In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Given the wide variation in ISP's then a firewall issue does sound likely

Just been playing around and admit I am completely baffled by this!

With my Zxyel router...

Plugged it directly into my laptop using dhcp and nat. Tested.
Then...
Switched off nat and dhcp and assigned external IP's to the router lan address and laptop. This should have removed any firewalling and given as direct a connection as possible. Tested.

Switched to another bridged modem and PPPoe on my clearOS gateway. Tested.

All three tests gave similar results.
Around 15000Kb/s download and between 600 and 1000Kb/s streaming speed.

Even tried using my HTC desire on wireless to rule out the laptop which gave the same results.

I'm sure I had the same problem when with AAISP before switching who I know give a completely clean connection to the net so I'm assuming it isn't traffic shaping.

Bit stuck now?? I might give it a go very early in the morning to maybe rule out congestion somewhere on the network...


Gary

Took a snapshot of the tbb meter. Link

From the right is a tbb test file (port 8080), then a tbb speedtest, then the iplayer streaming test. Another iplayer test to the left.
Streaming around 500kb/s, the same as the tbb speedtest. Coincidence?
This is half as fast as last night.

Looks to me like port throttling - does our test improve if you select the port 80 option?

Also as you have tbbmeter try its 20MB file on the three ports offered, and the multiple thread test using 3 or more threads.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Looks to me like port throttling - does our test improve if you select the port 80 option?

Also as you have tbbmeter try its 20MB file on the three ports offered, and the multiple thread test using 3 or more threads.

Thanks for the help on this.
Link to port test

In order

tbb speedtest port 80
20mb file port 80
20mb file port 81
20mb file port 8080
20mb multithread
tbb speedtest standard port
tbb speedtest port 80

The fact the multi thread is faster points to traffic management and it is based on packet inspection at a guess.

Since all the HTTP traffic was slow - odd as usually HTTP is left alone.

Our speedtest does not use HTTP even when using port 80

OK thanks.
I'll give Vivaciti a call and see what they have to say.

Gary

OK. I'll hold my hand up. Looks like this was my fault for not asking enough questions before signing up

I've already forgotten the exact times mentioned but there is throttling in office hours between around 9ish and 7.30pm.
Doesn't explain the slow streaming speeds in the evening but I will be sent more detail on how this works.

The solution is to pay an extra £19 a month for the "file sharing add on" which should remove any and all traffic management.

I've ordered this to see how it works out.

Hopefully it will also resolve the slow evening streaming speed even though that isn't supposed to be throttled.

Kind of puts me back to what I was paying BT and AAISP except on the faster LLU speed and a lot more available daytime usage.
I won't mind this too much if the service is truly unmanaged as I realise that generally performance costs and my options are somewhat limited

Only thing left now is finding out why my latency has doubled since Monday evening!

Thanks for your help with this MrSaffron.

I'll add an update to my Vivaciti review to mention the throttling and upgrade option.