Different speedtests

Hello,

New to this forum; apologies if this post is in the wrong place. As you will see, I don't understand very much about these things.

I live in a part of West Sussex that suffers very low broadband speeds. If I try to view a 2 minute video clip on the BT news website, it generally stops to reload every 15 seconds. If I run the TB speed test, I usually get 0.2-0.7 Mbps; very occasionally up to 1.4. BT exchange is non-LLU. I buy all my phone services from 24Talk.

Ran TB speed test last night, got 0.4. BT speedtest produced 1.3Mbps. Am I comparing like with like? If so, how do I interpret the difference? If not, what am I to understand?

Would be grateful for any answers, in simple non-tech language!

thanks
veryslow

First step is to ignore the speed tests and check what speed your ADSL hardware is connecting at. This gives you the maximum technical speed you will ever get, and helps you to judge speedtests.

As things stand you could be connecting at 4 Mbps, so all those results are poor.

As a rule the BT Speedtest bypasses a chunk of the providers network, and thus avoids some congestion giving better results sometimes.

That's a bit of a difficult question, as some of us get very similar results from the two, others get big differences like you describe.

What might help, and might also help us improve your connection a bit, would be if you can give us a bit more information, as below:-

Please run a test using www.speedtest.net and post the link that gives to share the result. That will tell us what underlying ISP 24Talk are using, as they may just be a reseller.

And see if your router is listed here. If it is, try to follow the instructions and copy/paste the stats you get out. But if that looks difficult, or it isn't listed, tell us what it is and we'll see if there's an easier way.

Have you got a phone socket that has a split front, where the bottom half looks like it will come of if two screws are removed? So it would look the one on the left here? If you have, is that the one you use for the broadband, without a plug-in extension cable? Just the ADSL cable that came with your router.

My router is a Netgear.

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1984 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 63.5 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 9.6 db 10.0 db

How do I relate this to speedtests?

Speedtest.net result =
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2423746915.png

Router stats in post above.

Phone sockets are not of the split front type. Master looks like LJ 2/1A as in pic. I'm connected to an extension.

Great - thanks for that bit.

To relate that to speed tests, the first thing is to read about IP Profiles. You can see from the table there that yours will be 1500kbps, so a speed test result of 1.3Mbps is about right.

In my previous post I said about us trying to improve your connection. At the level you are at we don't need to get you much to get a big percentage jump in the real throughput.

See if you can do the other things I asked.

Got to go for a bit, but there are two things we can look at.

Even though you don't have the modern master socket, as long as you are careful, even though you say you are non-techie, it is very likely a ten-minute job at each of your sockets could add several hundred kbps to your connection speed. By several hundred, I'm meaning almost certainly 500, and anywhere from that to the exceptionally high over 2Mbps we have seen. I'l get back to you.

This could also make you line a bit more stable, as that 9.6dB noise margin points to a bit of instabilty. That's maybe inevitable with your long line though. The normal value is around 6dB, and that alone accounts for 500-750kbps.

So watch this space . In the meantime have a look at the insides pictures here of the LJ 2/1A and LJ 2/3A.

Thanks for all the comments so far. I don't know if my phone circuitry is non-standard or whether this might make a difference? Brief description:

BT metal box outside has BT cable coming in. From there 2 cables:
1) cable (via outside of house) to inside upstairs socket (the one connected to router); and on to an extension from this one.

2) wiring to a junction box inside. From there 2 more cables:
2a) wiring to a socket - BT master? has a T on the front
2b) wiring to a second socket upstairs.

Well it wouldn't be done that way for a new installation these days, but nothing to suggest a problem so far as I know.

Have a read about the ring wire. That's what we need to deal with, just that the instructions there are for the modern NTE5 master.

What I would do is disconnect absolutely everything from the phone line for a few minutes and go round each of those sockets in turn, open them up, and gently remove the wire from T3. (It should be numbered). If you have a pair of small-nose pliers they should lift the wire out easily. It is best not to cut them. Make sure you don't connect two terminals together accidentally with the pliers.

Coil the spare bit a little to keep things tidy, and put the faceplates back on. make a note of which is the master - see the cylindrical capacitor at the top in the picture. Though it may not be at the top.

Then connect only the broadband filter and router at the usual socket and read/post the stats straight after. Note that whatever the stats say - hopefully a decent improvement, your download speed won't change for a few days. Then connect whatever you have back on, one at a time! Re-read the stats after each one is added, but no need to post them. Don't add them all at one go. We need to see if anything hits the noise margin, so that's what to look for in the successive sets.

if the box outside splits the wiring into a T circuit with things on each end then you're going to get less than full speed, ideally you want the incoming line to go right to where your router connects and anything else off there to be filtered.

From your description I think it goes

Text
1 23	incoming --- junction box  -- (1) ------ router socket ----- extension socket                   |------------(2)------- junction box ------ socket with T                                           |------- second socket upstairs

if these all have dial tone and are on the same line you have a chance to improve it.