Openreach guarantee a minimum throughput to the exchange. But if from there your ISP has opted to only make available a lower speed (through throttling, congestion, whatever).then... Well, it's a matter between you and your isp.

Openreach guarantee 15mbps but BT's speedtester thinks 12mbps is the minimum acceptable, many ISPs also guarantee 12 on consumer and 16 on business services so I'd assume it's the norm.

In any case I saw similar behaviour on my Infinity line about a month ago, where throughput dropped from 38mbps at peak times one day down to 4-6mbps the next. It was down to congestion, not throttling - note that throttling would *not* cause an increase in ping but congestion normally does.

For me it occurred several weeks before the 80mbps became available, and solved itself about five days later; speeds went straight back up from 4-6mbps to 38mbps again by itself, and since 80mbps came out I've been hitting a constant 77mbps at peak times.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

and solved itself about five days later; speeds went straight back up from 4-6mbps to 38mbps again by itself, and since 80mbps came out I've been hitting a constant 77mbps at peak times.

I'm hoping mine does exactly that.
I was switched to the 80/20 product earlier today and I now have an upload speed greater than my download speed.

Download speed achieved during the test was - 7 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 12 Mbps-77.43 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 77.43 Mbps

Upload speed achieved during the test was - 13.26Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps

So much for the assured rate over the 80Mbps product being 30Mbps (I read somewhere on here). Clearly that's an Openreach assured rate and nothing at all to do with BT retail (my ISP)

If only my line was short enough to give good speeds over 24Mbps ADSL2+ (although if it were, I wouldn't have switched to Infinity in the first place - I'd have stayed with BE).

Isn't the last stage of the BT speedtester (using a generic non-ISP related log-in) supposed to bypass the ISP and test the actual line capability (i.e. removing ISP throttling/congestion from the equation)?

Another person with congestion issues with the Shrewsbury exchange here. I am not on fibre as it got delayed on my cabinet until June but since switching to sky and their network I get much slower speeds in the evenings (I switched in mid march so it could be coincidence, although it never happened on talktalk).

May I ask what part of Shrewsbury you are from?

Edited by deleted (Mon 23-Apr-12 17:38:32)

Try a quick speedtest.net check but use the XILO server in Manchester.
So far it's the only speedtester and server combination from which I have been able to get a decent result.

Just got this from the Xilo Manchester server, this from their Maidenhead server, this on automatic (just click on 'Begin Test' and it selects the server with the lowest ping) and this from the ThinkBroadband tester.
Clearly we cannot rely on the TBB tester for accuracy as it seems to be out by a factor of 6 (or 7) on the download test and by a factor of three on the upload test.

Either way (and excluding the obviously flaky TBB tester) the problem here certainly seems to have improved for me (it's got better even over the last hour or so).

My actual download speed (using multi-thread or multi-split download applications, such as Usenet) is currently around 75Mbps.

It's almost looking like domestic broadband connections (or the number of people doing simultaneous speed tests) is getting too much for the test servers!

Edited by adebov (Mon 23-Apr-12 18:38:31)

12 Meg being lower than 15 makes total sense, but it is certainly not as firm a figure as the CBR.

The cost of keeping spare capacity so every FTTC customer can hit 12 Mbps at anytime is horrendous

Hi Ade,

if it makes you feel any better, the same is happening here, rock solid until my 80/20 service came on. At one point yesterday the BTw tester showed 3meg download, and the speedtest@speedtester_domain showed 5.

I decided I might as well raise my concerns, as the tester told me to. Three phone calls to Tech Mahindra (at least they are free). I politely informed the helpdesk guy that if they did try and book an engineer visit, it would most likely be me that came.... First blamed on a 'network issue'. The line is spot on.

Then suggested that an engineer visit would be required.......Perrrr-leease.

Then had me swapping round the ethernet ports, and on finding that there varying results on each test, stated the router must be faulty........
" I'll send you a replacement"
" But I have replaced it already ?"
" How?"
" I have a spare"
" but I'll send you a replacement,"
[sigh] ...... OK, go on then.


So, clearly no further forward, but I feel it's like voting, if you didn't then you shouldn't complain about the Government. *Maybe* if we all make enough noise ??

Oddly enough it's a little better today (80/20 was enabled in the early hours of this morning and, much to my surprise, I'm getting maximum sync in both directions - I was expecting around 60Mbps).

Still very flaky with certain speed testers (TBB is the worst) and switching between speedtest.net server locations gives wildly different results.

All I know is the same as you - begger all wrong with the line, modem, router, blah, blah (and certainly nothing to do with ethernet ports or Windows installations).
But you can't blame the guys in India. The blame for dodgy tech support must be placed firmly in Ipswich (or wherever they write the stupid scripts).

I'm hoping it's more to do with so many getting 80/20 upgrades and hitting the speedtesters, then hitting them repeatedly when getting rubbish results (which either Bob or Andrew suggested).

I can't think it's a widespread congestion issue (otherwise I wouldn't be getting full speed from Usenet and multi-thread downloads). Also pings seem largely unaffected (maybe a touch higher than normal, but only by around 10%) so that also points away from congestion.

It's either some weird routing issue, too many speedtests or throttling (which would affect single-thread downloads and speedtest results).
If I were a "glass-half-full" person I'd say it's the middle, but my "seen it all too many times before" experience says it's throttling.

My local cabinet is just by the Oxon pub