[censored] Slow Internet Question. (Nothing New then!)

Here comes another 'I've got slow internet, help me' type questions, but appreciate any light that can be shed. The house is on Talk Talk broadband, although I'm unsure what speed connection they advertise the product at. I imagine its 8 meg. The router we have is a Belkin ADSL G router that has never really caused any issues, but I am often skeptical of Belkin products as the drivers they load on your computer are bum! As for my OS, I'm on Mac OS X 10.6.6, but there are also Vista computers in the house which give similar slow results.

Having used various speed checkers and ping checkers, it tends to average out at 300kbs download, but for some reason does 360kbs upload. My Xbox also struggles to find games at or below 80ms on Call of Duy and there's a distinguishable lag when playing. My 3 mifi manages 2000kbs down in tests and finds 100ms games, so there's something clearly not right.

Every one else on the estate seems to be getting 2-4mb where I'm punished with the Talk Talk 0.3mb. here's a picture of the results:

Picture

Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 5568 Kbps 448 Kbps
Attainable Line Rate 6112 Kbps 1100 Kbps
Noise Margin 11.2 dB 21.0 dB
Line Attenuation 28.5 dB 22.5 dB
Output Power 12.3 dBm 19.8 dBm

The wholesale checker says this:

For Telephone Number 01246****** on Exchange CLOWNE

Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial test on your line indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a fixed line speed up to 2Mbps.

Our test also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL Max broadband line speed of 3.5Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 2.5Mbps and 4.5Mbps.


Any suggestions you can give before I chin of Talk Talk in favor of BT or Sky will be appreciated. I've tried talking to customer services, but I get more sense out of my cat!

Thanks, Paul.

Welcome to the forums Paul. Thanks for registering, Anonymous posters can be a pain.

Please can you put your phone number into this checker and post the URL of the result?

It looks as though you are on a BT Wholesale service, so please try the BT Performance Test and post the full results (copy/paste) down as far as the start of the useless text below the upstream speeds.

If it gives a message saying your number isn't recognised, then even that is information . Who do you pay line rental to?

As for your suggested alternatives, hmmmm ! Let's see what the first link says about your exchange .

I would have replied sooner but the tinternet is a bit slow.... haha

The SamKnows site won't let me post the details so they're posted below:

BT ADSL broadband availability

You are connected to the Clowne telephone exchange.

* ADSL is available in your area
* Your exchange is also enabled for ADSL Max services
* Your exchange is not yet enabled for ADSL2+ services

According to BT Wholesale, your phone line should be able to support a 3.5Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max.
Standard ADSL RAG results

* You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
* You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
* You can receive 512kbps ADSL
* You can receive 256kbps ADSL

However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.

And here are the other tests

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.

Download Speed
315 Kbps

0 Kbps 500 Kbps
Max Achievable Speed

Download speedachieved during the test was - 315 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-500 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :5600 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 350 Kbps

Ohh, did you mean this?

Exchange

I meant the URL of the samknows result, like this:-
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SLCL

or better, on this site you can wrap it up with a descriptive link like this.

Anyway, a pretty unfortunate exchange to be on for broadband, but your figures do show you should be getting far more than you are. They point to a fault or problem very possibly within your house, so we need to try to identify and fix it, or prove it to be external.

Until we do no change of ISP will improve things, though one or two might be better at helping.

Have you ever had anything higher for any length of time, and this is a new problem, or has it always been like this?

The (almost) easy bit is that with the 28.5dB downstream attenuation you should be connecting at 8128kbps or 7616kbps, not the mid-5000s. However the high noise margin of 11.2dB will be partially responsible for not achieving that.

I note that your original stats said 5568kbps. The BT test says 5600kbps. So in the interval you have had a reconnection. What happened?

Next bit is the IP Profile of 350kbps. That means two things.

First, it means you cannot download above 350kbps, as it is the IP Profile that directly determines your speed. Not the connection speed. The connection speed does determine the IP Profile but in a slightly complicated way. Please read the rest of this post, then have a read of my IP Profile page.

Second, that low profile has a cause, and several reasons why it isn't rising to the 4500kbps region even with your low connection speed.

Either within the last 24 hours you have had a connection speed of between 288kbps and 384kbps, or it was longer ago than that but frequent disconnections like the one we have just observed are stopping it rising, or it happened a while ago and it is "stuck". Unusual to be stuck at that level, but I don't think it is impossible.

So that's the bad news. What do we do?

Do you have a Sky box? If so is it connected to the phone line through a filter? Everything that connects to the line, at any socket, must go through a filter. Phones, burglar alarms wired in, etc. etc.

Are any plug-in phone extension cables used?

There are more things to check. So have a read of that IP Profile page, and also the BT DLM amd Noise margin ones.

Then go to the Troubleshooting section and browse that to see what else is often a cause of trouble.

See you in a while, and don't complain about the headache . This is sortable.

In reply to a post by Cookbot:

Ohh, did you mean this?

Exchange

Yep , but I have been typing my reply to you for ages so didn't see this post.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 30-Jan-11 19:21:42)

I'll have a read into it, I did find that master socket that the BT engineer would use too and connected to that, but it made no difference. There is a sky box though as well. Thanks for the epic advice too.

Cookie

"Have you ever had anything higher for any length of time, and this is a new problem, or has it always been like this?"

I have had slightly higher speeds usually late at night on Peer 2 Peer software, but only about 400-450kbs and has been like this for months.

"I note that your original stats said 5568kbps. The BT test says 5600kbps. So in the interval you have had a reconnection. What happened?"

I would have been fannying around connecting the router to the BT NTE5 master socket although it made no difference and was still in the low 300's. As far as I'm aware, it's a stable network, but you never really know as it automatically reconnects. Is it worth digging out the old ADSL modem and connecting via that?

There's also these on the Router Info page and I refreshed the other info page:

Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 192 Kbps 448 Kbps
Attainable Line Rate 608 Kbps 1060 Kbps
Noise Margin 12.1 dB 20.0 dB
Line Attenuation 29.0 dB 22.5 dB
Output Power 12.4 dBm 13.6 dBm


Jan 30 19:40:42 2011 Outbound Traffic Blocked - NAT out failed ICMP type 3 code 1 89.243.232.215->87.248.114.191 on ppp0

Did the BT test again too and it's even worse:

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.

Download Speed
111 Kbps

0 Kbps 250 Kbps
Max Achievable Speed

Download speedachieved during the test was - 111 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-250 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :192 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 135 Kbps

There are plug in extensions used, but as I went through that BT master socket with only 1 cable and the filter (with nothing else connected to it) that should eliminate poor cables shouldn't it?

I'll start working my way through the trouble shooting sections, although might find myself barking up the wrong tree so to speak.

Thanks, cookie

The only thing that eliminates all other cables is the Test Socket on the wall at the back in this pic. Even that isn't a guarantee as sometimes people connect stuff in the hidden part behind the test socket. You can check for that by making sure nothing else connected in the house works when the faceplate is off.

It most certainly is not a stable network. And yes, now you have even worse stats.

Avoid disconnecting/reconnecting more than 5-6 times in an hour. The theoretical maximum before the DLM gets more upset is 10, but don't push it.

That Outward Bound traffic error, I've never seen before. Maybe someone else will comment, but it may be a failing router.

Is the Sky box filtered? Is everything filtered? Are plug-in extensions routinely used - they are death.

Yea, that's the one with the removable face plate. I connected to the socket inside. I'll avoid reconnecting so often, I never knew that. Yea, the sky box runs on the same filter as the phone and has a splitter running into it. The broadband wire (only has 2 wires on the plastic block) runs directly into the filter from the router. The filter plugs into the wall. When I plugged into the Test Socket, would the results be instant of it was poor wires or will I have to leave it over night? I checked the phones too when it was connected and none of them worked, so the only thing connected to the line was the router via its one cable and filter.

Wondering if it's time to talk to someone in Delhi? haha