Capped download speed and stuck bRAS

Good morning on this, my inaugural post.

I'm with Orange on DSLMax, <1km from the exchange.
I was "upgraded" from fixed 2.2 Mb/s last year.
I appear to be capped at 2.7Mb/s, according to offpeak results from Thinkbroadband
speedtester.

Does this smell like a stuck bRAS profile or has the exchange imposed a cap
because of line limitations?

I've been unable to use the newer BT Performance Tester because of persistent
"unexpected results" errors after inputting my phone number, so I can't answer
these questions myself.

are you able to provide line stats ? Attenuation , sync speed, etc etc ?

Zarjaz,

Thanks very much for your prompt reply!

I attempted to use Dr.Speedtouch diagnostics, but it always fails at the Internet stage of the
session. I tried to persuade ZoneAlarm to allow it through in case ZA was the obstacle, but it
might only work if I shut ZA down. I'm reluctant to do this even for a brief time.
I've tried hard to research this to help myself, but my time on this is limited and, to be fair,
2.7Mb/s is OK for my needs. It would nice to be faster or pay less, however.

The ADSL cable goes to the master socket and the Speedtouch driver diagnostics
show rock-hard stability: no packet loss, retries, etc. This is so even during recent periods
where my speedtest result was ~ 0.5Mb/s at peak time. Actually I'm not now concerned
about this because I suspect Orange and/or BT were performing maintenance.
I think resource was being withdrawn and restored, because peak speed (2.5-2.7) was
restored in an instant.

FYI: I am an experienced ex-IT techie, although an OS specialist, not a comms specialist.

I do not believe that Dr.Speedtouch is going to provide the required info. Try having a go at this instead. Also, having run these tests, repeat them again, testing at the test socket, as described here.

In reply to:

---

I've been unable to use the newer BT Performance Tester because of persistent
"unexpected results" errors after inputting my phone number, so I can't answer
these questions myself.

---

This is a normal occurance. It either tells you you have put in the wrong tel no. or wrong ID. Just ignore that and try early in the morning.

The tester on this site often gives 50% of the actual speed compared with the BT tester on my system. BT is the only true reading you can quote to your ISP.

If you are getting 2.7Mb on this site you could well be getting around 5Mb in practice.
A lot less at busy times however when systems get congested.

BT test will also give you your IP Proflile (the third page shows you this while testing).

Hope this helps,

Mike.

P.S. the kitz site just tells you where to get the Speedtouch latest drivers (use the 8Mb one - made a difference on mine) and tells you to use DrSpeedtouch, which has the same error on my system as yours on running.

Thanks Mike,

I'll see if I can catch BT Perf.Tester on the hop and establish a test session.
Yes, I installed the "8Mb" Speedtouch driver, running in isochronous USB mode when
I was put on DSLMax. I also used SpeedGuide TCP Optimizer to adjust my MTU and
RWIN settings.

Your comment about the Thinkbroadband speed result is an eye-opener.
I did get similar results with DSLZone and BBMAX, however.

Regards,

Ray (Former UNIX Support Engineer Man, with externalised Y-fronts of course)

Thanks again Zarjaz,

I'll check out the guts of my master socket next week, when I have more time.

Ray

Ray, I have been doing extensive tests with all the popular speed testers for about a month now.

None but the BT tester can be relied upon to give accurate results.

http://st.tstools.co.uk/ using test 3 (3Mb) will give fairly accurate results but only at off-peak times.

All others will give between 40% and 60% on average.

Use the BT tester at

http://www.speedtester.bt.com/

That's the best one. (Wasn't working a while ago, but keep trying).

Let us know how you get on.

Mike.

Ray, just to demonstrate just done 4 tests with 4 different testers...

TSTools (test 3, 3MB) 5747kb
ThinkBB 1756kb
BBmax 2773
DSL zone 2128

You can see the problem with testers.

Mike.

I seem to get good results with BBMax and Speedtest.net in the order of 6 meg which matches the BT speedtester.