variable speed today

Since June I have had a solid 2880Kbps adsl speed but the last few days its been slow. Running some speed tests today I have had from 945 to 2386 at best and varying every few minutes. Is it just me?

It hasn't affected me, and I've seen no reports over at Netters. Can you run a BT speed test and paste the results please?

I experience a "bouncy" service after about 4.20 pm of 18th. Everything was back to normal next day and continues great at circa 7mbps

BT speedtester results;
Connection rate; 7424/ 448. IP profile 6500. Actual IP throughput 4354

I did 3 tests, all around these sort of figures and I assume these results say that the speed is OK. I am within a mile of IDNet's head office.

But practical use tells me that things are working slower now than from June to early November and Thinkbroadband speedtester which can be used for relative speed surely? shows a significant decrease from a steady 2880 from June to early November whereas recently its been hopping all over the place from 900 - 2500 and most times nearer 2000.
IDNet tell me there is nothing wrong with my connection. I'm no expert on this but could it indicate more users on the same connection these days?

That looks like it might be BT congestion at the exchange. Have you asked IDNet to check that with BT?

Rik,

The response I got from IDNet was;

'The reason you see such a variance between the thinkbroadband checker
and the BT one is the way their servers are run.
The BT speedtester site is purely used just for speed testing purposes,
wheres thinkbroadband has overheads for its other services associated
with it.
This means that the BT site is a much more reliable source of speedtest
results, and is the checker that engineers use when verifying the
performance of a line.

All physical tests on your line are returning no issues or errors, so
nothing we can pinpoint at this stage that requires intervention from BT
to repair.
Although there is a variance between the actual throughput being
achieved on your BT speedtest results, this is entirely normal of a
shared service. At the exchange there are many other end users sharing
your virtual path to BT's routers - depending on how many end users are
connecting and how many are actively downloading - this can affect your
performance overall.

All checks at the time of writing confirm your line is running within
the correct parameters for a DSL line, as I mentioned fluctuations from
time to time are to be expected.

If you see a significant drop in your IP profile, this could represent a
physical error on the line. If this occurs for you please get back in
touch and we'll take another look for you'.

So as I see it I just have to accept that performance is within normal parameters. Unless anyone knows any different? But the reason I left Tiscali after they wrecked Pipex, and then Freeserve before that is that service quality declined. I don't really want to do it again but I will if I don't get what I am paying for which after all is at a premium price.

Al.

It looks like exchange congestion, and unless your line speed has changed significantly, then there's little that any ISP can do - BT are not rushing to put in more capacity but focussing on WBC. Unfortunately for everyone, delivery dates on that are slipping back.

You are getting what you pay for, namely an 'up to' service, but if you feel it's not VFM, then your only redress, unfortunately, is to migrate.