Single thread download problems again

Is anyone else having single thread download problems again ?

I recently moved to a new build property and have 80 / 20 FTTC - it was perfect for a few months.

Since early December I'm getting no more than 300kb/sec on a single thread download. I can still max my 80mb/sec if I download using something like Steam where it opens up so many threads.

I have raised the issue with Zen who have said there are no known problems their end and want to send an OR engineer out at a potential cost of £165.

Last time they had these problems I ended up forking out for my phone line to be re-cabled, a bt engineer and entirely new kit at a cost of ~£500. It then turned out their routing was bad due to the bandwidth and I had an unusable connection for over 6 months. I was offered 1 months compensation.

Getting pretty fed up of Zen now... I think I'm going to have to change provider only a few months into a 12 month contract

Edited by deleted (Mon 07-Jan-19 12:54:48)

I have had a problem with Single Thread download speed ever since I joined Zen just over a year ago. I tried complaining and they took my complaint seriously but couldn't seem to do anything about it. In the end they asked if the single thread speed was causing any problem for me and if not why bother. And so I gave up at that point.

With a 80/20 connection and 200 meter from the OR cabinet I always have a stable connection night or day but there is still this niggle regarding Single Thread especially if I would want to use say Nexflix 4k UHD.

Here are the two speed tests I do which are always showing around the same results.

Using Speedtest.net
Latency - 17ms
Single Thread - 28mbps
Multi Thread - 70mbps
Upload - 17.5mbps

Using Zen's own Speed Checker
Latency -25ms
Single Thread - 38mbps
Multi Thread - 70mbps
Upload - 17.5mbps

Interesting why the Zen test should show 10mbps faster on single thread than Speedtest.net does. I have checked other speed tests including the Think Broadband one, who Zen use as their badged speed test, and they always give the lower single thread reading of 28mbps too.

I don't think I'd be that bothered with 30mbps single at the moment... I'm getting 3mbps!

I can download at full speed from steam...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/3303397427157...

but everything else is just really bad.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/3303397427157...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/3303397427157...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/3303397427157...

This is plugged directly into my PC via ethernet via a draytek VDSL modem with PPPoe in Windows.

Me to ,absolute garbage evening time , even multi thread isn't much better .
This all happened a few months ago after a disconnection through the night sometime, used to get a good 73 Mbps when it was running ok , i've had a single thread as low as 8 Mbps some times ,not good for 35 quid a month +

Should have mentioned that I am also connected by ethernet cable from FritzBox 3490 on Windows 10 PCs.

Looks as though my Single Thread is much better than yours and others. The main plus is that the connection is very stable and never varies by much at any time.

As well as Steam I get fast downloads from NVidia when they issue a new driver. Around 68mpbs. That must be a Multi Thread server.

Steam is def super massive threads, and if the driver download is in an app very likely too

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Steam is def super massive threads, and if the driver download is in an app very likely too

Yeah, Steam uses multiple download threads, when we had 2 ADSL2+ Connections I would setup the 2 gateways and ended up with the combined download speed, but this only worked with download services that uses multiple download threads.

The only ones that I did try it on back then was the Battlenet launcher and Steam which was fine.

Paul

Single thread is worse than the old ADSL2+ evening speeds are a complete waste of time

Hi

If the speed is there on the multi-threaded test then there is nothing wrong with your VDSL connection, and you don't require an OpenReach engineer. Zen need to get their technical support people better trained, although likely it's just a way to get the customer off the phone and pass the problem to someone else.

The VDSL connection does not know if you are doing a single threaded test or multi-threaded test and doesn't care. If it can do full speed on the multi-threaded test, then it can do full speed on the single threaded test, and not being able to is an indication the problem is elsewhere and your line simply passing on the packets as they arrive slower than they should do from the wider network.

Regards

Phil

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-Mar-19 08:09:14)

Erg, annoying to resurrect this -

Zen did eventually find the problem and resolve it, it took around a month - I was offered 0 compensation and even refused it when I asked for it as the service wasn't actually failed according to them.

Anyway, the exact same problem has started happening again. Line snyced at 80/20, multithread downloads max it out, but single thread downloads less than 10mb/sec - makes watching anything streaming pretty much impossible.

Very frustrating, have opened up another support ticket but will almost certainly change ISP as this is now the 3rd time this exact same problem has happened with Zen.

I might try IDNET out !

Here we go again!

TBB Speed Test

Might seem a strange question, but have you recently upgraded to Windows 10? I had terrible single thread speeds for years. The cause was an UPOGRADE to win10 from Win 8. Had to do a fresh install of win 10 and the problem was sorted. Nothing to do with ISP or BTOR. Now have perfect single thread speed.

I first noticed the issue at about 1am (25th Jan), when I was downloading a maintenance update to an Asterisk box.
From looking at the logs from another machine, the problem was present at or before 11.30am (24th Jan), but I can't be any more precise than that.

I dropped and restarted the PPP session, from my end several times, without any improvement, so I logged a service call.
The line re-sync'd at 4am and single threads were back up to full speed.

The building has another GEA- FTTC connection, provided by KCOM, from the same cabinet, which wasn't affected.

I ran the speed test from a Windows 10 laptop, but the Asterisk box runs under CentOS and the other machine a custom build of Debian and all were suffering, so not a Win 10 specific issue, although thanks for the suggestion.

Ignoring the other line, what were the other two machines doing when running the speed test on the laptop?

Hello Bob,
It was easier to isolate to VDSL2 circuits from the rest of the network (by unplugging the HG612 modems from the WAN ports of the router), in order to test them, rather than faffing around with the allowed outbound routing, so I didn't much care what, if any, traffic the active hosts were generating, as it was all going via the EFM circuit at the time of testing.