[censored] broadboand (again)

I live 7 miles from Trafalgar Sq in the year 2013 and donate £25 pcm to Zen for [censored] broadband, about £40 pcm to BT for a [censored] phone service and £15 pcm to Vodafone for no signal mobile. I also donate £20 pcm to Battersea Dogs' Home and that appears to work fine. Since the 9th Nov, my broadband has seriously started dying on it ass between 16:00 and 08:00 and when it's up, gives speed checks of about 1MB old protocol and 5 or 6MB on Http during those times. Zen says it might be my router or filter but are baffled as to why it works fine during the day. Given what has happened to my line in the past my suspicion is that BT have farted around to give their customers their BT Sport package. Anyway, I'm thinking that I might bin all this nonsense and just get a top notch mobile and data contract and tether my stuff to that. Reviews of all mobile broadband providers all come to the same conclusion...they are all rubbish, so I thought I'd ask around here. Can anyone give a recommendation on a mobile broadband provider that operates well around greater London? TIA

What works fine one day on mobile may be bad another, hence why techies often travel with two or more mobile options

If the tbbx1 is better for what you would consider is the quieter times of day and you are using an Ethernet cable then the suggestion is congestion in the network, at the exchange, BT Wholesale backhaul or what Zen buy.

The main issue with mobile is the usage limits, which will be a lot lower than what you get from Zen.

Yeah..@ 08:22 tbbx1 6.61 (burst 7.73) and http 8.74 (burst 34.15) whereas after 16:00 last night it was about tbbx1 about 1 (burst 1) and http about 5 (burst 5), oh and Lol my upload was down to 0.02. You would think that 01:30 this morning would be a quiet time but the figures were just as rubbish then.

So tbbx1 and http are better ("normal") between 08:00 and 16:00, but why it doesn't improve after midnight I don't know. It's like I'm being throttled during consumer hours.

What are your router stats during the day and during the evening?

A step change at 16:00 could suggest a major noise source starting up at around that time ... dare I mention Christmas lights? Or a generator running close to a cabinet.

Something a little odd if the burst is hitting 34 Mbps when you manage 8 Meg as the average. Post the link to the results if you can.

If speeds are still slow at 1:30am, then pointing more towards some night time RF based interference as the issue maybe. So next step is the attenuation, noise margin and connection speed data from the router.

If noise margin is lower when things are slow, then the speed test may show the effect you are seeing.

Right...I've a very simple set up..BT box into the house, filter for phone and broadband, then the router. Replaced the filter and router on Friday (it's now an Asus DSL N55U), tested it over Friday and Sat and it seemed ok, so I thought duff router. Went away yesterday and returned today. Http is still around the 8 mark, but tbbx1 is now down to 2.

This was done a few mins ago...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...


On Friday the problem kicked in at about 14:00 which prompted me to nip down to PC world.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...


Here's Friday morning's result before the new router with a burst speed of 29 (can't find the 34 at the moment)....
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...



As regards RF issues, none of my neighbours have gotten anything new or changed anything, nothing has been installed in the street and the green cabinet is in sight. Usually when this happens, BT come out check the house, then they check the exchange and finally they go to the cabinet where they switch me onto a separate circuit or something and that cures it.

Sorry I can't work out how to embed the images.

Oh..one last thing...this issue has a clear start date 09/11/2013

20:00 tbbx1 @2 with a 13 http burst
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
23:04 and everything's back to normal but with an http burst of just under 36 against an average of 8.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Edited by deleted (Mon 02-Dec-13 23:09:16)

Ignore the bursts they do not mean your line is running at that speed, just you have something software or router based that is delaying the HTTP data and delivering it in a chunk, e.g. software firewall or antivirus on the PC.

Looks like contention in wholesale (i.e. exchange level) or in the Zen network is the case.

As Zen has a mix of SME and consumer, their peak time may actually be around 4pm to 7pm.

cheers for the response. I get the same results whatever device or router combo I use. I'll check back with Zen. It's still wobby this morning, so I can't see it being a Zen business/domestic issue. Probably it's some wholesale bollux