Serious post-migration issue

I migrated to my new ISP in the early hours of yesterday. It involved a change from an ADSL1 connection to ADSL2+.

Obviously, I did not expect migration to solve my six-week disconnection problem but I was confident that the new ISP would get this right eventually. What I didn�t expect was a new problem.

When I checked my router yesterday morning, I was pleased to see that I was synched at 16312 kbps. The BT Tester reported an IP Profile of 14000 kbps. My first BT download test reported a speed of 113827 kbps. Then I set about my business.

Anywhere on the Internet other than the BT Test site my download speeds are between 3.5 mbps and 1.5 mbps.

I spent most of yesterday in touch with my new ISP. Multiple line tests involving changing routers, phones, etc have not come up with a solution. All the changes reduced my IP Profile to 11000 kbps. As a diagnostic, I downloaded a 78.7 mb file. It took 7 minutes and 10 seconds at a speed of circa 185 KB/sec. A second download of the same file was a tad faster at 195 KB/sec. The ISP�s own speed tester has, so far, reported speeds or 2.5-1.8 mbps.

This morning, I�m synched at 16120 kbps. I ran a BT Test around 7.30 am and this was the result on an IP Profile of 11000:

Download speed achieved during the test was - 10218 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 4000-21000 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :16120 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 1152 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 11000 Kbps
The throughput of Best Efforts (BE) classes achieved during the test is - 16.86:25.92:57.23 (SBE:NBE:PBE)
These figures represent the ratio while sententiously passing Sub BE, Normal BE and Priority BE marked traffic

Any answers for me?

Edited by ARD (Fri 15-Apr-11 09:07:53)

Ask AA what IP Profile has been reported to them?

Hello Andrew
Can you explain why that would help? (I'm not a technician...sadly.)

It would check if AA are seeing the same IP profile (some ISPs manage the connection to the profile that they have reported to them and if it is different could artificially throttle the connection).

I'd credit the ISP with the sense to have checked this out but thanks for the tip. I'll make 100% sure.

EDIT: As expected, they are seeing the same IP Profile.

Edited by ARD (Fri 15-Apr-11 13:14:16)

I would say that as you are getting expected speeds through the BT speed test that it would appear the issues are at the ISPs end of the connection.

What other methods are you using to measure download speeds? What other speedtests have you done? Have you tried downloading a large file from Microsoft to see what speed you can get?

I�ve used the ThinkBroadband speed test and speedtest.net. Also the ISP�s own tester. The speeds reported are consistently awful.

Anything�s a big file at the moment, Ian! As I wrote above, a 78.7 MB file from my ISP mirror site was downloaded at 185 KB/sec. I�ve just download an audio file from a site I use every week. It�s 8.37 MB. Transfer used to take seconds. I downloaded at 54 KB/sec, taking 2 minutes, 28 seconds. A 10 MB file from the Zen test page downloaded at 57.9 KB/sec, taking 2 minutes, 28 seconds.

Here's a recent BT result:

Download speed achieved during the test was - 11187 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 4000-21000 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :15704 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 896 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 11000 Kbps
The throughput of Best Efforts (BE) classes achieved during the test is - 15.57:23.03:61.4 (SBE:NBE:PBE)
These figures represent the ratio while sententiously passing Sub BE, Normal BE and Priority BE marked traffic.


What can go wrong in a migration process?

Edited by ARD (Fri 15-Apr-11 14:36:08)

Sorry, glazed over the original speed stuff in the email - must be tired

I still say it is a problem at the ISPs end. Your line is clearly capable of decent download speeds (EDIT : removed that bit of superfluous text as it was answered in original post!)

You've probably already answered these 2 questions as well and I am having a bad day, but:
1) Who is your ISP? From MrS's comment I assumed it was Andrews and Arnold but I can't for the life of me see how he knew that
2) Have you tried the thinkbroadband speed tester to see what results that gives? Not expecting it to be any different but as we are on the TBB site would be nice to see the result

If it is Andrews and Arnold that are your ISP I would expect them to be looking in their own network as the BT speedtests are consistently pointing to errors their end.

Edited by ian72 (Fri 15-Apr-11 15:07:03)

Here's a thinkbroadband result:

15/04/11 15:15:22
Speed Down 2425.35 Kbps ( 2.4 Mbps )
Speed Up 749.04 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest2.thinkbroadband.com

Has the ISP confirmed what the IP Profile is that has been reported them?

AA certainly do limit based on the IP profile reported to them, since we saw this recently for a FTTC customer on the bbs.