.

InSSIDer is an excellent free tool to see what channels are in use, if you are interested, but seeing as you run wired it doesn't really matter.

I've never heard of optimising the wireless channel helping the wired connection. If both are in use then the more that is coming down the wireless the less you can get down the wired, and vice versa, as you have a limited amount on the connection itself.

Hi Bob, Thanks for the reply.
That was my thought, and in a nutshell, the BT guy was just giving flannel. I let him ramble on, thanked him and then ended the call - no better off.
MHC berates me a little for giving confusing figures, but I presented exactly what Windows Download showed i.e. Download @ "1.6MB/sec"; as we speak I am downloading TBB 1GB file, which is showing 161MB of 1GB @ 1.7MB/sec (now 870KB/sec with 8 minutes remaining). Some random files I've downloaded are in the "K"s - not the "M"s.

Download speed - tested concurrently - shows 24.46Mbps down & 7.8Mbps up..
My original post had no interest at all in wireless, just a query about the seemingly slow download speed and the fact that my normal TBB tested speeds are 30+ down & 8+ up - coupled with iPlayer only seeming to record in real time (via Applian). As I said,YouTube for example, seems fine but there is a lag between changing pages especially on the BBC news pages - often needing a refresh to get the page to load.
I have uninstalled FF8 a couple of times, reverted back to 3.6 and then installed FF8 again (my usual browser revision).
My question was - do I have a specific PC problem or problem with the router/HH3 or BT generally?
Again, any help much appreciated
(requests to use the BT speedchecker draw a blank "try again later" is all I get)
Cheers, Les

In reply to a post by lelboy:

Hi Bob, Thanks for the reply.
That was my thought, and in a nutshell, the BT guy was just giving flannel. I let him ramble on, thanked him and then ended the call - no better off.
MHC berates me a little for giving confusing figures, but I presented exactly what Windows Download showed i.e. Download @ "1.6MB/sec"; as we speak I am downloading TBB 1GB file, which is showing 161MB of 1GB @ 1.7MB/sec (now 870KB/sec with 8 minutes remaining). Some random files I've downloaded are in the "K"s - not the "M"s.

Download speed - tested concurrently - shows 24.46Mbps down & 7.8Mbps up..
My original post had no interest at all in wireless, just a query about the seemingly slow download speed and the fact that my normal TBB tested speeds are 30+ down & 8+ up - coupled with iPlayer only seeming to record in real time (via Applian). As I said,YouTube for example, seems fine but there is a lag between changing pages especially on the BBC news pages - often needing a refresh to get the page to load.
I have uninstalled FF8 a couple of times, reverted back to 3.6 and then installed FF8 again (my usual browser revision).
My question was - do I have a specific PC problem or problem with the router/HH3 or BT generally?
Again, any help much appreciated
(requests to use the BT speedchecker draw a blank "try again later" is all I get)
Cheers, Les

So, did you download a 1gb or 1 GB file?
And trusting the Microsoft download monitor is a big mistake.

Hello MHC,
Hmm, as an MOT tester for VOSA, I have to be reasonable literate, have passable vision and have a grasp of comprehension - to enable me to do my job: otherwise think of all the dodgy MOT's I may have done!
I joke a bit, but I know what I've said and seen - I download, repeatedly, the TBB "1GB" file; that's how it shows on the top of the TBB file download choice. I do grasp the significance of capital & lower-case letters and my 1st post said exactly what the situation was.
As I said to Bob, no interest in wireless at all - just wanted an opinion on two situations i.e. apparent strangeness with regard to sync speed and downloading of file speed and secondly, whether there was anything particular about why iPlayer - via Applian - only downloads at real-time speed.
Any help much appreciated (forget BT speedtester, it never works for me).
Cheers, Les.

Hey,

Just as an aside, have you tried this BT one? (rather than the usual BT thingy)

http://speedtester.bt.com/beta/

I have just got Infinity, and via ethernet I get 37.5 Mbps.

And, not what you are looking at I know, but I also get 12-19 Mbps via my old wireless g stuff (just did one and got 14.88Mbps), on a machine 3 rooms away (that is through 2 solid walls, in fact 2 outside walls as the room is an extension!).

My line originally was 59db attenuation, and it was about 8db to the cabinet.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Rob

PS I did have a time (like a day or so) when I had uploads at 8Mbps and downloads at 6Mbps!!! But all seems good now. Suspicions were on general network congestion, probably a footie match being streamed or somesuch

Applian appears to be a way of ripping streamed video, and as such the rate it receives video will be governed by the methodology the streaming server uses, so provides very little clue to speed of service.

The Windows you are downloading X of Y at a rate of Z currently, pop-up window is notorious for not being good at displaying accurate figures. Hence the creation of software like http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tbbmeter.html

If you are downloading the 1GB file, then the trick is to compare the completition time with the guidelines we give on the page, or do the actual maths and time it accurately.

In reply to a post by lelboy:

... and my 1st post said exactly what the situation was.

[pantotime] Oh no it didn't! [/pantotime]

Oh yes it did (well sort of)!
Touche, Bob.
I just checked my 1st post, and I appear to have said that i downloaded a "1gb" file, when I meant 1GB; my aged finger on the shift key caused that, as I knew which file I repeatedly downloaded - the finger worked properly on the second post though, and the third. Humble apologies to all.

On a serious note though, I have updated various Microsoft "fixes", run Combofix and updated the dotnetfx to 3.5. Things seem a bit better, and watching the TBBmeter it seems as though my speeds on the "1GB" download vary between 9 & 32 - which seems fine to me. It doesn't, however, address the fact that when I watch the meter whilst using iPlayer it runs in fits and starts and peaks at about 9 Mbps - spending most of its time hunting, with very little actual download: as I say, it appears to be in real-time or less. This was really my main query, as we use iPlayer a lot.
Again, any help graciously received.
Cheers, Les.

Hi again, Bob,
Just a little snippet. As per RobFlet's suggestion, I tried the BT Beta tester a few times and my speeds varied between 6Mbps & 9Mbps, this whilst the TBB meter showed between 12 & 30.
Checking via TBB meter - whilst downloading various, random files - I never seem to get, for more that a second or two, the 30-35 MHC says I should. Is that just a glitch of the system or something else? Cheers, Les

There is a good reason that iPlayer runs in fits and starts rather than a constant rate.

The buffering it uses fills up, so it stops sending data, when that has got down to a certain number of spare seconds left, then it will grab another burst.

If watching a LIVE as opposed to recorded stream the behaviour will resember more what you expect.

In reply to a post by lelboy:

XP SP2

Is that the 32-bit or 64-bit version?

If 32-bit you should install SP3 and all subsequent security updates, SP2 stopped receiving security updates a long time ago.

Have you tweaked your TCP settings at all? XP can benefit from optimising them, have a look at http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

I've not used Applian but I do use the free Get_iPlayer, it will downlaod streams as fast as the beeb will let you have them, for SD TV that's about 22Mbps and for HD TV that's about 11Mbps (why they throttle HD more than SD I don't know). You can run several instances at the same time if you need to download more than one program and that will saturate your connection.

TTB test files are up and down for me, I can get a steady 37.5Mbps from the microsoft site. Like the SP3 install file for example.