Zen Speeds

We're currently suffering some very poor speeds on two of our Zen connections and serveral of our customers. Several speed tests show around 0.5meg downloads on a 4.0meg connection. (and yes, I've troubleshooted).

Whilst I appreciate to a certain extent the 'Summer Period' (http://status.zensupport.co.uk/index.php?serviceid=5&incidentid=1855&simple=1) this isn't something I'd expect from Zen, especially when we're paying for 'Traffic Prioritisation or Elevated Rate'. Clearly this goes out of the window if it's BBQ season.

Despite having attending the Zen ADSL troubleshooting course, On-Line technical support just fobbed me off with 'Check your wireless, check for viruses..blah blah'. I've been on the course, we're a platinum partner, we know what we're doing, we know what to check before contacting Zen.

Is this something that we should expect from Zen during every sporting event? What happens when Wimbledon starts? Should we expect speeds to drop further?

Luckily speeds within Zen seem stable so supporting our customers hasn't been effected, but it's hard fobbing off a customer about issues at Zen for a product we recommended.

Also, why is it getting harder and harder to contact technical support? I've spent over 30 minutes on hold on two occasions recently. Are the calls related to the same issues? If so, why doesn't techsupport admit that there's speed issues in Zen's core network?

Edited by rogermwl (Mon 21-Jun-10 15:00:22)

I'm suffering too. Downloads are poor, streaming video impossible (synced at 22mb) first hop pings up to 140ms from 10ms all the time. I'm now connecting to the Manchester gateway not Leeds - have you noticed anything similar?

I called tech support, they asked me to do a bt speedtest and enable ping on my router for logging. Just tried calling again to get the speedtest 'service ID' and gave up waiting on hold. What's going on?

Try using http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test/ and compare it to something like http://www.btopenworld.com/speedtest . Speeds with the Zen tests are fine, leave Zen's network and it just crawls.

Edited by rogermwl (Mon 21-Jun-10 15:16:49)

Since the 21CN switch my fuller speedtests have never reached half my sync speed so I don't trust it any more. I'm currently downloading at 30KB/s from fuller

same here. Very slow speeds today and I'm not on the 21CN network. I thought it was my router, I restarted it and its still downloading from zen fuller @ 53KBs. its normally 600KBs. My sync is @ 6.4Mbs.

Over the last week or so I have also been experiencing slower speeds. I always sync at 3360kb/s but have seen actual download speeds of 60kB/s (from usual 260-280kB/s) quite often.
http://i49.tinypic.com/qppjzn.jpg

fuller.zen gives me 60-80 kB/s at the moment and browsing the net just seems incredibly slow.

World Cup, Wimbledon. It's being experienced on a lot of ISPs.

My 8Mb connection is crawling at about 1Mb now! Both my speed test and Zen test download.

Should I register this as a complaint, it's [censored] awful!

I might expect it from some ISPs, but not from Zen, and not with supposed prioritisation.

I don't want to see traffic shaping. Maybe Zen should consider upgrading their infrastucture, after all, we do tend to pay more than 'alot of ISPs'.

From about 11 June everyday at about noon my two adsl2+ lines drop from about 7.5Mbs to 750kps and network latency from 25ms->130ms
Have spoken to Zen support and they are suggesting it is local electrical interference.

This is what has annoyed me the most. If Zen are having contention issues that's fine, but at least admit it when we call, rather than asking me to 'disable my wireless'.

I'm calling support now, I do not know if it's contention at my exchange or with Zen.

Been on hold for 5 minutes so far...

As my speeds are above 650Kbps threshold, not much else I can do except wish it was faster!

G'Day Roger,

can you PM the details of the fault please.

As a complaint is fine, however if any of you have raised faults then please PM the details.

In reply to a post by rogermwl:

Also, why is it getting harder and harder to contact technical support? I've spent over 30 minutes on hold on two occasions recently. Are the calls related to the same issues? If so, why doesn't techsupport admit that there's speed issues in Zen's core network?

They've admitted issues in the core network I see, but like you the time to get through to Support (which i rarely had to do before) is definately getting more and more - and it seems to coincide with the shift to 21CN/up to 20 meg - since certainly all my calls bar 1 recently has been about issues post a move to 21CN.

I've added a note to the Knowledge Base article about using the BT speedtest, advising a service ID is not required.

Using the BT Speed Test

ta,
Phil.

Since yesterday (it's been OK always before) download speed have been down to a crawl, many pages (Zend's own for instance) doesn't even finish loading in the browser. I had to send this from the office since it was taking ages to do from my home connection.

Here's a screenshot of a BT Speed Test from about 8:30 this morning, definitely no summer events at that time.

This is not due to the World Cup or Wimbledon events, since it been happening all the time since yesterday.
Please do something.

I'd recommend ensuring you've done all you can to eliminate any local issues. Once you've done that, or if you've done it already, contact Support (call 0845 058 9009 or email [email protected]) with details of the speeds you're seeing and when. If you're seeing speeds as bad as that as early in the day as that then you're being affected by something else.

ta,
Phil.

Exactly the same problems as the OP here too, along with the same proposed remedy from Zen.
Since transferring to 21cn in February, my speeds have regularly been in between 14 mbps and 16,500 mbps with upload of about 0.96 kbps and at any time of day.

Within the last week, speeds have been noticeably slower. When I tested a week ago it was struggling to download at 0.5mbps for the entire day, although the upload has been consistently the same.

Every speed tester out there showed that this was all the speed that I was getting, but the BT tester, the one that supposedly counts, said the speed was just over 6 mbps and not enough to justify escalation to BT.

Spent a whole weekend doing BT tests which were all saying my speed was high and between 14 and 16 mbps. However, just by browsing you could tell that this wasn�t the case at all, as everything was just so s � l � o -w

Speeds are down to a crawl again today and it really is just appalling with a download speed of just 0.6 mbps. If things get much slower it will be faster to use dial-up, what on earth is going on?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/1...

Gary,

Can you PM me your details please?

Details PM'd Leo, thanks.

Interestingly, I was just reading THIS article about slow broadband speeds whenever there is a footie match or other live event on the main think broadband page. There was a match this afternoon too ..........!

I'm with AAISP who do CQM graphs as a matter of routine.

I've also been off for most of the World Cup and you can feel the lag as well as see it very distinctly on the CQM graphs in the form of latency peaks for the whole of the game periods.

I keep meaning to hook up the Sky router as I have Sky on the other line as whilst I know/expect demand to be up across all providers, I'm curious if it's purely a 21CN thing.

It's not just a 21CN thing. I'm still on a DSLMax circuit - and my 4Mbps was struggling to hit 0.5Mbps today. My neighbour's Talk Talk connection at exactly the same time was shown 3.7Mbps - and was noticeably quicker to do things. Surely Talk Talk aren't better at handling these events than Zen?

I am in the process of switching my work across to Zen from Easynet and have noticed that my new zen lines are suffering massively from about noon.

At the same time the Easynet network does not seem to be showing any congestion whatsoever...

According to my network traces at home where I have Sky, they use the Easynet network. No signs of congestion here either.

I'm on the Sky connection right now. I don't have any monitoring on this line so I'm only going with gut feel but although the line syncs at a lower speed (still 4.5mbps so not an issue for web browsing) things do generally feel snappier and more responsive.

It will be interesting to see if this continues during the game.

I've seen no congestion or performance issues with any LLU provider I use. I have though with Zen Lines. The LLUs have got the advantage still at the moment.

agreed - ive got a SKY and a ukonline line (both easynet) and both pushing 20mbit/s easy at peak times to give a combined 35-40mbit IP output across my network..

might be llu..