Slow Download Speeds

Hi,

First off, I'll give you a little information. I'm with Orange and have been for the past couple of years. While the speeds that we've been getting weren't always brilliant for our package (8Mb/s), we would live with it (think 2Mb/s). Recently, however, we've been getting very unstable connection speeds and it is sometimes going as low as 0.2Mb/s. First off, I have a collection of speed tests going back a few months (http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=dc2445baf588...). As you can see, the connection has been getting slowly worse until it is now pretty much unusable if more than one person is using it for gaming, downloading anything or watching a video.

I'll share my router stats and hopefully you can find the problem. I tried to make sense of them but I'm no expert and don't really know what I'm looking for.

Type: Interleave
Status: No Defect

Data rate:
DOWN: 8096
UP: 448

Noise margin:
DOWN: 11.4
UP: 23.0

Output power:
DOWN: 19.8
UP: 12.1

Attenuation:
DOWN: 27.0
UP: 15.5

There are no units on the stats page, and that's all of the information that's there. I seem to remember from recent checking that I'm about 1.5 kilometres away from the exchange, so I think that's relatively close in broadband terms. In the security log page, there are loads of rows of these:

May 18 16:11:43 - alert - klogd: Intrusion -> IN=ppp_0_38_1 OUT= MAC= SRC=41.178.116.122 DST=95.149.162.3 LEN=56 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=111 ID=9011 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=60429 DPT=80 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

Dating back to yesterday (I restarted the router as it was pretty much stalled and it seemed to go a little quicker). Any ideas on what these are?

The router I'm running is a Belkin "Pre-N" from about 3 years ago. I don't think they're manufactured any more. Thanks for your help!

Edited by deleted (Wed 18-May-11 16:26:46)

You are still on Orange's IPStream (ADSL Max, non-LLU) network which is notoriously variable and prone to contention.

What exchange are you on? Your only hope is that it is 21CN enabled and Orange migrate you to WBC (as it has done for the rest of us who were on LLU).

Thanks for the reply. I'm on the Barnwood exchange (http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SSBWD) which it seems doesn't support 21CN WBC.

Do I have any other options? I was looking at BE Broadband, but would that improve my service?

Yes, that;s what I'd do, go to O2 or Be where you should get 16 - 17 Meg Sync on a good ADSL2+ LLU network.

I'm surprised you weren't on Orange's LLU at your exchange.

The only thing is, BE would cost me £17.50/mo which is like £10 more than I pay at the moment. Would I really see that much of an increase? What about if I called Orange and asked if it would be possible to move to their ADSL2+ LLU network (I assume it's available) or would they ask for more money anyway?

Basically, bottom-line is, if Orange want more money than I will go to BE.

O2 are cheaper than Be. If you got an O2 mobile and can spend £10/quarter on it, their All Rounder is £12.50/month unlimited usage. Only downside is they operate traffic management, which Be don't; so depends on your usage.

I'm on same attenenuation as you, 27 dB, and got > 16 Meg on LLU. So, yes, as long as your wiring is OK.

Now Orange have got into bed with BT, they are running down their LLU network and putting users on BT WBC, which you can't have,

That's my only concern with companies like O2 and Orange - they operate traffic management. We use quite a lot of bandwidth (I'd say pushing 80GB/month due to games from Steam; around 8GB a piece!).

Thanks for the info and the quick responses!

I understood Orange IPStream had a FUP of 5GB/month peak. Maybe you are on a legacy unlimited product?

Sounds like your best bet is Be and pay for it. It's a fair price for an unlimited, unmanaged product.

Or look ay Sky Unlimited?

Edited by XRaySpeX (Wed 18-May-11 19:58:02)

I'm not entirely sure about which service we're actually on, but maybe we're exceeding the 5GB/mo allowance? That could be one reason for the incredibly slow download speeds recently...

I'll probably go with BE for their unlimited* service.

* unlimited not actually being unlimited, but it's as good as it'll get.

In reply to a post by Sneeza:

Data rate:
UP: 448

proves you are on IP Stream. It would be about 604K on LLU.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

If you got an O2 mobile and can spend £10/quarter on it, their All Rounder is £12.50/month unlimited usage.

Unfortunately not. This page says "download as much as you want": http://www.o2.co.uk/broadband/

However drill down to the FUP and 100GB is specified: http://www.o2.co.uk/assets2/pdf/HomeBroadbandFUP28Ap...

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

You are still on Orange's IPStream (ADSL Max, non-LLU) network which is notoriously variable and prone to contention.

Why is it then that other non Orange, non LLU connections often see no let up in speed, or very marginal.

They buy more capacity from BT? But AOL, O2, Sky and Virgin non-LLU are just as notoriously variable.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

They buy more capacity from BT? But AOL, O2, Sky and Virgin non-LLU are just as notoriously variable.

Guess so, I just know from using Newnet at different exchanges, the speeds have been consistent.

With Orange it's very up and down, seems to be consistent in the evenings more recently, consistenly below 2mb