Terrible speeds (0.6 MBps)

I signed up for a "Broadband Your Way Pro" package from Plusnet a month and a half ago. It's supposed to be the best broadband package, with no speed throttling and packet prioritizing.

From the first day, it was extremely slow, with download speeds maxing out at 50-100 KB/s. So they told me to wait 10 days and it would stabilize.

10 days came and went, but it was still slow. I called them, and they said it was a problem with the exchange which would be resolved on the 26th of February. That date came and went also, with no change to my line speed.

I almost never get download speeds higher than 100 KB per second, and if I am downloading something, my ping times to bbc.co.uk and google.co.uk go up to 2000-4000 ms!

I've called customer support several times, and every time it's the same: I have to wait 20-30 minutes before someone answers my call. They ask me where I'm downloading from, and I tell them it doesn't matter, every single website I download from is slow. They tell me to reset the router, and it's still the same. Then they tell me to file a fault at faults.plus.net. I did that, and the test result came out as "there is nothing wrong with your connection".

But if there's nothing wrong, then why doesn't it work? I just did a speed test on thinkbroadband and speedtest.net, for which the speed was measured 0.6Mbps and 0.7Mbps respectively.

Does anyone have any experience with anything like this, or have any suggestions about a possible solution other than changing my ISP?

Well we need more info, what are your line stats from the router?
Connection speed, snr rations etc.

Also if you have a 0.6Mbps capable link and are downloading the latency will increase, that is to be expected if you fill a connection.

Getting Line Stats from your Modem/Router >>> Kitz

Where do I get the line stats?

Yes I understand that latency will increase, but I don't expect it to go up to 3000ms just because I'm downloading at 100KB/s.

In reply to a post by xander:

Where do I get the line stats?

The "kitz" in his post was a link to a site telling you how.

Around 300ms is more normal but even that makes gaming impossible

OK, thanks, the ADSL stats are:

Mode: G.DMT
Type: Interleave
Line Coding: Trellis On
Status: No Defect

Downstream Upstream
Rate (Kbps): 8128 448

SNR Margin (dB): 13.0 28.0
Attenuation (dB): 15.0 8.0
Output Power (dBm): 11.9 15.8

Super Frames: 39283202 39283200
Super Frame Errors: 269 0
RS Words: 1047548240 333907200
RS Correctable Errors: 68193 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors: 5032 N/A

HEC Errors: 235 0
OCD Errors: 1 0
LCD Errors: 0 0
Total Cells: 4211938728 0
Data Cells: 86347046 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

Total ES: 198 0
Total SES: 0 0
Total UAS: 12 0

Well that is a very good line on the face of it, except for the high Upstream Error Seconds of 198. Also I don't know what UAS are.

If those error seconds are over a short period they could explain your problem as downloads require responses to be uploaded. If they are over many hours then they wouldn't directly affect anything, but even so seem very high. Maybe a problem that is directly affecting download speeds.

Otherwise you should be getting over 6500kbps actual downloads except when throttled or there is congestion. The indication also is that on ADSL2+ you should get over 16Mbps actual download on a sync around 20Mbps.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 17-Mar-09 13:35:12)