Speed fluctuations

For the past few weeks I have been experiencing downloads speed reductions particularly in the evenings.

I am preparing to contact my ISP (Pipex) but am anticipating a standard response that speed is bound to be affected during peak times.

I accept that inevitably due to sharing the same physical media there will be contention.

The question is, is what I'm seeing reasonable?

I live at the far end of the copper and the best speed I can achieve is 2.3M. This is reducing to as low as 0.3M during the above periods averaging around 0.9M.

BT has my line profile at 2.5M.

I can post full details but I just wanted to see whether there was any point in pursuing it with my ISP/BT.

Cheers, Peter.

The question is not necessarily whether it is "reasonable" but whether it suits your requirements. I would suggest you could find a far better ISP that would meet a higher level of performance (but it may cost you more).

I understand Pipex are going through a dodgy time at the moment and therefore not necessarily the best performing ISP.

Are you locked into a contract? Have you considered switching ISPs?

Remember that the websites themselves may be contended and busy, and this is out of the control of your ISP.

So its a case of seeing if there is any pattern to which sites are slow and fast, i.e. if one is consistently good, then the broadband side of things is probably not having any problems.

Thanks for the observations.

Ian,

The answer to your requirements question is no, it doesn't suit. There are certain things like streaming video - BBC news clips, youtube etc. (i.e. not HD films) which I find simply unusable due to the buffering pauses.

I'm not locked in to Pipex but my concern is that I might switch ISP only to find that the problems persist because of physical/contention issues.

Andrew,

I've been running ThinkBroadband speed tests and these show the wide variation in performance. In addition, the tbbMeter shows that when the speed is degraded the speed recorded during the test is erratic whereas when I'm getting a good 2.3M it stays flat.

So another way to put the question is could contention be the cause of such a dramatic speed variation?

Cheers, Peter.

In reply to a post by RollingJ:

So another way to put the question is could contention be the cause of such a dramatic speed variation?

Yes. In fact it is by far the most likely cause.

In reply to a post by RollingJ:

I'm not locked in to Pipex but my concern is that I might switch ISP only to find that the problems persist because of physical/contention issues.

The vast majority of contention exists at the ISP and is caused by shoehorning far more customers onto their purchased capacity than permit them to deliver acceptable speeds.

Of course unless you research it properly you may well end up with an ISP that is no better or even worse.

Do you have any LLU suppliers available? Thinking specifically of Be/O2 here as they would most likely provide you with the best possible service (but NOT O2 Access).

If you don't have O2 then it is possible it is exchange contention but relatively unlikely these days. More likely is that it is pipex.

Looking at ISP like Zen, AAISP and a few others would potentially give you a far better service.

Thanks.

Of course that opens up the dreaded "which is the best ISP?" question. I'll probably give Pipex a chance to resolve it but I suspect I'll be switching forum quite soon.

I started getting drops in speed since the middle of July - I wonder if the School holidays are affecting capacity for some ISPs.
Hopefully things will return to normal in a couple of weeks !

School holidays could make a difference. But as I understand Pipex have recently been bought by TT? (I think) then things may only get worse.

I have noticed that during these summer holidays transfer speed is still an issue during the day (though perhaps not quite as bad as the evening) where in the past (read term-time) daytime has usually been the best. Lends weight to contention being the root cause.

As to what impact the move to TT may have - "I couldn't possibly comment".

if it is literally as low as 300k it is falling outside the BT standards. Run speedtester.bt.com regularly at busy times as the results are referenced to your account and build up an evidence base.

Thanks Phil. Do you know where I might find documentation of the BT standards?

The BT speed test bypasses the ISP doesn't it? So I'd need results from there and, say, ThinkBroadband results for the same time?

Cheers, Peter.

BT speedtest does not always bypass the ISP - depends on how their network is setup.

Contention is sounding most likely, but its one of those things that is hard to prove

Pipex after being with Tiscali and now TalkTalk are not the best ISP in terms of peak time performance I would suspect, a case of too many users paying too little.

Sometimes pay a bit more and you get a bit more at peak times, not the sometimes, it is not a guarantee

Please post your router stats and results from http://speedtester.bt.com/ so we can see what your line is capable of. Speedtests can't tell you if you are connecting properly in the 1st place.

This shows a good test - 2.3M. Murphy's Law says that I will get a perfectly stable 2.3M for the rest of the day!

Equipment

Model Name : Vigor2710n
Firmware Version : 3.3.2.3_232201
Build Date/Time : Feb 25 2010 18:19:32
ADSL Firmware Version : 232201_A Hardware: Annex A

Router Status

Mode : G.DMT
Up Speed : 448000
Down Speed : 3040000
SNR Margin : 7
Loop Att. : 57

BT Speed Test results

Download speed achieved during the test was - 2271 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :3040 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 2500 Kbps

TBb speed test: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/1...

Check your exchange for common congestion problems at these two sites:-

Plusnet congestion checker.
Nildram congestion checker.

There have been several identical reports to yours about recent Pipex performance, so unless either of the above show anything the case is proven.

How much do you pay and what is the most you want to pay? Does what you pay include phone rental as well? What exchange is it please?

The exchange is Kintbury (THKB). Both sites say status Green - no congestion.

I'm currently paying 19.99 for a broadband only service.

How much would I pay? Looking around I think I pay quite a high price though I could be wrong. I don't feel I'm getting value for money at the moment since the times when I want to use it are the times when performance is at its worst.

Cheers, Peter.

Edited by RollingJ (Tue 17-Aug-10 20:06:33)

This shows a degraded speed TBb - 0.7Mb.

BT Speed Test results

Download speed achieved during the test was - 1162 Kbps

TBb speed test

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/1...

Congestion checkers still show Green.

No LLU at all at that exchange.

If you are downloading over 20GB per month then £19.99 is around the going rate for a BT Wholesale based connection. There are substantial quality differences though if you don't need huge amounts.

So it might be worth a switch to IDNet Home Lite. They are one of the top-flight for quality and support. Monthly contract.

See this comparison.

No LLU - yep price one pays for the rural idyll I suppose! Last on BT's upgrade list too

Thanks for the suggestion I shall certainly follow it up.

One of my colleagues living in the same village uses adsl24. Any experience of them? I notice they don't appear on TBb's comparison radar.

Cheers, Peter.

They are a reseller, use Murphx to provide the service IIRC.

ADSL24 used to be Entanet resellers, but when there was a lot of trouble with Entanet 18 months ago they switched all their customers to identical packages on Murphx.

There have recently been a few complaints about that service as well.

Two other resellers, vivaciti.net and xilo/uno sell 50GB packages on Murphx at a higher price than the 30/unlimited one of ADSL24. They seem to get no complaints.

So my guess is they have a performance quality contract, ADSL24 has a volume contract.

TBB at the moment doesn't provide forums or ratings for resellers, only full ISPs. ADSL24 are mentioned at times in the Resellers and Other Providers forum. That's the place to ask about all three.

Many thanks to all contributors to this thread.

I will follow the suggestions up and post the final outcome when I reach it.

Cheers, Peter.

Probably not the final outcome but ...

Two weeks ago I contacted Pipex to ask for my MAC. They asked why and when I told them about my speed issues they suggested I speak to 2nd line support before making a final decision to move to another ISP.

I spent between an hour and an hour and a half on the 'phone that evening to an engineer who:

- Repeatedly told me about contention despite my having acknowledged that I understood it and how it might affect me.
- Promised me that Pipex/TalkTalk were rolling out exchange ugrades though he was unable to tell me when nor exactly what the upgrade might be. I asked whether it was related to LLU but got no answer.
- Offered no answer to what might have caused the sudden degradation when I had previously enjoyed acceptable speed.

Although he claimed not to have made any changes - since according to him the problems were outside Pipex's control - a series of speed tests at the end of the call (modem directly into the line's test socket, then the master socket and finally my router) recorded a download rate of 2.4M.

Although he all but guaranteed that contention issues would mean that I wouldn't, I have been getting a rate which varies from 1.7 to 2.4M (and mostly at the higher end of that range) consistently since then.

Perhaps I'm on the "Stroppy Customer" service.

I've been through a similar process with Pipex in the past so I'm still not expecting to spend the rest of my online life with them but for the moment I'm content.

Cheers, Peter.