Moved to sky - Terrible

Just looking for some advise on broadband providers.

I was on o2 which was fine, solid connection and stable pings and solid download speeds all times of the day.

As we know Sky took over o2 and are moving everyone over, if I didn't respond I was going to be moved onto their contract anyway.

So anyway, after having free tv and broadband for a year offered to me for just the phone line rental of £15 per month I agreed.

Broadband goes live today and it's terrible. So i'm still in my DLM obviously and i'm synced at 4Mbps by I can barely get over 1Mbps and my pings are over 100ms.

I've tried with the cable so i'm going to have to cancel, god knows what my options are I haven't checked yet. Obviously can't go back to o2.

So if the local exchange is congested, will I face the same problem with other providers? I'm thinking plusnet or possibly BT but they are the most expensive.

I just need a stable, reliable, good ping connection and I can't get fibre here yet.

If this is Sky LLU then other providers are likely to offer a different peak time experience, might be worse might be better.

You need to see if the poor speeds is time related

Give it time.

Sky's DML is [censored] and starts with lowest speed going up until it becomes unstable then it steps back a bit ... just give it a week and you'll be back to the same speed as you had with O2.

Do not reboot or turn off the router during this time, in fact always leave the router on!

Skys DLM does not set the line to the highest profile at first give it at least 5 days i had the same issue with my sister when she moved to sky after 3 days her line was was getting a good 14 meg which is good as she is nearly a mile from the exchange

thanks guys

My concern was the high pings (over 100ms even on Ethernet) and the ability to only get 1.5Mbps

It is LLU yes and my o2 line speed was 16800 bps solid with a SNR tweak down to 3dB - my line was stable.

Current stats are 29dB downstream and 15.3dB SNR with 4089 bps

As the others have said, they start you at 4Mbps sync. I don't like the look of the 1.5Mbps throughput or the latency though .

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 09-Dec-13 23:53:11)

DLM starts at 4Mbps on most lines but if the sky system for whatever reason has an estimate of speed thats around 5Mbps or lower it often starts you at 1Mbps or 2Mbps. This seems to be the case for you. It also sets highest interleaving so 100ms is about right.

It will keep you at the slowest speed if you reboot the router so keep it on 24/7. The speeds usually stay the same for around 3 or 4 solid days when DLM releases your speeds upwards and this continues then every few days till you see max speeds around day 7 - 10.

I started at 4Mbps and it wasn't until day 4 when I got a bump upto 12 Mbps and later to 15Mbps a few years ago.

Keep it connected 24/7 and wait for 10 days.

Meanwhile go to 192.168.0.1, username: admin password:sky
Click show statistics
copy and paste them here.
(assuming sky router).

I think you've just began at 1Mbps not 4Mbps which happens time to time.

Also when your speed rises it can take time for Skys system to increase the speed too. At the end of DLM you will see at www.sky.com/mysky under broadband your speed that's been set. This is the speed you should achieve in speedtests (around 80% of it). When you see this DLM has ended, sometimes DLM seems to run for more than 10 days so don't worry if it's not there for 15 days for instance (it's prob just a bit slow).

I'm sure it's all going to be fine in the end.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 10-Dec-13 03:47:04)

I phoned up tonight as i tried downloading something i was getting 80KB/Sec!!

I was connected at 7Mbit from overnight but the download speeds were terrible.

The phone operator switched my connection up to 16Mbit and it is currently connected at 15.3Mbit with an SNR of 7dB.

I now have full speed. I can achieve 1.4MB/Sec - 1.5MB/Sec according to my network tools. However, trying to download a ubuntu iso or other bits of software my speeds range from between 500KB/Sec - 900KB/Sec. Some lesser known sites as low as 200KB/Sec.

However, Apple updates, Google Drive downloads are all running at 1.4MB/Sec as well as speed tests (server dependant).

So i was wondering, do Sky throttle some routes and prioritise others. Could they be throttling or is it just destination congestion?

Every time i got poor speeds around 250-500KB/Sec i ran a speedtest and its the full speed. I'm just confused as i don't remember O2 ever running at 200KB, certainly not 80KB/Sec... which is why i thought maybe sky throttle unknown sources and prioritise well known download servers like Apple/Google etc.

Edited by oldskool (Tue 10-Dec-13 22:49:29)

Just to make you aware really, often DLM can give you better speeds in the end than Sky can. Sky have 7db noise margin and fixed sync speeds to choose from. DLM can go as low as 3db... Also Sky can only set upload speeds relatively strictly (often meaning you do not get the full 1.1Mbps upload, usually around 800kbps). Anyway in your case it looks quite good what Sky have done however I am almost certain your slow speeds were just DLM running its course.

Lucky for you DLM never really stops so if the lines very stable for the next few months DLM is likely to increase your speed automatically and put the SNR down to 3db (keep the router on 24/7 for this).

As for the download speeds that is slightly strange. There is no throttling or anything like that. Sky use the easynet network and invested heavily into this (far more than o2/BE had). Ultimately the Sky networks peering is far superior to the old o2 network too. Given this, it should be outperforming it in every way.

No routes are prioritised so it likely the server you're connecting too having congestion (not skys network).

If it was Skys network, you would usually see speedtests etc affected also. The backhaul should be plenty for 15.3Mbps given that Sky will more than likely have upgraded backhaul for fibre services at 80Mbps

Perhaps you're just noticing things as you're analysing it which you prob didn't do back on o2?

On Sky there's no Fair usage policy, no traffic management, no peak time slowdowns and no prioritisation. Essentially it's anything goes overall.

Sometimes lesser known software is located abroad and the routing there might not be amazing which can slow speeds down, this should affect o2 probably worse though. So strange...

my sky llu was set at 3db for months btw