IDNet Home Super Max (8Mb) Connection Speed half that of BT

Please be aware that it is not necessarily a straight-forward exercise to compare IDNet's Supermax (8Mb/sec, £24.99, Peak:40GB, OffPeak:140GB) package, which I believe is a re-sold BT service, with either BT Broadband or others such as O2 Access.

I subscribed to IDNet on the basis of their promise that the speed would not be throttled or limited in any way. I concede it has been a reliable service so far (this is my second month), and the speed is consisent over peak and off-peak times. However, I am disappointed that the service provides only half the throughput of BT's Option 3 Broadband during offpeak hours, and also half the throughput of O2's Access package regardless of the time of day. To support this, I should say that I was with BT for years, and then moved to O2 about a year ago, and both connections provided similar speeds at 4.5Mb/s, whereas IDNet provides 2.1Mb/s.

If I am to assume that the line speed is not synthetically manipulated, then the only conclusion that I can draw is that IDNet does not subscribe to a large enough connection between my local exchange and their network.

This makes a seemingly acceptable price of £35/month in my opinion quite poor value for money. With IDNet's one month rolling contract, I can of course change my supplier, but I would have preferred to have had this information so that I could have made an informed decision before I joined. For this reason, I am sharing my experience with others here.

Edited by hal1901 (Fri 27-Aug-10 21:36:43)

Hi

It sounds like there might be a fault with your line as you should be getting, at the very least, as good a throughput as you were with your previous ISPs.

If you could please PM me your name or username or IP address then we can run some diagnostics on your line for you.

Regards
Simon

Definately something wrong there, I get full speed at all times, it looks as though your line has deteriorated

Hi Simon
Thank you for your remarkably prompt response. I will PM you the details you have requested.
Just in case it's of use, my modem is reporting the following stats, which includes a sync rate of 6.5Mb/s.

Modem Status
Connection Status: Connected
Us Rate (Kbps): 832
Ds Rate (Kbps): 6656
US Margin: 13
DS Margin: 11
Trained Modulation: GDMT
LOS Errors: 0
DS Line Attenuation: 39
US Line Attenuation: 23
Peak Cell Rate: 1962 cells per sec
CRC Rx Fast: 0
CRC Tx Fast: 0
CRC Rx Interleaved: 127
CRC Tx Interleaved: 3
Path Mode: Interleaved

Assuming there isn't any damage to your line, it could be a crowded network issue somewhere, either on your local exchange or IDNet's backbone.

We use a similar IPStream Max Premium product from IDNet, and whenever there are prominent sport events like football games, the speed goes down. Sometimes we also experience slower speeds during the daytime. There are no contention issues on our local exchange unlike what IDNet claims because this problem doesn't seem to exist with e.g. our Plusnet connection going through the same exchange

There is also a bit of misleading marketing here, because an up-to 8mbps, even for the best line quality, is never faster than 7.15 mbps on an IPStream MaxDSL service.

A stuck 2Mbps profile perhaps?

In reply to a post by hal1901:

Modem Status
Connection Status: Connected
Us Rate (Kbps): 832
Ds Rate (Kbps): 6656
US Margin: 13
DS Margin: 11
Trained Modulation: GDMT
LOS Errors: 0
DS Line Attenuation: 39
US Line Attenuation: 23
Peak Cell Rate: 1962 cells per sec
CRC Rx Fast: 0
CRC Tx Fast: 0
CRC Rx Interleaved: 127
CRC Tx Interleaved: 3
Path Mode: Interleaved

How long is it since you last re-sync'ed? Or better still rebooted the router?

For that connection speed the noise margin is remarkably high. That doesn't affect the throughput but will affect the connection speed.

Depending on how long you have been connected at that speed, there is a remote possibility a re-sync would sort things out in a few days.

Before doing that please will you run this BT Performance Test and post the full results. That gives us useful information, in particular the IP Profile I referred to in a post a few minutes ago.

In fact do the test now if you can, but leave the re-sync till the morning. Night-time connections are slow. In fact the high noise margin in your post could be because the last re-sync was at night, or during an electrical storm. It could well be a lot lower now.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 27-Aug-10 21:02:24)

Just so as to prevent any confusion to others reading this thread, re "half the throughput of O2's Pro Access package", there is no such package.

Pro is LLU and it wouldn't be surprising if the OP's speed were lower on IDNet than on O2, though given the line stats not as much different as they are.

The OP was, as he says in the opening paragraph, on the BT-based O2 Access.

Thanks for your replies, RobertoS - I was indeed on the Access rather than the Pro package. I have corrected the original post to reflect this.

I have been using that BT broadband page for years, and it is the most frustrating thing to use - as it often hangs half-way through a test, and then does not allow another test for 2 hours (IIRC).
Does anyone know the service tag for IDNet - it will not let me proceed without it.
Thanks
Hal