Broadband Speed Problem

My problem is my speed is 2 Kb/s and I feel it should be better.

I live in a terraced house in the UK and have adjoined neighbours either side, No�s 82, 84 & 86 (I live at 84). Both neighbours enjoy speeds of 7 Kb/s. Outside our houses is one BT pole with a wire coming off for each house.

Recently I had my old upvc front door and frame replaced. When the old had been ripped out and there was a bare opening I noticed an electrical junction box buried behind where the frame was. On closer inspection I saw that the telephone cable coming from the pole was entering that and on the other side a wire emerged which went into the wall and was (I assume) connected to my telephone socket. The old door and frame had been fitted on a grant from the council before I bought the property.

Also during the past 8 years I have experienced 7 Kb/s speeds on 3 occasions. the longest period of which lasted for a week. The other 2 were for a couple of days.

Can anyone help me sort the problem. I am with Plusnet who tell me that I should change to fibre but I feel if there is a problem then changing to fibre will not sort it.

I have an iMac connected via a wireless NETGEAR DGND3700v2

I would be grateful for any help

I trust that you mean 2 or 7 Mb/s (or 2 or 7 MB/s) for the speed.
My experience of going to FTTC (which is what I assume PlusNet must have meant for you) was that the guy who came to install talked to us about what he thought would be the best way to do the job, and he brought the wire into the house by a different route (which we thought would be good in consideration of our router desired placement), and would, anyway (he told us) have renewed the wiring at the house to eliminate any problems.

Thank you Derek.

That would be great if the wiring could be renewed at the same time.

I feel in my heart that when the old doors were fitted the fitters encountered a problem with the BT cable and botched up a connection using a 240v mains fitting to join the BT cable. I am convinced that is what stops me having speed where i can viably use iPlayer etc...

I was scared that paying extra for the fibre would keep me with the same problem as the signal would be very fast but then it would hit that bottle neck in my house.

Thanks again for taking the trouble to respond

Best wishes

Fibre and ADSL are two different animals. Yes, it might well come down the same set of wires from the cabinet but you'll be given a speed estimate, as part of the sign up, as to what sort of speeds they would expect you to get. If you were to drop below 80% of that then they would investigate further as to why. Whether it would pay you to go fibre, only you can decide.

Post your router stats and we'll be able to see what speeds you should be getting.

This could get nasty if the fault is in the box and that is still behind the (new) doorframe. The only clean way would be for Openreach to bypass that.

Possibly entering somewhere else entirely if the OP wishes. Which happened to me a few years back. It was quicker and easier for the engineer to fix my fault, and gave me an ideal place for a new master rather than the worst possible.

Thanks RobertoS. This is exactly what I was afraid of. The need for a new line from the pole to the outlet in the house. The door fitters were super fast so there was no time for me to check the connections in the junction box. I feel that the previous fitters had wanted to move the cable so fitted a quick connection which was a total cowboy job. As an added bit of info the new fitters showed me how the old ones had fitted part of the door the wrong way around. They had also done that to an upstairs window which is why it wouldn't open and close easily... so botching a line connection was well within their capability.

Thanks again

Thanks XRaySpeX. I have been searching my router admin page and i have no idea what to look for to get you the info. Is this it?

Link Rate 7616 Kbps 448 Kbps
Line Attenuation 17.0 dB 12.0 dB
Noise Margin 13.2 dB 24.0 dB

You are getting the full 7+ Meg. How are you measuring it when it is only 2 Meg? By Speedtest? It could be your exchange is congested, but I don't think the door-frame cable is affecting it.

The next time it is slow post these router stats again & try a wired speedtest here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html and copy to here just the "Link to this result:" link.

Given the stats you posted the line looks fine, congestion or local wireless issues are more likely.

Thanks again XRaySpeX. I'm getting the figures from safari download info when I'm downloading a file. I have just done a check on broadband.co.uk and that is telling me that it's 1.77 Mb.

It's always been around that or max at 2.3Mb regardless of the time of day or day of the week. There are the odd occasions when it's pretty much zero and I put that down to congestion as it's usually early evening (but it is rare).

This is telling me that to get a faster connection I would be better off with Fibre as my system is ok ... yippee

Thanks again XRaySpeX for taking the time to help. It is very much appreciated

Thanks MrSaffron. It is looking that way. Fibre here I come

Looking at your stats they are good. So the issue will be

1) Issue with congestion on the ISP end
2) Poor wireless internally

If it is number 1, then fibre will also be slow if you stick to the same ISP.

I would possibly look at switching ISP and migrating, my advice would be BT or TalkTalk as both of these come with a dual band router which is really a requirement nowadays for the full fibre speeds.

Plusnet and Sky is single band wireless, so you wont see the full fibre speeds unless wired (assuming 80 meg sync)

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 14-Dec-15 09:51:26)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I would possibly look at switching ISP and migrating, my advice would be BT or TalkTalk as both of these come with a dual band router which is really a requirement nowadays for the full fibre speeds.

Only if the connecting device supports 5GHz. For example my iPad does, but my iPhone 4s only supports 2.4GHz.

You seem to be ignoring the second possible reason. Your own wireless setup.

Also as has been said, if it is ISP congestion staying with the same one on fibre is likely to be congested as well.

A third possibility. Are you sure you aren't suffering from traffic management on an old broadband package? Which ISP and product?

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 14-Dec-15 10:57:45)

A 4th suggestion - could be a stuck IP profile.

In reply to a post by ian72:

A 4th suggestion - could be a stuck IP profile.

seems very likely!

In reply to a post by Geggsy125:

I feel in my heart that when the old doors were fitted the fitters encountered a problem with the BT cable and botched up a connection using a 240v mains fitting to join the BT cable. I am convinced that is what stops me having speed where i can viably use iPlayer etc...

Technical problems are always best dealt with by thought rather than feelings.

Before you rush into changing your ISP it would be good to understand where your current problems are coming from. There have been some good suggestions in this thread. When troubleshooting technical problems it's also often best to start from the beginning.

Connect your computer using Ethernet cable directly into your modem/router. If it's a router disconnect all other devices. Now run the Thinkbroadband speed tester in the mid-evening. If speeds are still bad repeat the test when you get up in the morning or early afternoon.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 14-Dec-15 12:05:18)

Personally my first step would be to check on the PlusNet Portal as to what the PlusNet "broadband speed" is (assuming they still display it in the portal - if not I'm sure someone will now how to get it these days). If that is OK then I'd use the BT speedchecker to check the BT IP Profile.

I am thinking one of these is currently set at 2Mb because the speed issues seem too consistent to be congestion.

Current line speed. Will request login if not already logged in, then go to the page.

You have a perfectly good connection speed now for your exchange. Before you go to the upheaval & expanse of changing ISPs and/or switching to Fibre get yourself an Ethernet cable to connect your Mac to the router, if at all feasible, and see the difference. I think you will be surprised .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Current line speed. Will request login if not already logged in, then go to the page.

Thanks Bob. I know it was in the forum somewhere but was sure it would be quicker for someone else to post it

Thanks again XRaySpeX. Sorry for the delay in responding but I was awaiting a cable. I plugged it in this morning and turned off the WiFi so I am connecting to internet via cable (RJ45, Ethernet). At 4:00am this morning it was showing 1.82Mb when tested. This evening it is showing 1.81Mb. On my WiFi it was 1.77Mb.

Plusnet reckon (and I know this is pie in the sky) that I should be able to get 17Mb. I would be happy with half that. I still don't understand why on those odd occasions I was getting 7.5Mb. Once for a whole week. That was also regardless of the time of day. It was 24/7 at 7.5Mb then it suddenly returned to this.

Would Fibre make a difference?


Thanks again

You need to run the BT Wholesale speed test to confirm what your IP Profile is set to, and also check what the configured line rate is in the PlusNet portal.

At a guess they are both saying 2 Mbps, and not reflecting your actual connection speed which if I recall was full rate, in which case ISP needs to prod wholesale to unstick a stuck IP Profile