slow downloads - normal uploads ... ideas please

Greetings all,

I'm not sure if anyone else out there has encountered this problem or not but over the past week or so my normal download speeds have dropped to a point where I can now upload faster than download!

My ISP is Demon, router is Speedtouch 500 series, the account is a Business 2000 which could give me downstream at up to 2Mbps and upstream at up to 832kbps.

To give an idea, using the speed test utility on this site, on 13th July last year (2007) my downstream speed was 1629.47 Kbps and upstream was 670.96 Kbps.

This morning my downstream was 221.88 Kbps and my upstream was 669.85 Kbps. Downstream gets worse at night.

Not being too router technical I can say that in the service info menu the Bandwidth down is set to 1952 Kbps and bandwidth up is set to 800 Kbps.

Any help or pointers would be appreciated and thanks in advance.

Regards

Ron

Speedtest results mean little without sight of your router stats ...

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.htm will hopefully help you find them so that you can post them up.

The package you are quoting seems a little strange as the upstream matches MaxPremium which would usually be rate adaptive and support "upto" 8Mbps sync or around 7Mbps download speed.

hi kiwibreaks

Thanks for the prompt reply, much appreciated.

I went to the site you mention and found my router. This is what I have found which the site suggest is the required info:

Sync Speed -
Attenuation - up 31.5 dB, down 56.0 dB
SNR Margin - up 4.0 dB, down 12.5 dB
Output Power - up 12.0 dBm, down 17.0 dBm
Errored seconds local = 26, remote = 46
Loss of signal, power, framing = local 0 remote 0
Loss of link = 0

The only thing I couldn't find was the 'Sync Speed'.

Regarding the package being strange ... It was originally 512 down 256 up but they went through a free upgrade process to this 2Mbps offering. That caused the router to slow to a crawl on a nearly daily basis, I contacted Demon and they sent me a file to upgrade the settings which worked fine and I have had no major problems since, well until now 12 months on. I thought it may be a line problem, just guessing like, but if I can upload why not download.

Anyway, this strange package, info for it can be found here:

http://www.demon.net/demon/products/internetaccess/businessbroadband/business2000/Technical%20info

Again thanks for taking the time to get back

Regards

Ron

Could be Demon being [censored].

Can you post more stats, e.g sync speed?

And what does www.speedtester.bt.com say about the line

Thanks for the reply Hysteria,

Wasn't able to find the sync speed on the router info but I'll take another look.

Regards

Ron

My Demon line is running a bit slower than its colleague :-

Line Line Speed (Kbps)
Up Down
Line 1 359 5615
Line 2 386 3523
Aggregate 761 9047

so Demon is 63% of the other 8128 sync line's throughput just now. Earlier in the week during the day it was the better of the two.

Hi MrSaffron,

I went to the BT speedtester as you mention in your post. It performed the first test without problem but gave a page not found error for the second test (I did change the username etc.)

Results from the first test are as follows:

IP profile for your line is - 1500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 800 kbps(UP-STREAM) 1952 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 28 kbps

I will keep trying the second and I understand third tests and post the results when I get success.

Regards

Ron

OK IP profile is good and synced at just under 2000Kbps

The first test that gave these numbers is all you need.

The throughput is very low - what does a tracert www.thinkbroadband.com show? and a tracert www.speedtester.bt.com

This could be a Demon issue, depending on whether the tracert's show packet loss and importantly where it is

I also am with Demon (2000 business service; I also have experienced lousy download speeds while upload remains reasonable.
My synch speed is 3616 kbps down, 832 up; line attenuation 51 down, 14.5 db up
Noise margin 14 and 8.

Tracert shows:

Tracing route to www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms www.routerlogin.com [192.168.1.1]
2 47 ms 47 ms 48 ms anchor-hg-4-lo100.router.demon.net [194.159.161.35]
3 48 ms 47 ms 47 ms anchor-access-3-s154.router.demon.net [194.159.161.129]
4 50 ms 49 ms 52 ms anchor-inside-3-g2-0-2.router.demon.net [194.159.161.70]
5 48 ms 47 ms 48 ms anchor-border-1-g4-0-0.router.demon.net [194.70.98.30]
6 48 ms 48 ms 48 ms linx-gw1.rbsov.ncuk.net [195.66.224.240]
7 48 ms 50 ms 48 ms star1-core-rs3.test.ncuk.net [80.249.97.12]
8 53 ms 52 ms 54 ms www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]

Trace complete.
I have run it twice - similar numbers.

Tracing route to www.speedtester.bt.com [217.35.209.142]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms www.routerlogin.com [192.168.1.1]
2 48 ms 47 ms 47 ms anchor-hg-4-lo100.router.demon.net [194.159.161.35]
3 48 ms 47 ms 49 ms anchor-access-4-s155.router.demon.net [194.159.161.161]
4 47 ms 47 ms 48 ms anchor-inside-4-g6-0-4.router.demon.net [194.159.161.94]
5 47 ms 47 ms 48 ms anchor-border-2-g4-0-0.router.demon.net [194.70.98.22]
6 48 ms 47 ms 48 ms linx2.ukcore.bt.net [195.66.226.10]
7 49 ms 49 ms 48 ms core2-pos0-9-0-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.125]
8 54 ms 54 ms 53 ms core2-pos9-0.manchester.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.204.198]
9 54 ms 54 ms 53 ms vhsaccess1-pos8-0.manchester.fixed.bt.net [62.6.196.202]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
... and the same up to 30
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

And I have run the second several times.
Both the Thinkbroadband and a test using MySpeed PC Lite show dreadful download times.
The former reported as follows:
Speed Test Results
Date 20/06/08 10:57:18
Speed Down 57.95 Kbps ( 0.1 Mbps )
Speed Up 676.00 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk
IP Address 80.176.128.xxx

And navigating this forum (and other web sites) has been slow this morning.

So is there a problem somewhere en route to Demon?