In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by StephenTodd:

Maybe your tester uses something seen by BT as p2p?

That I think is what MrSaffron has been alluding to - the problem is in the ISP's management. Not every ISP does traffic management as you're aware being a former BEing.

I'm with IDNet. I think it would come as a surprise to a lot of people if IDNet had any kind of throttling implemented. If they do then surely it would be on the downstream not the upstream since the upstream doesn't count against your allowance. It is still WBC of course but I just want to clarify that I at least aren't on BT Infinity. Mind you I also get poor results from the flash tester.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 17-Sep-12 20:59:51)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

I'm with IDNet. I think it would come as a surprise to a lot of people if IDNet had any kind of throttling implemented. It is still WBC of course but I just want to clarify that I at least aren't on BT Infinity. Mind you I also get poor results from the flash tester. I'll see if I can run the Android one.

Yes, that's why I'd like to rule out WBC. It could be "big scale" traffic management at the WBC level between PPP "virtual circuits" - essentially is 100Gbit/s of IDnet traffic being slowed down slightly in preference to another WBC customer. All hidden in the massive WBC "unknown".

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

I'm with IDNet. I think it would come as a surprise to a lot of people if IDNet had any kind of throttling implemented. It is still WBC of course but I just want to clarify that I at least aren't on BT Infinity. Mind you I also get poor results from the flash tester. I'll see if I can run the Android one.

Yes, that's why I'd like to rule out WBC. It could be "big scale" traffic management at the WBC level between PPP "virtual circuits" - essentially is 100Gbit/s of IDnet traffic being slowed down slightly in preference to another WBC customer. All hidden in the massive WBC "unknown".

I just installed and ran the Android app. The download was reported low (around 20Mb/s) but was all over the shop and I think that's down to my wifi. I switched to wired several months ago because of a lack of channels. But most interestingly the phone upload was fine. It settled down reasonably quickly...to 14.9Mb/s.

So it's not my connection. It's my Windows computers. Or their OS. Or..something.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 17-Sep-12 21:10:07)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

So it's not my connection. It's my Windows computers. Or their OS. Or..something.

Or oracle have broken something in java since buying Sun ?

My first guess would be to actually uninstall and reboot any security software products. Not something most people can do without a spare PC.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

So it's not my connection. It's my Windows computers. Or their OS. Or..something.

Or oracle have broken something in java since buying Sun ?

My first guess would be to actually uninstall and reboot any security software products. Not something most people can do without a spare PC.

Yeah. Although I'll note that the desktop upstairs is owned by my employer and has McAfee AV whereas the laptop and server are running Avast. It would be hard to find many points of similarity between those two machines.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

So it's not my connection. It's my Windows computers. Or their OS. Or..something.

Or oracle have broken something in java since buying Sun ?

My first guess would be to actually uninstall and reboot any security software products. Not something most people can do without a spare PC.

Okay the plot thickens - sorta

My work machine no longer wants to run the Java test. Doesn't dispaly the loading circle nor a message about installing Java. Doesn't do anything. The Flash tester runs but produces a poor download figure (30Mb/s as compared to my laptop and server that return 70Mb/s or better) but reports 14.9Mb/s upload. So that does suggest some kind of software interaction on my laptop. FWIW on the laptop the Flash based tester gives really bad results of around 5Mb/s upload.

Or oracle have broken something in java since buying Sun ?

Java v7 came out with some defaults going to ipv6 rather than ipv4. This caused me and several other people quite a problem running Java based tests and other Java applets: the BT tests routinely failed to run and stuck at 96%, for example. This isn't the reason for the lower speeds on the Thinkbroadband tests however; I think it must be as others have suggested that BT (or someone in the path) is interpreting the traffic as p2p and throttling it.

In case it helps anyone with other Java issues, try going to the Java control panel, navigate to the Java tab, click View, and under your Java v7 insert a runtime parameter of -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true; or disable ipv6 in your network settings.

The test running slowly is of course not important of itself, but might be a useful indicator/diagnostic for other applications that do not behave properly under Infinity etc.

Edited by StephenTodd (Tue 18-Sep-12 09:35:28)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

It seems to be connection or ISP specific though.

Do we have any comparisons from TalkTalk or Sky FTTC users yet? It would be interesting to rule out WBC, and MSILs etc.

I have Sky fibre and here's mine from the TBB Java speed test:


The Flash one gives me 45.8/17.6 and the speedtest.net one gives me 57.1/15.7. The line is sync'd at 59999/20000.

In reply to a post by simon194:

The Flash one gives me 45.8/17.6 and the speedtest.net one gives me 57.1/15.7. The line is sync'd at 59999/20000.

Thanks! That seems to answer it, the tbb Java tester shows slow uploads for FTTC even on ISPs that claim no throttling or traffic management.

It explains some things but not all.

I see (Infinity) down/up
TBB Java 30.2/3.8
TBB Flash 37.34/15.56
iPlayer diagnostics 63 (download only)
speedtest.net 68.17/15.47
capspeed 67.8/16.8

The upload loss on TBB Java is much more than others see, and even TBB Flash is well below other testers.