Slow speeds at peek hours

Hi all. I seem to be getting slow speeds at peak hours. roughly from think broadband and speedtester im getting an average throughput of 0.3 - 0.4 Mbit with a ping between 60 - 114, where as im getting 5.6Mbit - 6.5Mbit in the morning which is ideal. my sync rate is perfect for my line, line att in 9 - 10db and a sync of 7.6Mbit with no change of sync rate in the evenings and no intermittency. my exhange is Woodborough, Exchange code: SSWDH and my isp is sky, connect package as llu isnt available.

I have contacted sky tech and was told speed drop is due to congestion at the exchange which i doubt as sam knows only shows 500+ residents. No Cap is present on skys side. any ideas where i can go with this because the speeds in the evening are unacceptable. I really need some assistance as to how I can get this solved. If the issue is due to congestion on bt's side, im screwed as there is no availability for any other broadband packages due to bt being the sole provider at the exchange with just re-branded bt products.

I'd imagine it's actually at Sky's end as they're not that good. If it's not you could join AAisp who can fix problems at the exchange.

In reply to a post by mrichardson85:

Hi all. I seem to be getting slow speeds at peak hours. roughly from think broadband and speedtester im getting an average throughput of 0.3 - 0.4 Mbit with a ping between 60 - 114, where as im getting 5.6Mbit - 6.5Mbit in the morning which is ideal. my sync rate is perfect for my line, line att in 9 - 10db and a sync of 7.6Mbit with no change of sync rate in the evenings and no intermittency. my exhange is Woodborough, Exchange code: SSWDH and my isp is sky, connect package as llu isnt available.

I have contacted sky tech and was told speed drop is due to congestion at the exchange which i doubt as sam knows only shows 500+ residents. No Cap is present on skys side. any ideas where i can go with this because the speeds in the evening are unacceptable. I really need some assistance as to how I can get this solved. If the issue is due to congestion on bt's side, im screwed as there is no availability for any other broadband packages due to bt being the sole provider at the exchange with just re-branded bt products.

Actually if the exchange is that small it could be congestion. The amount of backhaul out of an exchange is chosen based on likely demand but also availability. They don't just go around shoving a 1Gb link into the back of every exchange. Small villages may be too far from the nearest decent pipe.

In fact if you are on a sole provider exchange congestion seems even more likely. That would suggest that there are fundamental capacity issues that mean the exchange can't offer much choice.

Edit:Ah, you mean BTw as sole provider. Still - I'm not surprised at congestion. You're probably relying on a tatty length of victorian string

Still looking here:

http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/?exchange=Woodbo...

Shows no issues.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 10-Jul-09 07:55:09)

As has been explained by others, it is possible that you have exchange congestion.

But what is very well known here is that, although Sky LLU is a very good product, Sky Connect is one of the poor resellers of BT Wholesale broadband.

At the ISP end there are things called Centrals which cost a million or so each per year. Some ISPs have good Central provision and some save money there by packing as many customers as possible onto them and never mind the performance. A bit like roads, double the number of cars and traffic slows down a bit, double it again and it stops. It doesn't halve then halve with the two steps. (The number of cars or ISP customers stay the same, it's a question of how many are trying to actually use the facility at any given time).

So an extra Central (or more) is needed before that happens. Trouble is for someone like Sky as a domestic ISP is that in the mornings with everyone at work or school they have all that kit eating money - but you get a great performance. In the evenigs at the moment it crunches, but if they cater for that then the daytime loses them money even faster.

(This will change with 21CN, and Centrals at ISPs are already being replaced by other equipment even on non-WBC exchanges - WBC is BT's 21CN Broadband - but the princilple remains the same with the new kit).

LLU suppliers such as O2/Be, TalkTalk and Sky LLU can manage this much better as their kit costs a huge amount less than BT Wholesale's prices.

Good BT Wholesale resellers are the ones like IDNet, Zen, AAISP and Newnet who have a large number of business customers paying premium rates in the daytime. That usage falls dramatically just when the domestic demand rises. So they have the kit to provide a good home service at all times.

So what it comes down to is that if your exchange is congested you are pretty well stuffed, but if not then one of those ISPs will almost certainly give you a much more consistently good experience.

The only way to find out is to migrate to one.

Edit - Comparisons.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 10-Jul-09 09:23:30)

No Cap is present on skys side

"Traffic management of our Network

To ensure we provide a sustainable quality broadband service to our customers, we continuously monitor and efficiently manage the Sky Network as a whole. To do this, during peak times (from 5pm to 12am each day), we may slow down the speed that all Sky Broadband Connect customers can get on certain applications which we consider use up a lot of bandwidth (for example peer-to-peer and newsgroups) and which have a negative affect on other customers There are no restrictions in place for applications such as browsing, email, streaming, instant messaging and VOIP during peak times. We do not put restrictions on our network outside of peak times. "