Talk Talk Line Speed and Download/Upload speed

I am have trouble with my broadband speed, it has been getting slower and slower over the last 6 moths, I live in Eastchurch, Kent, ME12.
I am with Talktalk, I have contacted them more and more each week, I have been told many different things from ratio levels, Talktalk not buying the bandwidth, faulty router, faulty switch, and the list go's on.
I renewed all of my in house wiring, switch, router, ect. and this has not helped.
I have been told a engineer will visit me this month (Jan) 27. and if they find trouble with anything inside my property that I will be billed for the call out and any parts that are replaced.
I am very switched on with network switch's, routers, phone lines, network cards, ect. But have no idea on how the ADSL noise / attenuation / ect, but dont mind learning new things.

My current router, is connected to the only master socket in the house, and a new wireless dec phone, on a new filter.
I have also tried the test socket, but I get no difference.
I have my PC wired in and only get speeds of 0.3mb to 0.5mb download most of the time, but some times, I get upto 5mb at early morning or the middle of the night.

When testing the internal network to my NAS drive I get speeds upto 76mb - 78mb so I cant see it being any of my network gear.

My router shows stats of:

--- DSL Information ---
DSL Driver Version: AnnexA version - A2pB023k.d21d
DSL VPI/VCI: 0/38
DSL Status: Showtime
DSL Mode: G.DMT
DSL Channel:
DSL Upstream Rate: 448 Kbps
DSL Downstream Rate: 7936 Kbps

Down up
DSL Noise Margin: 6.4 dB 21.0 dB
DSL Attenuation: 33.0 dB 17.5 dB
DSL Transmit Power: 19.8 dBm 12.3 dBm

Can anyone tell me if this looks wrong and tell me a little about it?

Those stats look absolutely fine.

To find out a bit about what they mean, have a browse around my site.

As at 3 January there was no published (by Openreach) capacity problem at your exchange. At the moment though it appears they have stopped publishing such, where they may be about to upgrade the exchange from ADSL, (G.DMT that shows in your stats and is clear from other sources is all that is available there), to ADSL2+ capability.

You are out of area for TalkTalk, which means instead of being connected cheaply to their pretty good LLU ADSL2+ network you are connected through BT Wholesale.

As you have been told somewhere, TalkTalk (also Sky and O2 out of area) don't rent adequate handover from BT Wholesale to themselves. My personal opinion is they only supply service on exchanges like yours so they can claim national coverage .

Off the top of my head there are three most likely causes:

1) TalkTalk BT Wholesale bandwidth provision has become more inadequate than before. As this would affect many users and I haven't seen a spate of complaints that isn't the highest probability. Though I don't monitor the TalkTalk forum here - maybe you should take a look yourself if you haven't already;

2) Unpublished exchange capacity shortage. This will resolve itself in time if BTW do upgrade to ADSL2+. That would probably solve your speed loss, but it wouldn't give you the 12Mbps+ your line could give on that. The ISPs I listed don't do ADSL2+ out of area;

3) Your wireless network is getting high interference levels or has been hacked and someone is leaching your bandwidth. How secure have you made it?

Hi Roberto
Thanks for looking at that, as I was just going to spend some more money and get a Billion 7800n router.
This will be listed backwards as I remember the options.

3) On the hacking options, you got me thinking ... SO ...
I have just checked my DHCP/ARP table and can account for all the devices on my network, I don't think my wireless could of been hacked as I live over 300 meters away from anyone, but I do understand that doesn't stop anyone hacking my network if they really wanted to, but it helps.

2)Come on BT, get your finger out and sort out ADSL 2+ or FTTC

1) I know four other people in my local area (on the same exchange) that have done speed tests at the same time as me, and this looks like the most likely option.
Two of them are on BT and have no trouble at any time.
One of them is on AOL and have the exactly the same probably! The other is on another supplier (I can not remember the supplier name) and they also have the same probably.

The friend on AOL has been on the phone nearly every day before x-mas. AOL have sent them a letter saying that BT have raised their prices and AOL will not raise their price to the end user so have had to limit bandwidth at peek times, because of this AOL are breaking the contract to the end user and are letting them out of the contract early.

Have a look at a few of these results. Somewhere you may find a list of exchanges getting upgraded.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

this has nothing to do with mobile phones the person is having a problem with their landline based broadband

[cough]
It's called (failed) spam .

And now removed as spam

Fried with eggs?

Right, a quick update ...
I have been doing a ping test and speed test every few hours, at peek times I can get ping's upto 2000ms (yes 2 seconds!)
I noted it all down to show the engineer when the turn up .
The engineer turned up Monday 27th, took a quick looked at my network, said, nothing wrong here, looked at the master socket and said, any others lines, I said no.
He then pulled out his laptop, plugged it in to my network switch, smiled and said, "gigabit, nice" he then pressed a few buttons, and said, "OH! ipstream, hate to be the bringer of bad news, but there is no fault and nothing I can do to speed you up at peek times, its all controlled by BT"

We then had a chat about my options, and he said to the words of, I'm stuffed aless

1, I can find a BT engineer and see if he can change my profile for a back hander.

2, I change my supplier to BT internet

3, I go for a wireless supplier (V-Fast)

4, Wait for FTTC to be connected, as it's planned for this year, but... that could be 3 months time, it could over run till next year.

1, Could I really have the cheek to ask a BT engineer, and also why should I pay someone to give me the internet I am already paying for!!

2, I really do not want to change to BT as they will put me back in a contract and also why should I be forced to go with them, when it is them that is slowing me down now. Correct me if I am wrong but is that not monopolizing the system?

3, I have had V-Fast out and they have told me, without putting a booster on the place next door, they can't supple me with anything, I have asked the people next door, and they have agreed for this, but V-Fast told me they are very busy, and will contact them shortly. (This was the start of November last year 2013)

4, And waiting for FTTC ... Well I'm not sure I can carry on with waiting 2 - 3 seconds for a webpage to load at peek times.

I was wondering about anyone else in the Eastchurch area with the same trouble, as they engineer said, the TalkTalk Group own AOL, Pipex, Tiscali, ect

I think your best option would be to go with VFast. When living in Sittingbourne many moons ago, i had their wimax service (and previously Telabria's whom they took over) and was very happy. Used to get ~10 meg day and night whereas my POTS line would support no more than 0.5 meg.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help us in knowing which of the three possibilities I listed originally is the issue. It's possible that the way TalkTalk get the traffic from you back to their internal network is worse from your exchange or area than in others, but as I said, it's rather poor everywhere.

The bit of good news is something you clearly are not aware of. The "BT" information about your exchange refers to BT Wholesale. In a way, the engineer was right in saying it "IPStream" is all controlled by BT, but in another way he is wrong.

In particular, every ISP in the country barring the LLU services such as the good TalkTalk and Sky ones is available to you. You do not have to move to BT (Retail).

All the other ISPs will be using IPStream as well, as that is the only service available at your exchange. The maximum connection speed on that is the 8Mbps you have now.

The difference between the good ones, (and many of us have opinions which are the best), is that the very best will provide you with over 6.5Mbps actual download speed 24/7/365 and a consistently low latency/ping; the good will possibly do the same but it might slow down a bit or latency rise a bit at heavy load times for them, and the poor will almost certainly still be better than TalkTalk or the Sky equivalent "out of area product" Sky Connect.

Most of the quality difference is to do with the capacity they rent from BT Wholesale at the point where they take the traffic out of the BT Wholesale "Cloud" into their own network.

The vast majority offer monthly contract terms. Some also offer line rental, but none insist that is with them, though it obviously has to be somewhere.

So, remembering that you will see "up to 20Mbps" downloads and "up to 1.3Mbps" uploads on all websites, (occasionally a 2.5Mbps upload), but you will only get 8Mbps down and 448kbps up, (some offer 832kbps up at higher cost), I suggest you look at:-

vivaciti Home Allowance
Aquiss Home Broadband
xilo/uno SOHO(BT).

I think all offer phone line rental, but it is available considerably cheaper elsewhere.

Plusnet is another possibility, see tables 1.3 and 1.4 on this page - you are not in a low cost area. "Essentials" has a 10GB peak-time allowance and unlimited overnight. Unlimited is true unlimited. Rates "with phone" mean if you take line/calls rental as well - not included in that price. The deals on the Home Page may apply - I don't know.

I would move away from TalkTalk, on monthly terms, and see how you get on for a while. I think I would stick my phone with someone like Zen Home Talk, so you can move the broadband easily wihout hassle over the phone line as well. Make sure you cost in things like Caller Display and 1571 if needed.

Do you use TalkTalk email, or are you ISP-independent for that?

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 29-Jan-14 19:15:18)

Hey Richy,

I'm on the same exchange as you and I'm with Plusnet, on their unlimited plan. I consistently get (according to the speed meter on my usenet software) between 7.0 and 7.8Mbps. That said I've just run a couple of speed / ping tests, and both are showing me 6.6Mbps download and a ping of 47ms.

I'm aware of two people, one next door to me and one in the high street with similar problems to you. The one in the high street has resolved the problem by switching from sky to Plusnet. I'm not sure who next door used to be with, but they also have changed to Plusnet and I'm assuming that their issues are resolved as I'm sure I'd have heard if they weren't. For what it's worth, Plusnet are a subsidiary of BT, so that may explain it.

I've just read that back to myself and should probably point out that I do not work for Plusnet.

I came across your post as I noticed last night that www.samknows.com had changed the FTTC status of the exchange and was searching for more info. Interestingly the openreach future exchanges list shows Eastchurch as down for FTTP rather than FTTC, which would be very nice if it happens.

In the meantime I'm reasonably happy with the speed I'm getting, but I would say that your best chance for a quick improvement would be to change your ISP.

Right ...
Update ... We moved to PlusNet and everything has been fine, we are still using the same router and everything, all I done was to change the user name and password and that was it.
The speed has been perfect !!!
Thank you all for your help ...

Good of you to report back as well .

Hi Richie,

Just thought I'd let you know, if you're not already aware, Anne Boleyn Close now has a live fibre cabinet. It changed to accepting orders earlier this week. The rest of the village can't be that far behind, given the amount of cable pulling and duct clearing that's been going on recently. So if you're on the close, you can order it now. If not, keep checking.