BT Speedtester under plusnet

I monitored my BB+ connection throughout Sunday to try and get some more information. Speeds are now generally pretty good between the hours of 2am and 2pm - around the 4-7MB mark. From 2pm to 3pm the connection nosedives to around 0.3MB, hitting a low of 0.087MB during the evening.

I tried to do BT speedtests using the [email protected] login name. Now, I don't know if this uses the PN network or not, but the results from this were also extremely slow ~87kbps. This speed tester said that the results were not conclusive and to perform another test by reverting to the old test domain rather than plusdsl.net. However, each time I tried this it just gave an error page saying you had reached this by one of five methods, and only gave the option to close the window. My exchange status on plustools however was very green.

Any ideas?

Hi,

Can you do this test and report back please:
http://www.zensupport.co.uk/knowledgebase/article.aspx?id=10383

Also this one afterwards making sure you have entered your PN details back in:
http://test.speedtester.bt.com

Edited by rsharma (Mon 19-Feb-07 16:39:40)

If on Max then the speedtesst@speedtest_domain will not normally work, it will try to send you to the Max performance tester when accessing www.speedtester.bt.com

While you can get the tester via an IP address, this may lead to odd results as I beleive this bypasses the load balancing

So how can I ensure that it really IS plusnet making my connection like narrowband and not my line/exchange?

Not a lot that you can do currently, short of waiting for the next phase of BT's Speed test.

It doesn't really matter if it is BT or your ISP that is the cause as it is the latter that are responsible to you and they alone. If you are getting poor speeds you can lay the blame squarely on their shoulders and do what you would have done had it been a purely ISP network fault. It is also they who have to resolve the speeds issues through diagnosis and fault finding. Have you raised a ticket?

I don't think exchange contention would slow it down that much, also I think you'd see a lot of variability. That the speed is consistently low points to you being contended with a lot of other users.

You can swap to PAYG with 2GB for free - that would prove if it is the throttling being experienced by all BB+ users at present. If it doesn't work out I'm pretty sure James would move you back to BB+ for free - he has already made that offer to other users on the portal forums.

In reply to:

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If it doesn't work out I'm pretty sure James would move you back to BB+ for free - he has already made that offer to other users on the portal forums.

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I would suggest people get a confirmation of this in writing on their tickets too.
[deleted superfluous part of the post]

Edited by rsharma (Mon 19-Feb-07 18:03:34)

As previously mentioned I would have no issues moving someone back to their BB+ account free of charge if there was not a noticable improvement in service.

James, I have done three separate speed tests at 3pm, 9pm, and 12.30am, and not one of them was above 400kbps. This is below what BT define as working broadband, so can you please fix this for me ASAP. My ticket number is 21342576.

Admittedly previous tests done at 2am provide a 7MB connection, but my latest three tests - one at peak, two at offpeak should suffice. Both 12.30am and 3pm are offpeak.

I assume that some punters will have complained to Ofcom about the removal of the only diagnostic tool which helped the consumer to diagnose his line problems.

Simon

Actually a provider with enough customers, or our speedtest (now we know the locality of a tester) should make it possible to track exchange/region issues.

In other words plot the speeds on a per exchange basis.

Remember LLU customers don't have this sort of tool, so I cannot see Ofcom being overly concerned.

I have been having similar issues (on my brothers connection), but today as if by magic, it's suddenly quite good for a 2M BB+ line:

from http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/
Download Speed: 1936 kbps (242 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 135 kbps (16.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

and from TB: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/11719334914594347949.html
Speed Test Results
Date 20/02/07 01:04:44
Speed Down 1888.53 Kbps ( 1.8 Mbps )
Speed Up 238.81 Kbps ( 0.2 Mbps )

I've seen good performance most of the evening from 9PM to 1AM.

Assumptions are the mother of all bad words.