Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ADSL Issues => Topic started by: grumpy old man on February 11, 2009, 10:11:37 PM
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Over the last week my connection speed has dropped from 5/6 mps to 1/2 mps. The first time happened and my connection slowed to a crawl I switched my router off and back on and the problem was solved. However since then this doesn't solve the problem. Have just run speed test with result of download speed 2056kps.
I assume my first port of call is BT to ask them to check the line. Is there anything else I should check?
Thank you
gom
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The general advice for diagnosing this sort of problem is here (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/troubleshooting.htm) and the associated pages. A big sudden change like this indicates a significant problem such as a line fault or a new piece of electrical equipment causing a lot of interference. If there is audible crackling on the telephone, then it's probably a line fault, and a call to 151 is the best thing to do. Otherwise I suggest that you work through the advice in the link I gave above.
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I assume my first port of call is BT to ask them to check the line.
No.
What do you mean by speed? Sync speed or download test speed or something else?
If you are on a BT connection run a BT Speed Test and report the results here.
Do you know what your connection (sync) speed was before and is now?
Who is your ISP?
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iirc he's with Plusnet.
I think we need to see GOM's line stats (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php) to see if we can see anything obvious.. and whether its a sync problem, or a throughput problem.
May also be an idea GOM if you can do a BTw performance (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/btwperformancetest.htm) test to see if we can see what your IPprofile is.
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Thank you for all your replies. Will follow up on your suggestions and will post back shortly.
Have run speedtest this morning and currently getting 3899 kp/s download and 381 kp/s upload.
gom
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iirc he's with Plusnet
Well they have a lot of advice (and information) available online to assist with tracking down such problems, not to mention their own forums with staff in attendance. I'd advise starting there (might even see me ;) ).
See: http://community.plus.net/blog/2007/07/02/broadband-speed-faults-how-to-diagnose/
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lol - guess who was asked to proof read that article before it went live :)
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I wonder who??? ;D
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Thanks for all your responses and sorry for delay in responding.
I have now used the BTw performance test with the following results:
7616 kps (downstream), 448 kps (upstream)
IP profile 6500k
Actual IP 2879 during test
Statistics using Kitz's link are
WAN Status PPPoA
TxPxts 10724
RxPxts 19076
Collisions 0
TX B/s 820
RX B/s 22730
LAN Status 10m/100m
TxPkts 379
RxPkts 0
Collisions 0
TX b/s 49
RX B/s 0
WLAN Status 11M/54M
TxPkts 19694
RxPkts 11291
Collisions 0
TX B/s 21650
RX B/s 844
Connection speed 7616 kbps downstream 446 kbps downstream
Line attenuation 5db downstream 2db upstream
Noise margin 13db downstream 19db upstream
I have just checked speed using speedtest.net with the following results 1430 kbps downstream 365 kbps upstream.
Kitz you are right I am with Plusnet.
Hopefully I have posted the correct information
Thanks
gom
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Your attenuation is so low that I can only guess that the exchange is in your front room. :) Your connection speeds are (sort of) OK but your throughput is far below what should be possible, so either you are being throttled by your ISP, or there is serious congestion somewhere. There are probably some things you could do internally to optimise your connection, but the underlying limitation is elsewhere.
You can check the current status of your exchange here. (http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/)
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If the speed tests indicate a higher throughput early in the morning (before 9) then the most likely cause is traffic shaping applied by the ISP. This increases both latency and download/upload speeds.
I have noticed that Plusnet's ellacoyas go out of tune every now and then and some gateways get hammered, while others are free flowing. In this case, the fact that your speeds improved when you resync'ed was probably such a coincidence - you ended up in a less throttled gateway. These symptoms are usually worse in the evening and weekends, when everybody goes online. After a while and a lot of grief from users on the forums, their switches balance out or they add more pipe capacity and speed improves across the board.
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Yes at Line attenuation 5db downstream you are really close to the exchange so why have they put interleaving on? that shows by the 7616 kps downstream cap when u should have 8128 kbps being that close to the exchange.
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Yes, I am very close to the exchange, about 200 metres.
Have checked exchange status with your link Roseway and not problems are being reported. VP is green with no capacity problems, no major outages over last month. Exchange has been upgraded for max DSL.
Just checked speed and it's 1183 download and 366 upload.
I will contact Plusnet to see if they can help.
gom
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>> Just checked speed and it's 1183 download and 366 upload.
Thats very low... if you were seeing speeds like that due to PN throttling then I would have expected to have heard about it by now.
http shouldnt be affected anyhow.
AFAIK capacity should be ok as they have recently lit several new pipes and have been regularly lighting pipes over the past year.
>>> why have they put interleaving on?
Interleaving is now applied by default on all max lines.. if you raise a ticket they will happily remove it.
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Thanks for your reply Kitz. Not sure what interleaving is but will ask Plusnet to remove and see if that increases speeds.
AFAIK capacity??
Have just checked speed and much the same as last night at this time.
gom
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I have contacted Plusnet over my problem.
They have responded by saying that whilst interleaving could be turned off it is was probably applied to stabilise the line.
It was also suggested that I as I hadn't rebooted router for a few days it should be turned off for 15 minutes and rebooted. Not sure why this should have any effect, following advice from this forum I leave it on all the time. Anyway have done as Plusnet asked but as I anticipated it has made no difference to download speeds.
Is the interleaving the possible cause of the lower speeds and if I ask it to be turned off will the line be destabilised and what problems would that cause?
Thanks
gom
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I wouldn't have thought interleaving would be the problem. Interleaving is simply a form of error correction and unless you are a gamer with a need of better pings is best left switched on.
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gom,
ring Metronet/plusnet or PM a member of their team that lurk around in the forums and ask them what your IP profile is. It may be stuck and they need to reset it. Failing that they will need to investigate what is wrong because an attenuation as low as yours and a 6500 BRAs profile should get you a healthy 6200-6300 kbps download at off peak times. They should also switch off interleaving which will give you a small increase in your sync speed and lower latency. Their explanation that interleaving has been applied to stabilise the line does not stand - unless you have experienced frequent resyncs because of e.g. a storm, or pulling the telephone wire out of the plug.
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Mick
Thank you for your response, I will follow up your suggestion.
Interestingly download speed about one hour ago was around 6000 kps, now dropped to 1000 kps.
gom
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Looking at the time you posted this, the slow down you mention is most likely due to traffic shaping.
What's it like early in the morning (well before 9)? If you do get around 6200 kbps, then the problem is with the traffic shaping setup plusnet are applying currently. In that case, you should ask them to reconfigure their switches as they seem to constrain your speeds somewhat excessively.
Hope this helps,
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Mick
Thanks for your further reply. Have just checked tonight about 15 minutes ago and it was 6800 kps (never achieved this before) now its down to 5700.
I haven't checked first thing in the morning as I normally busy going to work and don't think to check, but will so as suggested.
The fluctuations I am experiencing do seem to suggest traffic problems but living in semi rural location I can't believe the telephone exchange is overloaded.
I haven't had a chance to speak with ISP yet but will raise issue of their traffic shaping.
Many thanks for your continued input on my problem. It does make it easier being able to discuss the problem with people like your self who understand how ADSL works, and armed with the knowledge to hopefully resolve the problem.
gom
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Mick
Thanks for your further reply. Have just checked tonight about 15 minutes ago and it was 6800 kps (never achieved this before) now its down to 5700.
Right. All things being equal, this is an indication that there is nothing wrong with your line, but that speeds are throttled.
I haven't checked first thing in the morning as I normally busy going to work and don't think to check, but will so as suggested.
The fluctuations I am experiencing do seem to suggest traffic problems but living in semi rural location I can't believe the telephone exchange is overloaded.
It seems to me that the "traffic problems" you mention are related to the ISP's traffic shaping and the balancing of their gateway switches, rather than your local BT exchange. Plusnet offer good support (mostly through their forums) and relatively cheap pricing. However, they are not the ideal ISP if you want fully unthrottled, unconstrained internet connection and you are an advocate of Net Neutrality/Open Internet. Their business model is similar to cheap holiday flights. They oversubscribe their service - if you want no traffic shaping then you have to pay more. However, even on their unconstrained accounts your connection will be routed through their switches and when they do occasionally go out of balance then even people on more expensive accounts suffer slowdowns during peak.
I think that for people who are not bothered if their connection is a few kbps slower during peak times, do not use special (non-common) ports and services and are not concerned about Open Internet principles, Plusnet are one of the better providers available.
Hope this helps.
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What concerns me about GOMs low speeds are that he is seeing exceedingly slow speeds on http which should not be affected by any of Plusnets traffic shaping.
As mentioned previously they have been lighting new segments very frequently (on average about 1 a month (http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/pnPipes.htm)) and Ive not heard any reports anywhere else of any problems on the PN network that would be affecting GOM's connection in this way.
Ive today checked with several other PN users who all confirm that they are seeing full speed ahead on their connections.. and even no probs on some of the more traditionally shaped things like p2p.
I'm wondering if this could perhaps be some sort of exchange congestion.. I know from my own experiences that my own exchanged didnt go into red, until sub 1Mbps had been recorded.
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You're right, it "should not be affected". However, some times PN do not light up new segments fast enough to cope with demand; some times their switches go out of balance. I recall that particular gateways almost always dropped more packets than others.
It is true that the http/s packets should not be affected, however there have been times when they were badly throttled on more than one gateways. There was even a thread a few months ago (I can't find it now but I think it was opened by BarryZ) where he asked for people to provide relevant info like gateway, speedtest results, router stats, etc. in the hope that PN identified some pattern in the problem.
Notwithstanding the above, if as you say the gateways look quiet and other users are not reporting problems, then the slowdown could be due to contention at the local exchange: GOM, what's your neighbours' ADSL performance like?
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Although I seldom have time to follow the community.. I do remember that from last year... irrc there was some gold packet drop prior to the new 622's being lit?
Did Barry think it may have been affecting the BB+ customers?.. I cant remember the outcome.
Theres been another 4 or 5 segments lit since then and I cant see any glaring gold packet drops (http://www.plus.net/support/network_performance/broadband_bandwidth_usage.shtml) from the network graphs only the expected brown, orange and grey.
Funny enough Barry was actually one of those that I asked today about the network performance and he said that afaik it was fine.
However, this isnt really sorting GOMs slow speeds, could do with one of the PN guys looking at this really to see if they can see anything obvious from their end.
(I'll try prodding one of them).
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Hi Kitz and Mick
Thank you both for your replies. Gets a bit technical at times but think I understand your comments.
I am currently in the process of using plusnets speedchecker over a 24 hour period, for plusnet to then look at my problem.
The results posted are quite interesting:
14/03/09 19.10 Actual IP throughout test 124 kbps
14/03/09 22.23 5190
15/03/09 07.33 5708
15/03/09 15.20 4614
15/03/09 18.37 186
Following most recent check I have run speedtest.net and got 4380 download?
Mick I can't as you suggest check my neighbours ADSL as neither of them are 'on line'.
I don't really have a problem with slight fluctuations in speed as I don't do alot of downloading, anyway with current infrastructure changes in speeds are inevitable. However the fluctuations I am getting are clearly not acceptable.
Will post again when I have received a response from plusnet.
Thank you for your continued interest in my problem. It's great to be able post a problem and get advice from you experts even though I don't always understand the technicalities.
gom
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Hi
14/03/09 19.10 Actual IP throughout test 124 kbps
15/03/09 18.37 186
These 2 fall into the same time band 18:00, 20:00 hrs that PN uses for Traffic shaping . there may be a fault with the way its set up
It might be interesting to try some tests before and after some of the change over times .
see below for details
http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/plusnet_shaping.htm
Jeff
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>> However the fluctuations I am getting are clearly not acceptable.
They certainly arent!!!
~ Out of interest which account type are you on? - eg Broadband Plus
~ Which router are you using - by any chance is it a Voyager 2100 series?
15/03/09 18.37 186
Following most recent check I have run speedtest.net and got 4380 download?
Thats really interesting that PNs own speedtester gives 186 kbps.. yet speedtest.net in the same period gives 4380.
Are you using this one (http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/) or their older one?
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Morning guys,
A couple of things from me on this one:
- Interleaving being on or off will have no bearing on extreme peak time slow downs. If anything, it'll make the line more stable and it seemed to be perfectly stable as it was.
- It's not a traffic management issue. We prioritise web traffic (which this speedtest will use) so even if we were suffering capacity issues, you should still get decent speed test results.
To me it sounds like one of two things. It's most likely to be an exchange contention issue, but it could also possibly be MTU/rWin related. Kitz has mentioned in the past of an issue she's seen on the BT Voyager 210's where they default to an MTU of 1400.
GOM - Would you mind trying to optimise your MTU and rWin settings as per this page?
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/troubleshooting/rwin_video.shtml
If you'd also like to PM me your username, I'll be more than happy to have a look at your account to see what's been going on.
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You just can't top PN support! :)
Keep up the good work James.
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Your attenuation is so low that I can only guess that the exchange is in your front room. :)
For fear of wading into a discussion with a completely different track, I did quite a bit of analysis of synch rates, and one thing I have seen in the NZ market anyway is that where you are <6db attenuation from exchange, then I have seen the average synch rate drop by about 2 Meg, and stability drop by about 10-15% for these really close customers.
Quite a few of my helpdesk guys have advised using an extension cable and from my tests I have seen it adds about 3dB attenuation for every 10metres of cable. I know all the reasons not to do it (electrical interference / it is poor quality) but in NZ I have seen this work a treat.. But I have not seen that proposed or listed as a known issue in any of the UK forums.
I believe that BT uses DLM (Dynamic Line Management) so that may not be a factor in the UK.
Also when provisioning does UK tune the profiles on install?
From my understanding, I thought that interleaving off does improve latency, and that can in turn tend to speed up the (by improving the latency you see an improvement to the overall speeds) ala
http://www.wand.net.nz/~perry/max_download.php (http://www.wand.net.nz/~perry/max_download.php)
So my vote would be to remove it, not just for the latency but the possible improvements to throughput.
And all the associated MSS / MTU / TCP receive window etc.
I am pretty sure that doesn't help grumpy old man, but I was keen to hear if I understood it wrong..
And also another vote from me for PN / James support skillz
Cheers,
ADSL Geek (http://www.adslgeek.com)
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GOM
Have you heard anything official back yet from PN on your ticket? James has said he had a look at your account but cant see any reason why there should be a problem.
Is the problem still there and are you still seeing the appallingly slow speeds? Since you have a netgear router, then its not going to be the MTU issue I was thinking about that can occur with the Voyager 21xx series routers.
It may also be worthwhile grabbing a copy of NetMeter 1.1.3 (http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/), and then watching what 'realtime' speed it records when downloading a file from http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test/
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Sorry hadn't been back to the thread Kitz and then you contacted me by personal message.
Yes I am still progressing matters with plusnet but seem to be getting nowhere. They have carried out tests on my line, see results below, and have asked me to run the BT speed checker for a period of 24 hours. I have already done this, seem to be going round in circles and my speed continues at not much better than dial up at 500 for download. Could my router be on the blink, and how would I know?
Any way these are test results I have from Plusnet:
Upstream Link Info
Loop Loss Loop Loss Add Text SNR Margin Errored Seconds HecErrors Cell Count Speed
3
20 0 0 39192581 448
Downstream Link Info
Loop Loss Loop Loss Add Text SNR Margin ErroredSeconds HecErrors CellCount Speed
5
16 0 0 314388659 7616
DSL Max Data
BIP Interface Data
Current line rate Line rate change timestamp Maximum Stable Rate Recalcuated ProfileTimestamp Maximum Stable Rate
6500 2007-07-27T03:27:15 N 2007-07-26T00:00:00 7392
Fault Threshold Rate Interleaving Flag ServiceOption ServiceOption Status ServiceOption Update Timestamp
5913 I 1 THIS LINE IS STABLE AND WELL WITHIN ERROR/RETRAIN LIMITS FOR THE CHOSEN SERVICE OPTION (ILQ=GREEN) 2008-03-30T12:03:01
CIS Interface Message :Non Advanced Service
NTE Details
Equipment Status Power Status BypassStatus
In Service NTE Power On Bypass Not Activated
Outcome Summary
Test Outcome Test Description
pass OK.
Upstream Link Info
Loop Loss Loop Loss Add Text SNR Margin Errored Seconds HecErrors Cell Count Speed
3 20 0 0 39192581 448
Downstream Link Info
Loop Loss Loop Loss Add Text SNR Margin ErroredSeconds HecErrors CellCount Speed
5 16 0 0 314388659 7616
DSL Max Data
BIP Interface Data
Current line rate Line rate change timestamp Maximum Stable Rate Recalcuated ProfileTimestamp Maximum Stable Rate
6500 2007-07-27T03:27:15 N 2007-07-26T00:00:00 7392
Fault Threshold Rate Interleaving Flag ServiceOption ServiceOption Status ServiceOption Update Timestamp
5913 I 1 THIS LINE IS STABLE AND WELL WITHIN ERROR/RETRAIN LIMITS FOR THE CHOSEN SERVICE OPTION (ILQ=GREEN) 2008-03-30T12:03:01
CIS Interface Message :Non Advanced Service
NTE Details
Equipment Status Power Status BypassStatus
In Service NTE Power On Bypass Not Activated
Outcome Summary
Test Outcome Test Description
pass OK.
I hope some of you more technically adept will understand the results which show my line is OK.
gom
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I really dont know what to suggest now GOM. :'(
From what James has told me, they suspect Exchange contention - but to be totally frank Ive not been overly impressed with the normal lines of support and how long this is taking to get resolved for you. :(
There used to be a test you could perform to check and rule out ISP contention, but BTw withdrew easy access of this facility a few years back. It doesnt appear to be contention through ISP centrals - PN lit another one within the past few days, and have been regularly installing new pipes, so you really shouldnt be seeing problems with http. If it is exchange contention then it will follow you which ever ISP you go to unless its LLU.
Monitoring your speeds on a regular basis is a good idea. It may also be useful to sign up to a thinkbroadband speedtest login so that your results can be retained and hopefully you can see a pattern.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html
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Thank you for the reply.
I have just used your link for speed test and got 1425, but speedtest.net gave me 500 at same time, curious which one is accurate?
A further reply has been sent back to plusnet and I await their response.
Once many thanks for the help you have given me with this problem, I will keep persevering with plusnet and BT there must be a solution, after all I used to get 4000 so something must have changed. It makes a mockery of these advertised speeds of up to 8 mbps, and I live very close to the exchange.
Nigel
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I'd be inclined to believe the thinkbroadband one.
Speedtest.net - particularly the Maidenhead one, for me seems to record much slower than my real throughput speeds.
However even at 1425 is slow. I can 100% sympathise with you.. Ive been there (and below) several times with exchange contention as this exchange periodically is reknown for it... and why at one point several years ago I opted to go on dslmax premium. Unfortunately this option does cost more but for me it was worth it.
(its a BTw charge and Plusnet is one of those ISPs that offer it). Even the LLU operators seem to get exchange contention here :(
You didnt say which account type you are on with Plusnet.
Depending which one you are on, you could perhaps ask PN if they would temporally change your package type to help identify if it is exchange contention..
Another thought -what LLU providers are available on your exchange?
From the list on the right hand side of the adslchecker (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adslchecker.php).
Also whilst you are there, look and see what Market your exchange is classified at - it will say something like (https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kitz.co.uk%2Fadsl%2Fimages%2Fblue.gif&hash=418c862c4084e778ecffaad4d2c1010180d890d3) Broadband Access† Market 3
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My account with plusnet is Plusnet Broadband Plus up to 8b (lol).
There are no LLU providers at my exchange. Market classification is 1.
Plusnet have been back in touch and want me to use their bt tester again over a 24 hour period which I am now doing. The first test gave me an actual profile of 63kbps!
I will follow up your suggestion to get PN to temporarily change my package type and see if it makes a difference. I will also follow up dslmax premium.
gom
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>> There are no LLU providers at my exchange. Market classification is 1.
:(
>> I will follow up your suggestion to get PN to temporarily change my package type and see if it makes a difference. I will also follow up dslmax premium.
I want to ensure that you do not pay any additional funds.. nor do I suggest that you pay extra to upgrade to max premium yet.
Which software firewall are you using. Because your router has a hardware firewall and uses NAT, it would be quite safe to turn it off temporarily.
Did you also try grabbing a copy of Netmeter and checking your throughput speeds on there from fuller.zen as suggested here (http://comms.plus.net/blog/index.php/2006/08/17/about/#comments)
Running netmeter will show your realtime speeds and also show if any other network traffic is being generated that could be slowing your recorded speeds down.
>> The first test gave me an actual profile of 63kbps!
TBH that is downright appalling.
I really am not sure what is going on.. but to be perfectly honest, I would be requesting my MAC which may at least kick start PN into action.. because this has been going on long enough.
How much bandwidth do you use per month? Do you use p2p? There may be other packages/ISPs that would suit your needs and/or be a bit cheaper.
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From what James has told me, they suspect Exchange contention
Hi GOM, if you know anyone in your local area with ADSL you could ask them - they don't have to live next door or even in the same street - they just have to be on the same exchange which is easy to check. If it is congestion at your local exchange, and they are served by it too, they should be having similar problems to you.
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Plusnet are now going to involve their supplier, BT?
Interestingly speeds have since yesterday evening increased to around 4000 kbps and have kept up at that level today.
I don't use p2p and my bandwidth is not high as I don't do alot of downloading.
gom
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>> Interestingly speeds have since yesterday evening increased to around 4000 kbps and have kept up at that level today.
Thats interesting - because if anything, your speeds could have been lower last night.
There was a major outage over the weekend that knocked out some ISP's centrals. - This is the BTw MSO sent out which is aimed at the ISPs.
BT can confirm that, following significant damage by a third party to cables in a deep underground tunnel, a large number of customers in parts of East London are currently experiencing a loss of service.
The above had a knock-on effect of taking out some ISPs Centrals. I know that Plusnet were affected and they lost some of their centrals, one of which still wasnt back up by this evening... so if anything you'd expect speeds to be a bit slower until the problem is fully resolved.
>> I don't use p2p and my bandwidth is not high as I don't do alot of downloading.
You may be interested in the Value package @ £11.99 for 10GB. You can see how it performs to your existing package side by side here (http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/plusnet_shaping2.htm). Select the relevant products from the drop down box. Value starts at £5.99 but thats only only market 3 exchanges - its £11.99 for a market 1 or 2 exchange, but its still a slight saving over what youre paying now.
Warning that if you change you will enter a new contract period. However its worth pushing in your ticket for either a free new router... or push further and categorically say that in view of the problems youve been having that you wish to be transferred without incurring a new contract period.
Alternatively depending on how much you do use, look at Newnet £10.72 for 1Gb or £12.67 for 3GB.
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Hi
I was thinking of moving to PN :-\ from the dreaded T .Customer support seemed good up to now . But this problem of GOM has me concerned that PN is going the way of others . Is this a one of problem ?.
Regards Jeff
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Hi Jefbb,
Perhaps I'm letting experience get the better of me rather than waiting to see what develops.
As PN are part of BT there must be a reasonable chance that their culture and operating procedures will eventually become unrecognisable from those of the giant ?
This was the November quotation from their new CEO who used to be General Manager of Voice Propositions in BT Retail’s consumer division.:-
"I am very excited to be joining Plusnet and looking forward to building on Neil and the team's past successes. My primary role will be to focus on how we can drive more growth, using the backing of BT to help us achieve this"
Anthony Vollmer, CEO Plusnet
which is part of Anrdrew Ferguson's new at:-
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3789-new-ceo-at-plusnet.html
Kind regards,
Walter
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The new CEO at PN towers stuck his head over the parapet a few weeks back and asked for questions from users via the forums. Some very good questions were asked.
Unfortunately he hasn't seen fit to respond in anything like reasonable timescale, or even apologise for the delay, so there's a lot of p***ed-off people there. Cnicism is inevitably rife. >:D
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I could say more, but I'll leave it at Im not best pleased at the apparent lack of response of late.
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Value starts at £5.99 but thats only only market 1 3 exchanges - its £11.99 for a market 1 or 2 exchange,
Sorry to jump this thread but I was under the impression that if your exchange was market 3 you qualified for paying £5.99 a month.My exchange is Attercliffe and is market 3.
I contacted PlusNet and told them this,they then replied saying I qualified for the £5.99 a month for the full 18 months,not just the first 3 months introductory period.
Edit. I have just found this on the PN site.
Plusnet Value
We've designed Plusnet Value as a basic package, for basic Internet activities such as web browsing and email.
Telephone exchange area Cost for first 3 months Cost after this
Market 1 or Market 2 £5.99 £11.99
Market 3 £5.99 £5.99
[edited by kitz to correct my error and to avoid future confusion]
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>>> Sorry to jump this thread but I was under the impression that if your exchange was market
Sorry UB... that was my fault.
The price I quoted GOM was right for his market 1 exchange... I just had a brain fart and muxed up the figures later on. :-[
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>>> Sorry to jump this thread but I was under the impression that if your exchange was market
Sorry UB... that was my fault.
The price I quoted GOM was right for his market 1 exchange... I just had a brain fart and muxed up the figures later on. :-[
No problem, :)
Just thought I'd double check.
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Thanks for pointing it out UB - Good spot - in fact I'm glad that you did bring it up.
Ive edited to avoid further confusion in the future..
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I know there has been a few comments on this thread about PN support,but as I am in a market 3 exchange it does make it a very good price.
As I have said before when you put it together with the line rental,free eve/w/end calls all for £15.74 it does seem a good deal(apart from the 18 month contract),still I have got use to that with BT. lol
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Hi UB,
I have a slightly different take on such matters, particularly as out in the sticks we confidently expect difficulties.
All these deals are absolutely splendid until such time as things go wrong; at that point not only are you having to move hell on earth but you possibly can't escape unless you're prepared to pay the extra termination fees to them that you would have already done to a more reliable ISP.
Kind regards,
Walter
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I seem to have started a bit of a debate here about pros and cons of ISP's. I do wonder if the problems I have been experiencing are due to Plusnet becoming part of BT and the previous good customer support is descending to the level of BT!
Have just run speed check with thinkbroad band and speedtest.net. The results are wildly different, thinkbroadband showing 5700 approx for download whereas speedtest are just showing 2000, very odd.
Plusnet have now responded in some detail on tests carried, alot of which I don't really understand apart from the bit that says BT can't find anything wrong with the line. They now want to send an engineer out to check wiring but want to charge me £160 if it's a fault beyond the master socket!
Kitz I will look at the alternative products you suggest. Many Thanks, and thanks to everyone else who has read my thread and responded.
gom
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Hi GOM,
This link might be part of the explanation for differing speed test results, as might other unknown simultaneous internet traffic or possibly even contention.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3902-not-all-speedtesters-up-to-the-job-still.html
Provided you are confident that you have used the test socket on the master socket, or temporarily isolated any star and / or extension wiring, the BT O threat is almost never carried out.
The BT O guys are usually far too busy to want to become involved in such arguments and most are quite genuinely trying to get the best possible connections for their clients from the creaking copper within their allotted 2 hour time slot. I hope you're pleased that your case isn't just being dropped as the line test has passed.
Regarding other ISPs, I expect you will find some have far better fault processing staff and facilities than others as has been reported many times here.
Apart from the sheer frustration, discussing a problem in plain english with a trained troubleshooter, rather than to an automaton reading from a crib sheet, is a most welcome benefit in otherwise quite stressful circumstances.
Kind regards,
Walter
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>> thinkbroadband showing 5700 approx for download whereas speedtest are just showing 2000, very odd.
This has been mentioned elsewhere on these forums a couple of times recently and thats that speedtest.net results dont seem to be as good as TBB's. This seems to be regardless of which ISP you are with.. and I myself have seen more or less half speeds at speedtest net than think broadband results - particularly from their Maidenhead server at certain times of the day/eve.
Since BT are reporting no faults and your sync speeds/line stats are perfectly fine - I dont think BT will find anything further.
As mentioned by walter.. there have been reports that the thinkbroadband speedtester is normally the most accurate.. but sometimes speedtests should be taken with a pinch of salt and used as a guide.
Its one of the reasons why I suggest installing something like Netmeter, then grabbing a file from fuller.zen and then you will see your real throughput speeds.
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I have been checking my speeds with tbb over the last couple of weeks and apart from the first couple of days when download was around 1400, speeds have fluctuated between 2200 and 5700 the lower speed only occurring a couple of times. I don't know if this improvement of connection speed is due to plusnet.
These speed tests have all been conducted from my laptop but today I carried speed tests from both laptop and desktop with very different results. Speed on desktop was around 2800 whereas laptop was around 5700. I have no idea why I should get such a different. Desktop is connected to router by cable and laptop by wireless.
Any ideas?
gom
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Hi
Were both tests carried out within a short time frame ??
Regards Jeff
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Yes. I did test on laptop immediately followed by test on desktop. I did this twice.
gom
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Unlike good ol' ethernet cat5e cable, wireless does not run in full duplex mode and therefore it will be theoretically slower. At a practical level however most results with a strong wireless signal and an average speed ADSL connection are comparable under ideal conditions.
A lot of factors affect speed tests over wireless. If (on top of the half-duplex impediment) your connection speed is high and the wireless signal is weak, then the speed test result will be adversely affected. If more than one wireless devices are communicating with the router at the same time you can half the wireless speeds yet again. With a 100% wireless signal strength you should get comparable results.
To avoid spurious results affected by the wireless capacity I suggest that you take your laptop to the router and use a cat5e patch cable to run the tests, or use your desktop which is supposedly connected to the router with ethernet cable.
As it has been mentioned already most speed test servers give unreliable results. More so during busy times, when everybody wants to test their speed! So it may be contention to the speed tester that gives a low speed result than contention on your BT exchange/ISP/Internet. To obtain reliable results I recommend downloading at off peak hours (early in the morning) a large file (e.g. a Linux ISO) from a UK mirror and unless you have an application on your PC which measures bps, use your router's 5 minutes average downstream rate reported in the stats to see what's happening. You'll have to wait for 5 minutes to see the 5 minute average of course.
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Speed on desktop was around 2800 whereas laptop was around 5700.
That is unusual, normally you would expect a wireless connection to be a tad slower due to the reasons outlined by Mick.
One of the things I would normally do to check realtime speeds I outlined in my post and [http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=4278.msg109391#msg109391]here (http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=4278.msg107763#msg107763)
It may also be worthwhile grabbing a copy of NetMeter 1.1.3, and then watching what 'realtime' speed it records when downloading a file from http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test/
Netmeter will show you what speed traffic is really being received to your PC. It will also show you if there is any other type of traffic activity occuring on your PC through such things as malware which could be "eating your bandwidth" on that machine.
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I have, at last, downloaded netmeter. Tried a couple of times previously but the link you kindly provided didn't work. Any way done it now. Have downloaded file from Zen, I assume that I am looking at DL: on bottom of screen which give me KiB/s. On the download tonight it varied from 195 to 225 for the 10mb file. Will do the same test on desktop and let you know what results I get.
Connection speed continues to fluctuate was getting around 5.7 at weekend but only 2.6 tonight. Desktop continues to be around half of these speeds achieved on laptop.
gom
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Hi
Netmeter shows the max DL on the left hand side of the graph so ,the graph range is that figure using that you can estimate the mean of the graph using the 10 horizontal lines .
Regards jeff
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Just to finish this thread.
Since end of April speeds have stabilised at around 4.5 although tonight at 22.50 up to 5.6. So problem seems to have gone away but I am no nearer knowing what caused it in the first place.
With regard to differing speeds between laptop and desktop, that I have resolved. The problem here is my network card on desktop, this is an old one, probably 10 years +, new card should resolve speed difference.
Once again thank you for showing interest in my problem, speed issues do seem to be recurring theme, and helping me out which is very much appreciated. I guess until BT upgrades the network we are all going to suffer speed related issues.
gom