SSE UltraFast Fibre from Daisy

Hi, I had a slower fibre service from Plusnet a few years ago and I got used to consistently good file download speeds. I am yards away from my BT cabinet, use a fast PC with AV and firewall turned off for testing. It's been a while since I felt the need to do speed tests, so please bear with my ignorance.

In the first few days I was connected to SSE Daisy I felt something was wrong or bad, whichever way you look at it. I downloaded fixed 100Mb Winzip files from here and was seeing file download speed of 130kbps taking over 10 minutes to finish. I didn't think that was fair for the SSE UltraFast broadband service.

Next stop before I came here was to try the BT (BTW) tests. It came back with around 30Mbps when in the past I know I can run to over 70 Mbps and the BT test website says I can get a guaranteed minimum speed of 65Mbps. On the second BTW test screen I saw a range of speeds to my phone number fixed at 32Mbps. Now that seemed strange, because the figure as far as I know is a BTW contract figure with the ISP and not a line test derived result.

I complained then after a couple of days trying to work out what the ISP were up to I re-visited the BTW diagnostics line test and was pleased to see my maximum speed was now over 70Mbps but horrified to see the acceptable speed range was now 40-70 Mbps with my actual speed sitting at under or just over 40.

Then I started doing TBB tests and for the first time was able to reach some conclusions (Thanks TBB). I had already been to several of the 'other' speed test sites and saw 75Mbps. What's up with this ISP?

Now I think I know. The TBB test comes back with results like this:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14673...

The Avg TBB download rate is what I get in practice for file downloads using Windoze 'Save As' therefore my Winows and anti virus updates could take forever. The X6 result agrees with the maximum figure I get from other speed comparison sites, so they must be using optimistic speed test algorithms. I can prove it is not my system by using a multi thread downloader on the TBB test file.

I need help here. Does anybody think peak speeds performance based on multi threaded downloads is an Ultrafast Broadband service? I am now regretting my switch and I have to consider my next step unless those with more knowledge here can tell me service providers can fall back on peak speeds in their service promise? Using the TBB tests with my limited knowledge has been an eye opener. Are all ISP's claiming to offer competitive products, based on peak speed values unrepresentative of real world file downloading from a fast server with short pings? Do they agree wide acceptable speed windows to limit average speed downloading in order to hide behind peak burst speeds? If anybody is on the Infinity super package or equivalent Plusnet, what acceptable speed range do you see in the BTW further diagnostics screen?

Thanks

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-Jul-16 17:09:20)

In reply to a post by voxmagna1:

If anybody is on the Infinity super package or equivalent Plusnet, what acceptable speed range do you see in the BTW further diagnostics screen?

Download speedachieved during the test was - 60.02 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 40 Mbps-62.38 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 62.38 Mbps

The 40Mbps minimum is pretty normal. FWIW I considered switching to SSE but read too many negative accounts of it and Plusnet offered me a deal that nearly matched their price, so I stayed put.

Edited by kasg (Fri 01-Jul-16 17:31:11)

Firstly ultrafast is generally taken to mean 100 Mbps and faster, Ofcom defines it even higher as 300 Mbps and faster so the marketing people are already playing tricks there.

On the speeds we know some providers do have more variation and our dual testing does show this up more, but getting providers to accept this rather than just say 'tbb is wrong' is an uphill struggle.

In short we are seeing more people moan about the SSE service, and while not always true it is often the case that a smaller provider and a very low price can mean more variability in speeds, the key to the puzzle is how the speeds vary across a 24 hour period, i.e. are they good in off peak times.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Firstly ultrafast is generally taken to mean 100 Mbps and faster, Ofcom defines it even higher as 300 Mbps and faster so the marketing people are already playing tricks there.

On the speeds we know some providers do have more variation and our dual testing does show this up more, but getting providers to accept this rather than just say 'tbb is wrong' is an uphill struggle.

In short we are seeing more people moan about the SSE service, and while not always true it is often the case that a smaller provider and a very low price can mean more variability in speeds, the key to the puzzle is how the speeds vary across a 24 hour period, i.e. are they good in off peak times.

Thanks, I'm adding regular tests to my profile now and I understand about variation due to congestion. What I can't yet understand is why single thread downloads to port 80 are so way down in my results. Is everybody else getting similar from other providers? Does this mean if I want to stream HD from a live video broadcast service, this is the test result that matters most or are online video services using multiple IP ports to get error free live video? Is this a clever way ISP's can reduce demand for use of streaming services?

Until I came across TBBs dual test I was under the illusion I was getting the best speed and it was the practical download of a file timed using a stopwatch that woke me up, until I discovered Firefox gives that info on time and rate. Broadband specifications seem a bit like VWs dieselgate. The ISPs can fool Ookla and similar sites but what you get in the real world is a lot different. Has anybody got one of those Ofcom monitoring boxes? My SSE service isn't download capped.

Glad Plusnet offered you a deal. I just spoke to the worst retention agent going who couldn't of cared less that I was leaving.

You are one of many unfortunately. Allegedly, SSE are meeting with Daisy next week about congestion, will anything happen? I also remember this happening on PN for a month or so until they increased capacity.

I accepted with the cost that there would be a slowdown, but some nights the TBB tester doesn't even load and I got one result of 0.1Mbps!!

Mark

Do you get similar results all time of day? Perhaps the same issue as being reported by Zen customers

Interested to see the outcome as I'm debating a move away from Plusnet to try and save some money at the moment.

Firstly ultrafast is generally taken to mean 100 Mbps and faster, Ofcom defines it even higher as 300 Mbps and faster so the marketing people are already playing tricks there.

I checked and you are correct so I will now start another parallel approach. I have already asked them what results I should expect for my line (reply not received) which should differentiate whether they really are providing an Ultrafast service or something else I didn't sign up for.

I have now managed to submit a formal complaint through the SSE online webform. But I should warn others that SSE are applying a short timeout and by the time you have filled out all the details and over 1 complaint line, you get a time out! You can use tricks too. Prepare your complaint offline in Notepad and paste it into their details box to save time! I think that kind of practice from SSE isa despicable attempt to reduce logged complaints which Ofcom have access to.

The case continues.

UPDATE

I repeated the TBB measurements which showed a small improvement in the single thread average download time:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14674...

However, when I now repeat the BTW tests they now show my download speeds at 73Mbps!! Either BTW have changed their test file delivery to multithread, the ISP is catching the BTW URL and adapting their bandwidth to artifically improve tests to the BTW URL, or TBB are not representative anymore.

Sorry I had to throw in the last option but you can guess what I really believe. Now I need to test my theory using a fast VPN connection.