Contention On FTTP (Infinity4)

Not wanting to be a bandwidth hog with such as fast connection but I was wondering if there are contention issues on fttp lines. We live on a new build estate in phase one and as properties have been built I've seen our headline download speed drop by 15%, should this be expected?

Yeah, in my eyes BT cram as many connections together which is why its fine from like 1am to 3pm and then it drops a little in the evenings.

I have it drop down from 310Mbps down to 45Mbps just the once and I phoned BT to moan about it, I did ask if I could be moved over to another block of connections, which BT said they will look into it.

But recently I have only seen it drop down to as low as 200Mbps, but I am not checking this all the time, only when issues happen my end.
This is my current speed results from speedtest.net as you can see its still not that bad.

The issues I am having is I am still getting loads of buffering on normal HD Streams (1920x1080) etc, especially on Twitch where its buffering every 10 or so seconds and often freezes for a few seconds then starts again.

The speeds is there but I think the quality isn't.

I noticed your latency is rather high for FTTP.
This is my result from that same Preston server and I still get lower and I am miles away from it.

But this is what I normally get most of the time.

Paul

No slowdowns at all on my BT Wholesale based FTTP On demand connection with Fluidone. I get 310/30 Mbps day & night on the 330/30 service. I suspect I'm the only one connected to the local FTTP splitter node hence the lack of contention between my property & the exchange - no native FTTP in my locality. If there are others residents on your estate on a 330/30 non BT Infinity 4 service eg IDnet or Zen then worth asking them if they experience slowdowns as well.

Simply: yep. BT Wholesale won't regrade until the SVLAN you're on, the capacity you're sharing with others, spends above a certain period of time per week above a certain level of utilisation.

A little contention is normal. 15% loss at peak times is no big deal.

It has nothing to do with the Splitter Node in my case, its when it gets to the ISP, there is only 5 connections out of the12 on our entire Splitter Node in use, so its not that causing our speed drops, its when it hits BT Network is when the speed drops.

BT says its due to contention and they monitor all connections all the time and they shift connections around so that its balanced out.

But to me it seems like the people that pay for the faster connections see the drop more than the other people, so us lot on Infinity 4 get shafted in the evenings where as people on Infinity 1 or 2 that are on FTTP are fine and see no change in speed.

But maybe Fluidone don't over sell like BT do you wont see any speed decrease, basically you get what you pay for.

Paul

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Simply: yep. BT Wholesale won't regrade until the SVLAN you're on, the capacity you're sharing with others, spends above a certain period of time per week above a certain level of utilisation.

A little contention is normal. 15% loss at peak times is no big deal.

I had it drop only the once by 85% and BT still say its fine even what their internal tests show the same drop in speed.

I was told its not classed as an issue if a connection drops from 300Mbps down to 45Mbps, its only classed as an issue when it falls below 40Mbps and its the same for Infinity 2, if it drops below 40Mbps its classed as a fault.

I did tell BT how is that fair, all I got told back was sorry that's their system.

I did also say what if one month I only pay you 15% of the bill, my system, and she just laughed.

BTW I am fine with the 15% drop, the 85% drop was more of a shock at the time.

Paul

Thanks all, as I expected it's back up where it should be now, all I have to do now is add CAT6 to a few rooms, wish it had been an option before moving in

http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6485427204.png

Edited by deleted (Wed 26-Jul-17 00:11:10)

In reply to a post by Embraer:

all I have to do now is add CAT6 to a few rooms, wish it had been an option before moving in

Yeah, I have installed CAT5e and CAT6 cable between the walls, which was murder doing it, but paid off at the end.

The only thing that uses Wi-Fi is the mobile devices like Smart Phones, Tablets etc.

Paul

the higher the burst speed the more likely you going to see visible contention.

I dont know how big BTs svlan's are but based on historical events it wouldnt surprise me if they not much bigger than a single 330mbit user is capable of pulling.

In datacentres unless the resources have dedicated network resources, you tend to see some kind of slowdown on gigabit+ ports as well at busy times.

What is more important and relevant to your streaming issues is single threaded performance, run a tbb speedtest or dslreports single threaded test next time you seeing problems. Also run some packet loss tests. speedtest.net isnt a very useful test as it can hide certain issues due to its high threaded nature.

But maybe Fluidone don't over sell like BT do you wont see any speed decrease, basically you get what you pay for.

Indeed - pay over £300 a month on a 3 year contract and the ISP should be able to provide a much lower contention ratio in their network. Compared to "standard" cost of Infinity 4 of £73.49 a month that gives a lot of extra money to provide good service.