Looking for a new broadband provider-tips appreciated.

Hi folks,

Though my contract is not ending until October I am seriously thinking of getting a different ISP, current one is Talktalk, because of speed and disconnection issues. The current price I pay them per mth is great,£18 approx. for line rental, anytime and international calls and broadband, but the speed which is usually 3 MBPS off peak has gone down to the following and I paste from their speedtest page.

Your broadband speed is: 0.29 Mbps

This is pretty good, but your computer or wireless connection might be slowing you down.

If you�d like to experience even faster speeds, you can add our Superfast Fibre Broadband.

Your estimated speed on Fibre is: 40 Mbps

As You may well guess web pages load consdiderably slower and youtube videos are unwatchable. Probably a congestion problem where I live (its unbundled) but I can't see Talktalk rushing to increase capacity.

a few questions,

1 If I was to sign up to fibre is it possible I would get the same congestion as I get now and slow speeds with either Talktalk or another isp?

2 I was on BT pages would cost over £40 per mth (line rental fibre cost anytime calls) though it would be fibre unlimited. What is Sky like as an ISP as I could sign up to them as well?

I have gone on Talktalks members page so heres hoping they can do something as regards disconnections

Thanks for any info
Joe

Regarding your current speed issues, please post your router stats and the link to your results from the TBB Speedtest: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

Thanks for reply, done the speedtest and here is the link that I pasted in,

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Trying out a netgear DG 83 router to see if its a more stable connection


Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoE 153707 242280 0 947 3730 11:09:51
LAN 10M/100M 1145959 771105 0 6868 736 45:46:18
WLAN 11M/54M 988393 714182 0 6181 767 45:46:08



ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 304 kbps 704 kbps
Line Attenuation 50 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 15 db 12 db


Thanks a lot
Joe

Ugh! That's awful! Sync is far too slow and speedtest too erratic.

Speedtest: Are you testing over wireless? It can be very unreliable. Need to run over Ethernet.

Your down sync should about 5 Meg @ 6 dB NM, perhaps even 3 Meg @ your 15dB NM.

Can you get stats from the hidden test socket behind faceplate? Have you removed ring wire? Any extensions?

If FTTC is available go for it - I would suspect that you possibly have a home wiring issue and that would probably be fixed if you had vdsl installed. Also you are on a long line (50dB) and that may well be inhibiting, particularly ADSL2+, speed.

Plusnet might be a good choice for FTTC.

BTW. If TalkTalk said this: "Your broadband speed is: 0.29 Mbps. This is pretty good, but your computer or wireless connection might be slowing you down." that is absolute nonsense since your downstream sync is only 704Kbps and that is probably being caused by a problem with the line or perhaps the router.

Even worse. Down sync is 304K not 704.

Yes you are right!!! Obviously I mistook the larger number for downstream speed

Thanks very much for replies.

Im testing with computer connected by Ethernet to router.

Just done a speedtest now and this is usually what I get at off peak.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

and the router stats are

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 4077 kbps 784 kbps
Line Attenuation 53 db 16.5 db
Noise Margin 9 db 8 db


This should be my normal speed most of the time, I don't mind maybe going down to 1 mbit download at peaks time but to reduce my speed to under 0.3 MBPS probably because of congestion at the local exchange and tell me when I do a speedtest that it is pretty good is really taking the [censored].

I do get my phone and broadband from Talktalk for next to nothing to be honest £18 for DSL + anytime calls interational calls+ value line rental included but its so frustrating in the end not even able to watch a video online and I just ask myself is it really worth it.

I would imagine Talktalks 's business model for a particular exchange is just to keep signing people up. Its unbundled where I live.

Thanks again for the very helpful advice.

Joe

Edited by joemardo1 (Sun 05-May-13 18:40:54)

That's much better!

What did you do or change to make the router sync much faster? That's not caused by Ethernet; router is wired to phone socket.

In reply to a post by joemardo1:

Line Attenuation 53 db 16.5 db

Down Attn. was 50dB in last stats. You must have been running on ADSL1 (G.DMT) then; now you are on ADSL2+ and are now getting your true capability.

In reply to a post by joemardo1:

but to reduce my speed to under 0.3 MBPS probably because of congestion at the local exchange

Your throughput wasn't 300K due to congestion, but cuz you were syncing slow.

Thanks for reply Xray,

I haven't done anything except maybe switch off the router at night time and then on in morning.

This slow speed is happening more and more to me, like for example all day yesterday Saturday, tried rebooting the rooter a few times but no difference in speed.

And today the normal speed I am capable of is back again.

I don't think its got anything to do with wiring or the hardware.

I'm in N Ireland and I am personally putting this all down to some sort of traffic management or congestion or some network breaking down and talktalk putting people on maybe a lesser speed backup one.

All I know is at off peak or during the night its full speed ahead but at a lot of peak times slow speeds.

Thanks very much for your help in trying to figure this out for me.

Joe