'Superfast Broadband' described

Why do BT (and many other providers) dishonestly describe FTTC as 'Superfast' when it patently does not fit any such definition? My own line is rated by BT as having predicted speeds between 5-15Mbps (FTTC), alongside the description "Great news, Superfast fibre is in your area".

I do get up to 12 Mbps on a good day, but nowhere near the official definition of 'Superfast', i.e 24Mbps or above.

FTTC is "superfast" in the vast majority of cases, a relatively small percentage of lines, like yours, fall below the threshold. Your area almost certainly does have superfast - your area is more than just your house so others in "your area" will almost certainly get superfast speeds.

Unfortunately their website probably isn't setup to cater for the relatively low number of circumstances where FTTC doesn't run above 24Mbps. Given the very high percentage of people who do get superfast on FTTC I doubt very much anyone is going to take providers to task over this.

Thanks ian72, now I know! My neighbours and I are 'orphans', being near our county border, but on the exchange of the neighbouring county, so we are on nobody's scheme for Superfast, let alone FTTP, unlike people much further up the road who are on the local exchange. Such is life!

Do you get less than 10Mb? If so then there is hope for you when the USO kicks in. Have you checked other options like 4G?

Thanks for the info. I usually get 11 - 12 Mbps, which is not bad, but only 4 - 5 at peak times, which is roughly what my immediate neighbour gets all the time, coincidentally on the same ISP, so I don�t know why mine is better than his!

Does the sync speed change at peak times? If not, who is your current provider as that suggests network congestion is kicking in and slowing you down? You could find moving to a different ISP would give you more consistent speeds at all times of the day.

In reply to a post by DAT:

Thanks for the info. I usually get 11 - 12 Mbps, which is not bad, but only 4 - 5 at peak times, which is roughly what my immediate neighbour gets all the time, coincidentally on the same ISP, so I don�t know why mine is better than his!

If your throughput speed varies by that amount something is wrong.

Would you mind telling us your ISP, in case they have a history of peak-time congestion. Also there is a possibility your phone wiring at home is sub-optimal and your neighbour's worse.

Snap!

You need to have a word with BT about your exchange capacity if your throughput drops by half in the evening. Especially with you having a low sync in the first place.

That essentially means those getting full 80Mb may also drop to 4-5Mb at peak, and that isn't the norm.

At the moment it isn't confirmed that BT are the ISP - for clarity they need to speak to their ISP but it is quite likely ISP network rather than exchange capacity that is the issue.

I see the person is in West Sussex so it is possible that Kijoma might supply a wireless service.

In reply to a post by DAT:

Thanks ian72, now I know! My neighbours and I are 'orphans', being near our county border, but on the exchange of the neighbouring county, so we are on nobody's scheme for Superfast, let alone FTTP, unlike people much further up the road who are on the local exchange. Such is life!

Being "orphans" should have made no difference as there were normally agreements for who would deal with people in the position. However, you have FTTC and that is about all BDUK was delivering in most places - your problem is not that the cabinet is not enabled but that you are a long way from the cabinet.

As per one of my other posts - have you looked to see if Kijoma cover your area as they may be able to provide a fast wireless connection if they do.

Thanks to ian72 and others who have replied so promptly and helpfully to my posts.

My ISP is PlusNet, as is my neighbour's. Mention of variable speeds, in my case 11 -12Mbps (best) to 4 -5 (worst) does prompt me to see about another provider, although PlusNet's service overall is not bad in my personal experience.

Kijoma does indeed serve my area (West Sussex) with wireless, but, like 4G, does unfortunately look expensive with our usage. I do a lot of work online at home and our daughter likes to stream videos. At last that seems to work O K with only occasional buffering. Netflix runs O K as well.

In view of that, I suppose I am being a bit picky, but sometimes I get tired of waiting for sites or cloud to come up, when I envy people with real 'Superfast' speeds, let alone Ultrafast.

Your speed test I presume https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15359797217...

The fact it takes two seconds for downloads to register suggests something is wrong, presume when browsing things seem to take a while to start after a click and then after a couple of seconds things seem speedy?

400ms or higher for a small TCP packet is not normal.

The single download test is even worse, suggesting there is mega congestion or some other issue. It would be a good idea to get a speed test from a neighbour an look at the shape, if they have a nice steady 4 Mbps

The sort of test you want is a shape more like https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15359257451... and in a perfect world something approaching this nice square like shape http://tbb.st/1535886167680608955

What is the actual sync speed from the hub?

Post deleted by MrSaffron

In reply to a post by DAT:

My ISP is PlusNet, as is my neighbour's. Mention of variable speeds, in my case 11 -12Mbps (best) to 4 -5 (worst) does prompt me to see about another provider, although PlusNet's service overall is not bad in my personal experience.

That suggests a fault to my mind. PN usually provide a very consistent service. They do occasionally go through periods when some users randomly see poor speed but it's not common. Congestion symptoms are usually seen on the TBB speed test with the single threaded result being a lot lower than the multi-threaded result.

Yes, that was my speed test.

It is the case that the initial click-start is slow, but the browse speeds up thereafter.

I note your and another's comments about the likelihood of fault on my line.

I'm not sure how to measure my speed from the hub; I have an Amplifi Mesh router which gives excellent coverage.

Do you have the Amplifi app? I am assuming from looking at the Amplifi website that you should be able to hopefully get line statistics out of that. Some items that would be useful are sync speed, attenuation and SNR margin. If there are error counters available then that would be useful too.

You may be able to get all of this through a web browser as well which might be easier for copying and pasting in to forum posts.

To rule out the Mesh being behind the cause, you need to plug in a device using an Ethernet cable to the hub and run the test again

Amplifi app will only give wireless/throughput stats, not xDSL stats.

The OP needs to bypass the Amplifi router completely and connect wired via Ethernet to the modem (Plusnet Hub One?) and run the speed tests again.

Line stats from the modem would help.

if they are using a PlusNet Hub One, then likely they are running double NAT unless the Mesh device is running in a pure access point mode. Double NAT should not cause what we are seeing in the speed test.

The PlusNet Hub One is just the BT Hub in a different colour plastic and has no special modem mode.

Will add if the wireless is still turned on on the Hub One it may be interfering with the Mesh system