1) It can be, but BT probably don't think it is worth fixing.
2) Until the situation gets worse and it falls below acceptable limits, and/or BT do upgrades anyway, or you get changed to Fibre.
3) Your speed falls within acceptable limits (set by BT), therefore you can complain to Zen as much as you like, and they can complain to BT, it is unlikely BT will do anything
4a) Ofcom wont care
4b) Usually you need to run 3 consecutive tests, but again, your speeds fall within the acceptable limits, so this arguably wont do anything
5) Presumably it requires Java, so yes.
6) Yes most likely.

You can try complaining to Zen but at 3Mbps I don't think they will entertain raising this with BT.

The best solution if you are frustrated is to simply go to a cheaper ISP, but you may then experience contention on the ISPs own network in addition to the contention that occurs on your exchange.

In reply to a post by mixt:

'nobody is to know this, but during peak times, we apply traffic shaping to all our connections to even out the load across our entire network'

As much as I am not a fan of BT, this does not make sense. Why would applying shaping to "all connections" even out the load across the network? They may apply some technology to ensure that everyone is throttled equally but that is the idea of contention in the first place, they would not gain anything from throttling everyone down at peak times, they are better leaving it running at max capacity. Or are you saying BT shape particular bandwidth (such as p2p) to ensure that, for example, HTTP traffic is more stable.. I don't think BT have equipment in exchanges to do this.

Or am I misunderstanding you and the guy was referring to BT broadband itsself? In which case we know they shape bandwidth.

Edited by Pipexer (Sat 14-May-11 16:29:27)

I'll ring um monday, if they even mention the word test I'll drop em like a sack of mouldy spuds.

In reply to a post by Tox_Laximus:

I'll ring um monday, if they even mention the word test I'll drop em like a sack of mouldy spuds.

That sounds like a really well thought out, productive way of dealing with tech support and ensuring they're friendly and helpful towards you in return.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-May-11 16:38:57)

In reply to a post by awoodland:

In reply to a post by Tox_Laximus:

I'll ring um monday, if they even mention the word test I'll drop em like a sack of mouldy spuds.

That sounds like a really well thought out, productive way of dealing with tech support and ensuring they're friendly and helpful towards you in return.

LOL, actually I can get the a better deal at idet, and might be able to squeeze for a better deal in the process.

And I'm insulted that you don't think I have a plan B & C & D & E

Very mature

In reply to a post by awoodland:

That sounds like a really well thought out, productive way of dealing with tech support and ensuring they're friendly and helpful towards you in return.

Someone is obviously embarassed they did not know BT run and own his local exchange.

I can't remember the exact quote, but it was something like what I wrote.

I agree, contention should take care of it. I think you're probably right - they just shape particular types of traffic (so my original quote was misleading). And maybe he was talking about BT Broadband connections only (not BT wholesale connections connecting to other ISPs).

But I genuinely believe they have the capacity to shape their back-haul, if they so wish, to give certain classes of BT wholesale customer traffic priority over others (business users etc). It all uses the same infrastructure so there has to be some kind of priority/shaping going on to make sure business always gets more of the back-haul during peak times than residential. Or to just make sure everyone is getting a sub-average experience during busy times, and to keep everyone reasonably content.

In the OPs case though, I suspect it's more an exchange/contention issue.

In reply to a post by mixt:

But I genuinely believe they have the capacity to shape their back-haul, if they so wish, to give certain classes of BT wholesale customer traffic priority over others (business users etc). It all uses the same infrastructure so there has to be some kind of priority/shaping going on to make sure business always gets more of the back-haul during peak times than residential. Or to just make sure everyone is getting a sub-average experience during busy times, and to keep everyone reasonably content.

Good point. Pure speculation but I would imagine this is done more in the form of port-based QoS. For example, customers 1-100 are on a 25:1 service (it's 20:1 last time I looked but for simplicity), and customers 101-200 are on a 50:1 service. All customes have identical connections and are using 100% of their bandwidth. All customers are contended yet customers on 25:1 get 75% bandwidth between them and 50:1 customers 25% bandwidth between them. DPI equipment in every exchange would be quite expensive.

OR they are indeed equivilant but the business customers has more weight in their projections as to when an exchange needs upgrading and if the SLA/contention ratio is not met can request a VP upgrade sooner than residential customers.

My connection slows at certain peak periods to around 4Mbps from the consistent 7.5Mbps and while it is slightly annoying I know that there is no way in hell BT would take that issue seriously when there are exchanges which suffer far worse than this.

In reply to a post by Tox_Laximus:

I'll ring um monday, if they even mention the word test I'll drop em like a sack of mouldy spuds.

Good luck to your new ISP for having you as a customer. Before I came to Zen in 2006 I tried 2 of the worst ISP's who shaped and reduced the connection speed (Freeserve/Wanadoo and Plusnet).
Zen have been the most reliable, they have kept me informed if there was/is maintenance on the network and I'd rather pay a premium for a reliable service and connection than go to a cheap unreliable ISP.