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[happy37]

Out of curiousity whats your sync speed (line stats).

Thats not a stuck IPprofile - its showing as 69Mbps, so theres something else limiting your speeds.

Are you stuck constantly at around 27Mbps, or does the throughput speed vary?

kitz

Good morning - thanks for your reply.

My sync speed is 40mbps, which has been effectively unlocked to "up to" 80mb speeds. (This is what PlusNet said to me this morning.)

They are using the 40mb profile as the true 80mb profile does not exist because the 80mb product hasn't been launched yet. (this is only a trial)

I have been told on this forum that I simply cannot can't get the line stats from the PlusNet supplied/locked HG612 modem!

I do however, have another spare, Ebay purchased HG612 which I have yet to flash with Asbokid's unlocked firmware. I haven't got round to it just yet.

Is Asbokid's method the one and only way of getting line stats from a HG612 modem?

I don't think that the throughput speed has gone above 30mb yet, but I will have to check whether PlusNet's work that was done earlier this morning has taken effect (or not.)

Another BT speedtest will confirm this - I will do this tonight once I get home from work.

ADo you have any other thoughts?

Thanks again.

Regards

happy37

[kitz]

Sorry forgot you were using a router where you couldnt get your line stats

The IP profile of 69Mbps on the BTw speedtester would seem to indicate that you are syncing in the >80Mbps product.   

Can you also check from within your Plusnet user panel what PN have your profile set at?  iirc correctly its on the 'stable_rate' page.   

You could also try grabbing a copy of Netmeter, then try downloading some large files.   Netmeter will show throughput in realtime speeds and it makes it easy to identify if anything is limiting your speeds as it will show a flatline... or spikes.

On mobile device so cant post links or I'll loose this post sorry

[happy37]

Can you also check from within your Plusnet user panel what PN have your profile set at?  iirc correctly its on the 'stable_rate' page.

kitz

I can confirm that the profile is set at 40mb. (as on the page with the link that you've given.)

Regards

happy37

[burakkucat]

Is Asbokid's method the one and only way of getting line stats from a HG612 modem?

A very big "Yes" is the only reply that you will receive!    (Anyone would think that happy37 is one little "scare-dy kitteh" . . .    )

Once No-Feathers McGraw (a.k.a. Baldy_Bird or Bald_Eagle1) is back from his penance (as dictated by Mrs Eagle), he will guide you through the installation of his statistics harvesting script(s) that are being successfully used by many other people. 

[kitz]

Now using the PC so I can include links. 


>> I can confirm that the profile is set at 40mb.

1). Afaik if your profile is showing as 40 from  www.plus.net/my.html?action=stable_rate this indicates
the profile for the 80/20 trials so it doesnt appear to be plusnet that are limiting with their profiles either.

2). Did you manage to grab and install Netmeter which can be downloaded from here.
Once installed change the options to show kbps (not the default Kbps) and it should then automatically switch over to Mbps when needed.

Then go grab a file from TBB (say 100/200 Mb) and see what speed is recorded.  Do a screen grab of the graph,  so we can see whats going on.  I want to see if its flatlined or spikey.

Be careful of doing too many of these tests as it could seriously impact on your monthly bandwidth allowance hence dont use the 1GB file!

3).   Its also worth doing some other speedtests.
The Visualware one is a good one to try as it has some good diagnostics

Link back your speedtest reference number so that we can have a look -
to get your refernce number - once the test has completed, click the 'graph' tab and then the link for detailed analysis and you'll end up with a url that looks something like
http://mcslhr.visualware.com/myspeed/db/report?id=XXXXXX

[happy37]

2). Did you manage to grab and install Netmeter which can be downloaded from here.
Once installed change the options to show kbps (not the default Kbps) and it should then automatically switch over to Mbps when needed.

Then go grab a file from TBB (say 100/200 Mb) and see what speed is recorded.  Do a screen grab of the graph,  so we can see whats going on.  I want to see if its flatlined or spikey.

Hello again kitz

Thanks for the advice.

Yes - have now done this. Does the attached jpeg screenshot help?

3).   Its also worth doing some other speedtests.
The Visualware one is a good one to try as it has some good diagnostics

Link back your speedtest reference number so that we can have a look -
to get your refernce number - once the test has completed, click the 'graph' tab and then the link for detailed analysis and you'll end up with a url that looks something like
http://mcslhr.visualware.com/myspeed/db/report?id=XXXXXX

Here we go:-

http://mcslhr.visualware.com/myspeed/db/report?id=601556

Thanks.

Any ideas at all?

Regards

happy37

[happy37]

And another:-

http://mcssjc.visualware.com/myspeed/db/report?id=1189595

Thanks.

happy37

[kitz]

Thanks for the Netmeter graph, the spikeyness shows that your line is actually receiving speed of over 40Mbps, but its indicative that theres something like congestion going on.   

Im not lucky enough to have FTTC but I believe this is something seen by a few people with FTTC.  Im not certain on this so will leave that for others to comment on.    With this only being a trial by PN too, not sure how that would impact things either especially during peak evening time.


However it does clearly show that you are able to get more than 40Mbps... and are doing so.  The peak peak figure of 5.21 MB/Sec =  4168Mbps.   - As mentioned in my earlier post, you need to change the display options in Netmeter to kbps not Kb/Sec.

The visualware tests are even better.. showing a speedtest results of around 48.5 Mbps and up to almost 60Mbps, which aint too bad... and possibly about right for an IPprofile of 69Mbps

There are signs of some contention going on there, this could be at a local level or it could be on Plusnets pipes. 
I dont honestly know which, but the tests you've performed seem to show that your 'real world speeds' are in excess of 40Mbps, and therefore Ive no idea why the BTw performance tester is giving you a much lower speed.

Have you tried doing a speed test at ThinkBroadband?

[happy37]

Have you tried doing a speedtest at ThinkBroadband?

Good morning Kitz.

Speedtest result as requested.

Regards

happy37

[kitz]

Thanks Happy.. that clearly shows <30 Mbps.

Hmmm this is weird that the BTw speedtest and TBB is showing <30Mbps..  yet Netmeter and the visualware diagnosis show throughput speeds in excess of 40Mbps.

Anyone else any ideas?
I doubt it would be the ellacoyas on the likes of TBB and BTw!   -  MTU?  Could it be something like the problem I had with my onboard NIC that I had last month which were giving me slower speeds?   Just mulling ideas over outloud seeing if anyone else can think of what it could be.

[happy37]

Anyone else any ideas?
I doubt it would be the ellacoyas on the likes of TBB and BTw!   -  MTU?  Could it be something like the problem I had with my onboard NIC that I had last month which were giving me slower speeds?   Just mulling ideas over outloud seeing if anyone else can think of what it could be.

Thanks kitz.

So, did it turn out to be the NIC in your case? Do I/should I be using a 1Gbps network card as opposed to a 100Mb one?

Or, was it MTU or something else?

How did you get your problem fixed?

I have now raised this as a fault with PlusNet. Let's see what they can find.

Regards

happy37

[kitz]

>> Do I/should I be using a 1Gbps network card as opposed to a 100Mb one?

In my case it was the gigabit NIC which was misbehaving, for some reason it wasnt playing ball with the rest of my network unless I specifically set it 100Mbps.  Until I did then I was getting data collisions and lost packets, and slow internet speeds (and the spikiness that you are seeing).  I had to get a new Gb ethernet card in the end.

Forcing 100Mbps was a temporary solution, however this in itself brought slowness for my network.
The problem being a 100Mb network card wont actually give you anywhere near 100Mbps speeds and off the top of my head Im not sure what the maximum 'real time' speed will be.

Ive tried googling for a figure but cant seem to find anything definite to say what likely throughput on a 100Mbps network card would be.   There is however a thread discussing the max speeds on 100Mbps LAN here which mentions 45Mbps as being the fastest. 

However I dont want to give you duff info and send you on a wild goosechase - hence asking others what they think.

[asbokid]

Ethernet - nearly 40 years old now - is getting on a bit and it copes badly with congestion. It uses an exponential back-off and retry algorithm for deciding when to re-send the frame, after a collision. And those retries add exponentially to the transmission delay.

From wikipedia [1]:

After c collisions, a random number of slot times between 0 and 2^c - 1  is chosen. For the first collision, each sender will wait 0 or 1 slot times. After the second collision, the senders will wait anywhere from 0 to 3 slot times (inclusive). After the third collision, the senders will wait anywhere from 0 to 7 slot times (inclusive), and so forth. As the number of retransmission attempts increases, the number of possibilities for delay increases exponentially.

I've got in my head a true throughput of ~25Mbps for a 100Mbps ethernet network.  Somewhere in that order.   But if there were only two ethernet devices on the network, hmm.. not sure.. I guess their frames could still collide!

Also, ethernet is only Layer 2 (the link layer) of the network protocol stack.  To actually utilise the network, the IP layer and TCP-UDP layer of the stack will have to be added.  And those extra layers add to the overheads, limiting the true throughput.

cheers, a

EDIT: I briefly checked some old lecture notes but couldn't find anything.  IIRC, the lecturer supervised research into ethernet performance (possibly sponsored by BT). They arrived at a very precise figure for real throughput of eth, much reduced because of the binary exponential backoff and retry algorithm.  From memory, they cited about 25% of the stated ethernet wire speed (i.e. 25Mbps throughput with 100baseT, 250Mbps with 1000baseT)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_backoff

[kitz]

Theres something else ringing a bell with me, something I read a while back but cant find now, possibly on the BT forums, about how one user decided to plug straight into the gb ethernet port on the HH and suddenly he got much better adsl throughput speeds.   I cant recall if he said if he was using gb network card though... guess he must have.

Whilst trying to search for that post again, I did come across another post on whirlpool whereby some users where seeing similar and someone stated to get the best speeds (for the Aussie equivalent of Infinity2), then you must use gigabit ethernet, and use either Vista or Win7 which handles the TCP stack better than XP does.


The spikyness from the Netmeter graph would certainly seem to imply congestion somewhere.

>>  That system uses an exponential back-off and retry algorithm for deciding when to re-send the frame. And those retries add exponentially to the transmission delay.

Yep indeed - I recall that too.


Like I say this is all pie in the sky at the moment and I cant come up with any hard evidence... and I dont want to lead happy down a wrong path of buying a new NIC when that may not be the answer.

[happy37]

Like I say this is all pie in the sky at the moment and I cant come up with any hard evidence... and I dont want to lead happy down a wrong path of buying a new NIC when that may not be the answer.

kitz

This got me thinking, so I've now tried the following.

I unplugged the laptop from the network (it's using wireless) and plugged the ethernet cable from the router into the laptop.

And hey presto, I got an immediate download speed of around 59Mbps, with 18-19Mbps upload on there. 

This laptop is about 2 years old, and is a HP one. This is good news.

This also points to the fact that both of my NICs in my PCs are possibly old and out of date.

Would updating drivers have an effect on these to bring them upto full speeds or not?

I have tried this and I don't think it has worked - I don't get any speeds near what I've just got on the laptop.

Here's a link - I have 1 each of these installed in both of my PCs.

http://tinyurl.com/cb9plq9

As I now think that these are so out of date, should I now purchase 2 new NICs to replace these old ones to get full speeds on both PCs?

I'm thinking of this one now for both PCs:-

D-Link DGE-528T

http://tinyurl.com/cgyv2lu

Is this one newer and a better replacement? Or would you recommend something better?

I had to get a new Gb ethernet card in the end.

Which one was that?

What else would you advise that I do now?

Many thanks.

Regards

happy37