Sky speed and contention

When I switched to Sky my speed (speedtest.net) increased and stayed that way for a few months then it started dropping to ridiculously slow speeds, my line is capable for 40Mbps with a result at my house of between 30 and 37 (the best I have ever seen) now it is nearly always around 18 to 20 and sometimes as low as 2. The Fibre engineers agree with me this is all contention as more and more people are signing up to SKYQ our broadband speeds have to suffer. Anybody else noticed these drops in BB speeds?

Use the speed tester on this site and post a link. It uses both single and multi thread and can be quite good at showing up issues with congestion. I assume you have checked your modem connection stats to make sure there is no underlying issues with the connection itself?

In reply to a post by ian72:

Use the speed tester on this site and post a link. It uses both single and multi thread and can be quite good at showing up issues with congestion. I assume you have checked your modem connection stats to make sure there is no underlying issues with the connection itself?

I cannot get to the speedtest on thinkbroadband it says I have not been activated even after changing my password.
Sky have sent an engineer out to me 3 times and tomorrow, Wednesday 17th May, they are sending another engineer. First visit they changed my master socket to a Mk4 and discovered the fibre board in the street box was faulty, it was replaced, speed dropped again to create visit 2, by this time I had been sent a new router by Sky, The line was reset again, a week later speed had dropped again and the third visit arranged, that time the cable that runs from the front door connection box to my master socket was replaced, speed was good again but as before only lasted a few days. The last 3 days my speed has been around 20Mbps and this was the same on thinkbroadband speedtest without me being able to signin. Now waiting to see what the engineer will say about this tomorrow.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Use the speed tester on this site and post a link. .... .....

got the speedtest to work;

This was done while downloading the large 1Gb test file
and again after the test download;

Edited by deleted (Tue 16-May-17 22:22:55)

The speed test at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest does not need you to have an account, so am curious to learn why you think you do.

When not logged in you can simply click the results page link and bookmark that or copy the URL to a file to keep a record

There is always a chance that the modem is simply not behaving very well with the line.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The speed test at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest does not need you to have an account, so am curious to learn why you think you do.

Sussed it anyway but thought I had to be logged in to record speed tests and check them later. My speedtest.net results go back a long way but I need to be logged in to store them there, It even has the speeds from my preivious Fibre supplier which was a little slower than the speed I got from Sky in the first few months but is now much better than the speeds I'm now getting from Sky.

On the one where you weren't downloading no sign of congestion at all, looks a perfect test so guessing modem is connecting at just a little more than the speed test results.

If it was contention (caused by you or others) you would get a graph shape not unlike what you see in the first test you posted.

While more users on fibre services can create whats called more cross talk it sounds like it is not that, and would be rare to see such a big drop due to cross talk.

Not contention.

Can you post line stats?

Update for all to see;
Openreach engineer just been and tested my line, no errors found and he has reset the line which is now giving me 33Mbps;


Lets see now how long it lasts this time before dropping down to the low 20's

got congestion myself which I just reported to sky, they didnt argue, they acknowledged I am below the min speed threshold on the speedtest and have escalated it,

Oddly for me I am seeing signs of congestion at 4am as well, my tbb graph has latency increases early hours, although at that time I have no throughput issues.

Just put my order in for Sky Fibre Max Last thing I wanted to see lol

At the moment it seems to be steady and staying over 30Mbps;

To clarify a bit more, the evening slowdown is not an all day thing. I certainly havent noticed breakages with streaming etc but tested it as I was on the PC and remembered I need to do some diagnosis.

The 4am issue is just weird, I get a gradual increase then decrease of latency during dusk hours, during daytime and peak hours that issue isnt there, also it doesnt affect ipv6. Before this started a few weeks ago everything was perfect.

Also I have not observed this on other sky users so its not a nationwide thing.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 19-May-17 09:49:26)

Thanks for clarifying that - puts me somewhat at ease. Migration date of 2nd June given by Sky - will be interesting to compare stats/BQM versus existing connection.

quick update, every speedtest I have done since has been fine, bear in mind I have not been doing tons of speedtests, not daily either, but the few tests I have done at peak since are fine.

last test here done earlier this evening.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/14954845538...