Slow tbbx1 and fast HTTPx6 is a sign of congestion, or poor PC setup.

the x6 means we are trying 6 downloads at the same time.

Cheers, thought something like that. It's hard to say after such a short time (either way 3 days isn't a long test) but it seems like Kelly was probably right on the money in terms of an "amber warning" for congestion on our 'parent' exchange as a possible cause likely to be fixed within days, I think perhaps it was just that.

Still not sure what gives with the 10 meg drop in sync speed, but not overly concerned yet. Even without any sort of "training period" it probably does go up and down right? Or does it only go down. I'll have to have a read at those DLM docs. I doubt it's crosstalk at this stage (again, we were first on the entire exchange on Tuesday let alone the cabinet and it's not been advertised here yet). I suppose it's possible a dog peed through the vents on the cabinet, hehe. But seriously, so many people get the short end of the stick with 20-30meg connections I count us lucky.

Ah fair enough, thanks for the links. Makes more sense with a BT document behind it.

Unlocked modem turned up today, so that'll help with seeing what's going on. given the courage to interrupt its current happy state. I just still have these bad memories ingrained of rebooting our ADSL router
7 meg
*reboots it to change something*
6.5 meg
*reboots it to change something else*
5.5 meg
*vows not to change anything again*!
(changes not related to line. Port forwarding or whatever.)

Edited by deleted (Thu 17-Oct-13 21:41:46)

In reply to a post by LakesGeek:

Still not sure what gives with the 10 meg drop in sync speed.

Interleaving error correction can have that affect, has your ping increased?

Yes indeed, I'm seeing an increase in ping from 20 to 30ms generally. Does sound like interleaving, on a quick search around (so if it was a one off glitch, it might sort itself out after a few weeks by the sounds of it)

I've had my FTTC for over a year now, has always been much lower than the original estimate of 57, I was the first on our cabinet and even on the first day the best I had was around 52.

What I have found is I'll get several months on fast path (no interleaving), then I'd get varying levels of interleaving applied for a month or so, then back to fast path. Meaning my sync is between about 38 to 47 meg.

To have a ping of 20 to 30 you must have a pretty high level of interleaving applied, which may or may not improve, but if it's going to it does normally take weeks.

Once you get that unlocked modem installed you'll be able to see what's going on, just beware that BT are pushing out a new firmware which does away with the web interface, but telnet still works, and there are fixes being worked on for the stats logging programs, although they are only for Windows and Linux.

If this is about the worst it'll get, I won't be disappointed really. 50 meg still makes things like Steam far more viable than they were before (including the option of deleting a game when done with it and downloading it again later if you want to replay) and 15-16 upload is still a major advantage that will transform the way I do things i.e. a lot more cloud based and a lot more sharing of videos etc.

Still scared to switch the modem in case we fire the new one back up and end up with a speed of 30 or something, hah. But yeah no problem, if there's stats logging for Linux that could be a nice little Pi project.

In reply to a post by LakesGeek:

Cheers, thought something like that. It's hard to say after such a short time (either way 3 days isn't a long test) but it seems like Kelly was probably right on the money in terms of an "amber warning" for congestion on our 'parent' exchange as a possible cause likely to be fixed within days, I think perhaps it was just that.

Not out of the woods yet. Bear in mind that peak evening usage tends to drop through the week with Fri/Sat being the lower evenings, Sunday/Monday/Tuesday being the big ones. Do some tests Sunday/Monday evening. (This is based on our experiences so may not be indicative of other ISPs)

I wouldn't say it's the worst it can get, that entirely depends on cross talk, and how much your line will be affected, only time will tell, as others sign up. But with vectoring in trials at the moment at least there is something on the horizon to help alleviate the effect of cross talk.

I'm of the same opinion as you now, yes I was annoyed I didn't get the estimated 57/20, but the current speeds I get are ample at the moment. My Cloud backup only ever uses a max of 3Mbps, and other things download plenty fast enough.

Regarding the Pi you may like to talk a look at this, although I don't think the author supports it, he does still very regularly update the main version.

Possibly a little late as it's 19:50 but just did a test, 48.52/13.93 (down from a pretty solid 50/15, but that may be the error correction stuff getting stronger.. we can probably write off the 62 we initially got). Looked pretty smooth, a couple of ripples on the speedtest.net graph but nothing bad. I'll check Steam in a mo.

Edit: Solid 6MB/s or so on Steam, fluctuating occasionally down to 5.5, seems good

Edited by deleted (Mon 21-Oct-13 20:03:00)