Gigabit FTTP nearly unusable during working hours? Help!

Hey folks,

I currently have an FTTP line provided by Spitfire, on their 1000/115 package.
I have been with them for over a year, and initially went with them as I'd had great experiences in the past with their FTTC.

However over the last six months, during 9-5 on working days, the line's download speed drops to almost unusable levels.

I'm talking drops from a solid 940/115 in the evening and night to below 15/110 throughout the day, all measured by my Openwrt router directly.
Oddly enough, the upload is completely unaffected.

As you'd imagine with two of us working from home (in IT), this is awful.
Video calls drop, accessing cloud services becomes painful, the works.

and as soon as work is over at 5pm, the download returns to 900+mbps like clockwork!

I've tried contacting Spitfire a few times now, but each time they blame my router or 'excessive usage' and refuse to help further, even when I provide detailed usage and speedtest stats captured by the router to show the issues!

and of course, using their router it's exactly the same.

I understand that GPON FTTP is a shared medium with only limited bandwidth per node, but this is unbelievably bad?
Especially for a so called 'business' service!

Basically I'm at my wit's end here, and am wondering if anyone knows how I should go about getting this resolved.

Cheers!

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

to below 15/110 throughout the day

15/110 should of itself be fairly workable. I have run 4 zoom devices over 30Mb/s with very good results. But given that this is supposed to be a 1000M line, it is running into substantial contention, which means that the network is more than clogged. If it is being restored at 5pm promptly, I would suspect that you are being heavily throttled to a level more appropriate for ADSL. Odd for an outfit which professes to be a business supplier.

I suggest you check out fair usage policies as the first move and check that you are not violating them and that your usage of the network is compliant with reasonable expectations for whatever package you have bought. After that, move or argue your case.

Edited by DFScale (Tue 28-Jan-25 16:28:23)

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

Hey folks,

I currently have an FTTP line provided by Spitfire, on their 1000/115 package.
I have been with them for over a year, and initially went with them as I'd had great experiences in the past with their FTTC.

However over the last six months, during 9-5 on working days, the line's download speed drops to almost unusable levels.

I'm talking drops from a solid 940/115 in the evening and night to below 15/110 throughout the day, all measured by my Openwrt router directly.
Oddly enough, the upload is completely unaffected.

As you'd imagine with two of us working from home (in IT), this is awful.
Video calls drop, accessing cloud services becomes painful, the works.

and as soon as work is over at 5pm, the download returns to 900+mbps like clockwork!

two questions does this happen in the weekend?

Have you done a direct connection with a pc to the ont, just rule out your equipment doing something funky ?

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

I've tried contacting Spitfire a few times now, but each time they blame my router or 'excessive usage' and refuse to help further, even when I provide detailed usage and speedtest stats captured by the router to show the issues!


Cheers!

According to this, if what cs has said to you is correct, you would have been contacted by spitfire about usage.

https://www.spitfire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/0...

In reply to a post by Taras:

two questions does this happen in the weekend?

Have you done a direct connection with a pc to the ont, just rule out your equipment doing something funky ?

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

I've tried contacting Spitfire a few times now, but each time they blame my router or 'excessive usage' and refuse to help further, even when I provide detailed usage and speedtest stats captured by the router to show the issues!


Cheers!

According to this, if what cs has said to you is correct, you would have been contacted by spitfire about usage.

https://www.spitfire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/0...

It doesn't happen at the weekend, nor over Christmas. Definitely only during working times!

I've tried connecting to the ONT and running PPPOE on my laptop too, and the speeds remain the same.

By excessive usage, I don't mean a violation of the FUP by the way, certainly haven't been contacted for that!
We only really use just over 1.5TB in a month, which they have no issue with

They meant it as in local network congestion, for example downloading something huge while the speed test was running.

I've given them another ring today too, still awaiting a response as of this post...

Edited by nyctomanica (Tue 28-Jan-25 17:00:05)

Here's a screenshot of speedtest tracker

It tests hourly at hh:22, directly from the router.

You can see the massive dips in download during the day 5x a week, and relatively consistent uploads throughout unless I'm putting something into gdrive (or my NAS is doing a backup job)

Edited by nyctomanica (Tue 28-Jan-25 17:07:23)

When you bought the service, what was the minimum download speed they quoted you? From their response of "excessive usage" it sounds like they are throttling you, have you got them to admit this?

How often are you running automatic speed tests?

Edited by jpm (Tue 28-Jan-25 17:14:41)

I think I didn't make myself very clear, sorry!

I've asked them whether they were applying any throttling by email, which they advised they weren't.
Haven't received anything about excessive usage by email or letter!

By excessive usage, I meant to say that they were checking to make sure I had no other high bandwidth stuff using the internet at the time, such as downloads whilst I was running speed tests.

Those are hourly

I don't recall being quoted a minimum speed, just that this was a 'Premium' service with packet priority over that of normal connections.

Edited by nyctomanica (Tue 28-Jan-25 17:25:00)

In reply to a post by jpm:

How often are you running automatic speed tests?

thats what i was interested after seeing the graph. That said, spitfire is meant to be a business isp, so i have some issue if they throttling him because of say hourly speedtests.

Either the pon is congested or theres some funky traffic management going on.

[edited for a stupid typo]

I would have raised a fault and gone that route instead of showing them a nice graph.......

Edited by Taras (Tue 28-Jan-25 19:18:53)

It sounds like they're not willing to look into this for you, even that you have asked repeatedly.

If you're out of contract, switch provider. Maybe they will do something... !

Try and find out what the minimum speed should be as this would be a cause to terminate the contract.

If their other customers are causing this then they need to take action against them so it doesn't impact all other customers who are sticking to the FUP.