Fibre Broadband - Download Speed

Help/Advice I have fibre broadband from Plusnet and use their Sagemcom Hub One. The Hub manager shows the DSL line is operating at almost 40Mbps down and almost 10Mbps up. This has been confirmed by Openreach.
When I use a line speed checker I am getting results of approximately between 19 and 20 download and between 9.5 and 9.7 upload. I have used three different line checkers - BTW , Speedtest.net and one on the Which site. The first two give very similar results.
I have run the line tests with a single desktop PC connected by ethernet cable, also with a single WiFi device, an iPad. Have tested using an Android phone and tested middle of the night, early morning and evening but the results remain consistently the same.
Looking for a reason or cause for the download speed being so low - any ideas?
Thank you for any advice you can give.
(Note - I am not overly technical.)

Run this test https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest and when its finished click the results page button and paste a copy of the URL for that page so people can see the results.

It is about seeing if there is an obvious difference between the two download tests and whether speeds vary or are hitting a maximum value all the time.

Thank you for the advice. A link to the results of my broadband speed test performed this morning -
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15836640095...

Thanks

You also get faster upload speeds sometimes e.g. http://tbb.st/1582798744293033455 and http://tbb.st/1582798630210985155
there two faster upload speeds also happen when the average latency for small packets is lower 49 and 47ms.

The lower upload speed test and others have latency in the 111 ms to 165 ms region. There is a green Analysis button on the results page, a screen shot of what that shows might help i.e. compare a test where the average was low and the average was high.

Are you 100% certain that no devices are downloading or uploading (more likely upload) across the connection e.g. kids on youtube, iphone uploading a large video to cloud or or ther things.

The download looks stable and flat, suggesting that it is hitting some limit, this might be a configured line speed setting on the Plusnet side of things - there used to be a way to see this in the account portal but left Plusnet 3 years ago and have forgot where it was.

Maybe here. That's where it was years ago.

This does look like the PlusNet "Current line speed" issue, you can view this in your account under the Broadband tab giving a list of estimated speeds and at the bottom, the current line speed. It can get stuck on 21Mbps, which is some legacy speed cap for ADSL2+ services giving a throughput speed of around 20Mbps.

Customer support will probably not have clue or say it is no longer used since PlusNet changed their network a few years back, but it can and does affect some customers. It is known to affect users who have purchased a static IP address because of the way they connect to the network. However I believe there have been cases recently where users on dynamic IP addresses have suffered the same problem.

It may be worth posting on the PlusNet forum, you will get better technical support, but they are bit slow to respond lately.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Maybe here. That's where it was years ago.

Generally stopped working before I left PN in Sept.

Looks suspiciously like a device is uploading to a backup service, eg one drive / BTCloud / Google etc

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Maybe here. That's where it was years ago.

Generally stopped working before I left PN in Sept.

I was vaguely remembering this more recent thread, but couldn't check it out of course.

The description given there looks remarkably similar to what RealAleMadrid posted a little earlier here .

I�ll check my family�s line, they�re still with PN.

Yes that still provides the info., in my case it says, "Current Line Speed (Download): 48.2Mbps", I'm on a 55/10 contract.

I don't know if it is the case, (it probably is), but the PN "Current line speed" was always a fraction below the IP Profile, and was designed to prevent PN sending data out to you at a rate that could cause packet loss at the MSAN/DSLAM, as theoretically the MSAN could not transmit above the IP Profile.

If the CLS was very different from the IP Profile, "summat were oop!"

I believe all ISPs must do this, just don�t show this. I suspect A&A / AAISP do though!

Edited by jchamier (Sun 08-Mar-20 19:42:33)

They have to do it, one way or another. It's in the SIN's .

I can confirm that AAISP do it. They show it in your radius log, applying a percentage to the sync speed reported by BT Wholesale. (And I assume by TalkTalk Business unless TTB do it themselves).

Perhaps I gave the wrong impression, I wasn't saying "I'm on 55 but only getting 48.2" but rather pre-empting the queries about was I on a very poor 80 .

I have run the tests again today and seem to have seen a significant improvement. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15837721725...

Also ran speedtest.net and that gave download speed of 37 and up 9Mbps. I checked on my PN account as "realalemadrid" suggested and the Current Line Speed is showing as 37Mbps.

For clarity I have been disabling WiFi and using a desktop PC with an Ethernet connection to check the performance, so there should be no other traffic on my line.

I do not understand the change but it appears to have occurred since contacting this forum!! I will keep an eye on things over the next couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who commented - cannot say I understood the whole conversation but thanks all the same.

Your upload speed test is still showing as under 1Mbps, instead of somewhere around 10Mbps.

If you really don't have any upstream traffic (for example a cloud based backup service running on the PC) then there is still something very wrong somewhere between your PC and the TBB speed test servers.

Have not noted any particular issues uploading but I do not use cloud services and primarily my uploading is done through email. I have been puzzled by the difference showing in the TBB speed test and those found with BTW and Speedtest.net. The last Speedtest.net result used IOMART at Leicester and were done with in a couple of minutes of the TBB. Should I be concerned with significant difference as the DSL line seems to be performing at close to 10Mbps?
Thank you.

Have looked at Plusnet data for last 60 days and no drops in the overall upload figures. So there is not some generic problem between us and the poster.

As I mentioned earlier there is a pattern where when the poster has high latency their upload is low, 177ms latency is very high for a FTTC service.

The samples recorded for latency during the test were
Idle: [227,173,176,175,169,169,170,141,228,149]
While downloading: [876,643,600,557,605,448,725,845]
While uploading: [226,223,271,191,174,229,218,285]

Given how high the idle latency is, suggests something is wrong with the connection/PC. That latency is not changing much when uploading suggests something is uploading that the poster is not aware of.

The more usual results would be something like
Idle: [16,17,16,16,17,17,16,19,18,23]
While downloading: [42,42,51,54,58,55,47,47,46]
While uploading: [32,21,19,20,22,20,21,17]

Taken from this test that is a similar distance from London and using Plusnet, also notice the shape of the graphs which are more consistent.

I am running Windows 10 on an old pc together with Total Internet Security so could the latency may be caused by this? I have disconnected the pc and configured the hub so that just one WiFi device connects, i.e. our iPad. I have run the speed test on the iPad and the result page link is https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15838592922...

The latency figures are much lower. Maybe time for a replacement pc and a clean.

Thank you for the guidance I appear to have a better broadband service but as they say there is room for improvement with my kit.

Windows 10 and an old PC might mean its slow, so use task manager to see if the CPU is hitting 100% during the speed test.

Reaching 92% during the test on download and uploading.. Time to look at upgrading! Once again thank you for your help and guidance.

What are the PC specs?

Oh this doesn't look too good lol

http://i.epvpimg.com/mLmIdab.png

Or reduce overall system load with some tweaking. Free of charge.

Take a look at your Windows 10 background apps. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-prevent-apps-runn...

And disable all background apps under Windows 10. Also go to Start and disable live tiles for all of the Windows Store apps! These chew background data RAM and network.

Also disable Cortana web search. There are some registry configs that need to be made so Cortana stops chewing network data on its own at every new Windows 10 installation. It is a real pain but it needs to be done. https://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-turn-off-cort...

Open Regedit and go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search

Windows Search key subfolder MUST be manually created as it is not there by default! Now create a Dword 32 and name it AllowCortana and set this to 0. Restart the computer!
Btw, you have to make sure in Regedit both of these need to be modified Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search and Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search

Create AllowCortana Dword 32 and set to 0. Microsoft are very dishonest to have to make us trouble shoot manually each time. Sadly the Group Policy Editor to disable Cortana simply does not work. This has to be done ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE TIME using REGEDIT on a fresh Windows 10 install! It is such a torture.

Now Cortana will not use Network data anymore, it will remain 0MB!

Have a look at this as well. https://www.thewindowsclub.com/configure-reservable-...
Limit Reservable Bandwidth Setting in Windows HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Psched

Give it Value Data 0. If Psched does not exist, create it.

There is also one other thing you could try to use. Windows Update Blocker tool! https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-blocker-v...

I have been using this since August 2019 and have not had Windows Update services turn on by itself and the scheduled task scheduler. This effectively blocks Windows updates so that way no network data will ever be used. You can then manually turn it back on when you need Windows update.

Disable also Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service as this is data collection being sent to the Microsoft server on Windows 10.

Update your Ethernet network adapter drivers to the latest ones.

Follow these steps and your speed tests should dramatically improve! I am getting full 80/20 speed test results in various speed test sites and 76Mbps in thinkbroadband speed test.

Tired Line

Ae you using a VPN via Total Internet Security ?

If so this may explain your high latency. Extra distance ad additional network boxes.

I had a friend complain about a slow PC and this was solely due to a VPN ( routed abroad), removed VPN performance improved dramatically.

My opinion is that VPNs for domestic use do not improve security but do degrade performance. ( useful for hiding what you are doing from your ISP but the VPN provider will still know).

VPNs for work to a known server and network are a different case and are essential for business security.

If they were using a VPN via the security software the speed test would not be detecting BT as the ISP