hav bt said anythin bout this? im loking at them 2 as o2 are rubbish havin to use my fone to get web tonight

Ah ok. So if my download of the large 1GB test file is slow, then it's more likely to be congestion as it uses a different protocol to P2P, and BT are only throttling that? Is that right or am I wide of the mark there ?

Assuming it in congestion, is there anything I can do about it?

thanks for all the replies by the way.

In reply to a post by adebov:

I've been getting exactly the same (I'm on the Banbury exchange).

For what it's worth it seems fine down the road in Brackley but I'm with IDNet.

I would have thought deliberate throttling would come without an increase in the ping time.

Try the TBB 1GB download test file using a download manager (something like FreeDownloadManager .
Using a 12 split (i.e. splitting the file into 12 sections and downloading simultaneously) I'm getting a download speed of around 4558kB/s (around 36.5Mbps) - i.e. practically full speed.
If I download the same file using a single thread (e.g. downloading with IE) I'm getting a very bouncy download of between 6-14Mbps.

In my past experience (and I've been with some of the worst ISPs for congestion - Eclipse, Plusnet, ACE, Entanet) congestion has normally affected total available speed no matter how many segments/sections/threads are involved in the download.
I.E. A multi-thread Usenet download would also slow down when congestion is present.

Apart from deliberate throttling (although I'm sure someone will come along and correct me) I don't know of many issues which would cause a single thread to download significantly slower than a multi-thread.
I think we can eliminate PC and setup problems (as the issue corrects itself after peak hours have passed) - if you had MTU / Rwin / wireless / etc. issues surely the speeds would be low at all times (you wouldn't get 37Mbps downloads at 2am and 4Mbps downloads at 8pm if you had your MTU frame size set incorrectly).

It's possible any throttling (and it remains to be proven - either way) could be in place to prevent network overload caused by a sudden switch from 40/10 to 80/20 products.
It wouldn't be the first time an ISP has throttled some users, at peak times, to protect their network. Plusnet did (and most likely still do) this and Entanet had a very elaborate "throttling" system in place which kicked it (at varying levels of intensity) as their backbones started to overload.

Maybe the happy time is over and we're starting to wake up to the impossibility of providing a "real" unlimited product (at such high speeds) for £30 a month?

In reply to a post by thorice:

hav bt said anythin bout this?

I honestly wouldn't know who to call (or at least anyone I could get some sense out of).
The final step of the BT speedtester (it only goes to this if you get a rubbish result) suggests calling the ISP (which is, of course, BT) but I'd put money on there not being anything in the "script" at the Indian call-centre to deal with this.
And I certainly don't want BT to get wind of this and start mucking about with my profiles and capping speeds in an attempt to fix something which has nothing to do with profiles or connection speeds.

I'm not going to call BT because I don't want to spend the next week wasting my time rebooting routers and modems and re-installing Windows (the normal suggestions made by "help" lines, as it's bound to "be something your end" which is causing the problem).

Edited by adebov (Sun 22-Apr-12 21:42:59)

Just tried your suggestion and I'm getting 478KB/s which is still coming in at about 30 odd mins for the download, so it does look like a congestion issue.

I feel a little churlish complaining about low speeds as I could only previously get 1Mb before infinity, which was woeful. However, if I'm hovering around 4Mb in the evening, once a few people in my family start using the internet, it could make things like iPlayer unusable, which for £25 a month is pretty grim.

My fear is that something like this will never get resolved given it only happens when the people likely to be able to sort it (a competent engineer) aren't working. I'm also not sure I can face the prospect of phoning the general BT helpline given peoples horror stories on other forums.

Maybe I'll just have to become nocturnal

Congestion is most likely

What can you do? Not a lot usually

Well I'm sitting and waiting, in the hope it's temporary and caused by a sudden take-up of the 80/20 product (which is now available, with a few days lead time, for existing customers and new people can go straight onto it).

If any company can afford extra bandwidth, it's BT.
The danger is if people don't complain (and I'm certainly not going to call them) BT might think nobody has noticed and will try to get away with not paying for more capacity

Aren't BT obliged to provide a minimum download speed? I read somewhere it's currently 13-14.

As an aside, I'm sure I read somewhere that tracert can be used to identify congestion. I could well have dreamt that so apologies if I'm talking cobblers. Anyhoo, here is my tracert for the beeb, maybe it could shed some light?

tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 5 ms 6 ms 5 ms 213.120.155.227
3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 213.120.155.158
4 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 213.120.161.18
5 6 ms 7 ms 6 ms 217.32.26.62
6 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms 217.32.26.182
7 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms acc2-10GigE-0-0-0-6.bm.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.
248.210]
8 16 ms 14 ms 14 ms core1-te-0-2-5-0.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.2
48.128]
9 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms peer2-xe10-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.
254.128]
10 25 ms 11 ms 11 ms 194.74.65.42
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms ae1.er01.rbsov.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.46]
13 11 ms 12 ms 12 ms 132.185.255.134
14 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms 212.58.241.131

Trace complete.

Maybe my best option is to just hold tight for a few months and see if the situation improves.

The minimum is over the BT that Openreach run, once its left the exchange it is BT wholesale and BT retail who are the two main components if on Infinity