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[jaydub]

Having had some interesting issues with a Sky ADSL line, I migrated to a Pulse8 76/18 FTTC package about six weeks ago.  The FTTC cabinet is the other side of our front garden wall, so we are on a full 80/20 sync with no interleaving.

Since then I have been running ThinkBroadband speed tests and get a significant difference between the single thread and multi thread speed test results, with typically a single thread speed of around 40-45 Mbps and a multithread speed of 68-72 Mbps:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html?id=148231153859403321549

The usual thoughts on this sort of speed difference is that it might be congestion or traffic management.

However, the speed tests are pretty consistent day and night so congestion seems unlikely.  Traffic management is a possibility but as far as I know Pulse8 are just reselling a TTB connection (the line is recognised as a TTB line on speed tests) and there seems to be plenty of TTB customers that get their single and multi thread results coincident.

However to try and rule either congestion or traffic management out, I have upgraded from a Home to a Business connection.  This has made no discernible difference to the speed test results.

I have also borrowed some other VDSL kit (modem / router) to try and rule out my ZyXel VMG8924 being the root cause and that gave slightly worse results.

I have also validated the single thread results by downloading the 512MB TBB test file, which downloads in 90-100s so supporting the 40Mbps results seen in the speed test.

Pulse8's (actually TTB's) speed test usually gives me a whopping 72 Mbps download speed, but that is a multithread test on port 8080.

The TTB quality monitoring tool also doesn't give me any major concerns:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/a367401607150ffbaf6e453b9f2bc163-21-12-2016.html

With the exception of an interesting yellow burst at 1am this morning, all the other peaks are attributable to various speed tests.  However there is no significant packet loss except occasionally on speed tests.

I would welcome any ideas you might have about the single vs multi thread speed differences, as I need to make a decision about what to do next.

Choices are:  remain with Pulse8 and downgrade back to either a 76 or 30 Home package or to look elsewhere.

Many thanks for your help.

[les-70]

  Reduced single thread speed is how TTB seem to manage traffic through potentially busy connections.  In contrast to BT wholesale, TTB pings stay stable but single thread suffers.  It happens all the time though some parts of their network not just at peak time but if there is extra congestion it will be worse.  I believe all TT is the same but what you get depends on where you are located and the network parts your exposed to.

[jaydub]

  Reduced single thread speed is how TTB seem to manage traffic through potentially busy connections.  In contrast to BT wholesale, TTB pings stay stable but single thread suffers.  It happens all the time though some parts of their network not just at peak time but if there is extra congestion it will be worse.  I believe all TT is the same but what you get depends on where you are located and the network parts your exposed to.

Interesting.  That's a new one on me.  How did you find out about this?

It does slightly beg the question of what is the point in paying for a higher priority connection if it doesn't give you any greater traffic prioritisation?

[les-70]

  Experience with the same issue while a direct TTB customer and persisting in asking about the issue.  The bother is that they simply don't count the issue unless it is so bad that their speed tester gives poor results. To be fair it was seldom bad enough to bother me.

[Weaver]

Are there any Andrews & Arnold users out there who are experiencing this? (Many AA customers are on rebadged TTB lines.)

[les-70]

  To be clear with me the issue only applied to TTB FTTC and not to the TTB adsl product. 

[tommy45]

Though probably unconnected following My isp Zen migrating my circuit to their GEA backhaul from the BT wbmc  that i had been on since i joined them over 12mths ago, But following this change i started seeing  poor single thread performance on all speedtesters that have singled thread testing, as well as actual downloading of files for any source, typically it would be around 50% of what the multithreaded throughput was  sometimes it would peak at or near the max then drop to a adsl2+ type speed range or it would be similar to your speedtest result

Whilst on Zen's GEA the routeing was different  i got routed to their London LNS gateways instead of their Manchester kit
And as they had also re-enabled  IPV6 i was only able to connect to the one gateway, So matter what i did, such as connect the hg612 directly to my PC  and use that for PPPOE  sessions,  this also ruled out my router, It make no difference at all
Any how after  being migrated back onto WBMC platform again, i requested that they disable IPV6 again, as although it worked it didn't work as it should, i then re-tested just the modem to pc  same results, then i reconnected my Router, and it gave full throughput on single thread, after further testing i realised that it wasn't my equipment  but something zen's side  because one lns gateway it's fine but the other i see the poor s thread issues, Zen have checked  the SVLAN ect, all ok,  and there is no other customer on the gateway reporting a similar thing , so is it some sort of config/setup issue with my account on Zen's systems?

[Iain]

There are quite a few people on PlusNet having the same issue, there is a 10 page thread here

[jaydub]

There are quite a few people on PlusNet having the same issue, there is a 10 page thread here

Interesting read, Iain.  However I suspect that root causes are significantly different especially as Plusnet are on BTW and Pulse8 are on TTB.  If there were the same number of TTB or Pulse8 users impacted, then we would have a much longer thread of our own.

I know of one other Pulse8 user who is experiencing something similar and it sounds as though les-70 has experienced something similar on TTB.

I am seriously thinking of downgrading my Pulse8 connection to their 38/10 product and biding my time until Uno eventually launch their Talk Surf Fibre package.

[Chrysalis]

I cannot post on the PN forums due to their lost password function been broken, but that issue they have is bizarre and the only guess I have for the PN issue is malfunctioning shaping equipment as congestion alone would not create a x1 speed of 1mbit/sec and then x6 speed of 70mbit/sec.

[jaydub]

Having tried the 76 Business connection and seen no improvement over the 76 Home connection, I have decided to try downgrading to the 38 Home product.

Still seeing similar variations in the single thread vs multi thread performance.

Non-flash version:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html?id=1483092494371812755

Flash version:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html?id=148309235419345627959

TestMy.Net single thread results averaging out about 35Mbps though, which doesn't align very well.

Just tried downloading files and TBB and Speedtest.tele2.net results similar to the TBB tests, but web4host.net and test.unet.nl similar to the TestMy.Net results.

Slightly confused about all this.  Peering link performance issues?

[jaydub]

  Experience with the same issue while a direct TTB customer and persisting in asking about the issue.  The bother is that they simply don't count the issue unless it is so bad that their speed tester gives poor results. To be fair it was seldom bad enough to bother me.

Which ISP and product did you migrate to and did the single thread performance issues disappear on migration.

There is half of me that just says get on with life and just use the connection, but my scientific background wants to get to the bottom of what is causing the single vs multi thread performance differences

[jaydub]

Having just realised that DSLStats will run under Wine on a MAC, I've got my stats uploading onto MyDSLWeb Stats (as jaydub).

Looks reasonably OK as far as I can tell, apart from zero bits on the U1 band.

However I would appreciate the thoughts of those far more knowledgeable than me on these things.

Thanks.

[PhilipD]

Hi

I'm on Talk Talk Business via Uno (have been for years at two different parts of the country), at some point the connection is handed over to Daisy looking at the trace root though.  I've never seen any slow down at all on single threaded tests unless I'm on Wi-Fi on my PC (laptop is fine on Wi-Fi), which will be a driver issue/restriction so important to test using a wired connection, even if it seems Wi-Fi should cope with a 70+ as that is what you see on the multi-thread test.  Have you tried different computers just to rule out some oddity with your network connection/setup on that computer?

It would be hard to imagine why Pulse8/TalkTalk would be restricting the bandwidth 24/7.

Regards

Phil

[PhilipD]

Hi

Edit: Ignore below, just seen you downgraded your product. There is nothing wrong with your sync (between you and the FTTC cabinet) to explain the differences between single and multi-thread speeds.

Ignore:
Looking at your dsl stats, you are only sync'd at 40Meg anyway, so your maximum speed can only be 40Meg at any time.  Have you got a 80Meg product from Pulse8 or their 40Meg product?

Regards

Phil