I really need some Expert Help Here!

Hi there, if any of you are experienced enough to help me, please, please do! This is a very odd case!! Here goes!

I have had some wireless Broadband installed into my house, with a UBIQUITY 5 GHz Receiver on the side of my house reaching under 1/4th of a mile (clear line of sight) to one of the IPS access points (They are only a local provider). I am currently paying for 15 MB/s Down, and 7 MB/s Up (as I am aware, they have Leased lines by Virgin Media)

All was well and good until I was having issues with YouTube in 720p and unwatchable 1080p due to buffering - this is also the case with NetFlix.

I navigated to speedtest.net and did a speedtest: yep, I was getting what I pay for, 7 ping, 15.73 down and 7.54 up.

Now, here is where the issue starts to come in. If I try any other speedtest, and I mean any, I only get around 2 to 8 down (mainly around the 2MB/s mark) And If I try testing another server on Speedtest.net other than the recommended one, I get the same sorts of speeds (between 8 and 2 mb/s). What is going on? Please can someone help me! I would be really happy if someone could! Thank you for your time!

Download a 100MB file from the links below the TBB speedtester and time the download. No upload test for that, but you could start by getting a real-world download estimate.

Very possibly the link to Virgin Media may be fine, but depending on what level of connectivity they have with Virgin Media you may find that they are the source of the video problems.

If the same speed test using different servers gives significantly different result it suggest routes out of the ISP may be an issue, or that speedtest server is congested.

If the buffering is ok in the early hours of the morning it points towards congestion somewhere.

Okay, done that, Speeds never wend over 7MB/s, the Average was 4.2MB/s and it took 211.8seconds (This is the 100MB version)

Yes, I have an ADSL Line coming into the house, and using a graph streaming the same video, the ADSL line was able to stream at 11.1 MBPS where as the Connection I am troubleshooting is only streaming at 4MBPS and is all over the place!

Without looking deeper into the routes each connection takes you are only learning that the source video may not be the congestion point.

Even then when you use large sites, they use CDN systems so that even though you are viewing the same video at the same URL, one might be delivered from Manchester and another from Ilford.

ISP and Postcode ?

You should monitor packet loss with MTR or pingplotter or similar.

Any chance the Virgin backhaul is actually a cable connection and they've oversold it ?

YouTube buffering on a Virgin Media connection is a common problem.
Have a look here

MB/s ?

7MB/s = 56mbps

Edited by epyon (Mon 19-Aug-13 14:58:01)