Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: MrsDaddyCoull on November 06, 2007, 07:31:49 PM
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Hi everyone
I only recently changed to adsl max and i'm still on my 10 day training period, so perhaps i'm trying to run before i can walk lol
here's the problem...
i've manged to get my ip profile up to 5000 but the absolute max throughput speed i have achieved on BT speedtest and BBmax is just under 4mb. At best its usually around 3750 and at peak evening times it can go as low as 1000.
Is it likely that AOL are the ones that are keeping my throughput speed at what they would probably consider a 4mb connection. I am paying 24.99 a month on the gold package, which was 2mb but aol promised at the beginning of the year that all their customers would receive FREE upgrades, doubling each customers connection. These upgrades never materialised for most people and when i decided to push like crazy they wanted me to change to the new package for an 'up to 8mb' connection for 14.99 a month, this however involved a new 18 month contract which i flatly refused. I object strongly at not being able to take advantage of the falling trends with broadband charges, without subscribing to a new 18 month contract. I believe loyal customers should be able to feel the benefits in the change in market prices without new contracts. I insisted i wanted my FREE upgrade and they eventually agreed to regrade me onto adsl max, they told me my line would support up to 5.5mb and i presumed this is what i would be getting. Now i'm wondering if they have only honoured their commitment to double my connection speed, which is really annoying cos i still pay £10 more a month than new customers receiving their full 8mb.
sorry for waffling on a bit just hoped for someone elses opinions about why i wasnt getting a bit higher throughput speed.
Lis
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Could be exchange contention - but TBH right now I wouldnt expect this.
Its been several months since Ive heard of anyone complaining of bad exchange congestion (possibly related to many users moving to LLU).
Whilst not conclusive stick your details in the exchange checker
http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges
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Hi Kitz
thanks for the quick response.
Im getting a little obsessed with all this adsl max stuff lol
i forgot to mention i am a bit of an internet addict, so im on here morning noon and night (late) obsessively checking my speed. i've never got it over 3900 at any time of the day.
i just followed the link you posted and it came up with this....
red Virtual paths: Red
BT is reporting that some of the virtual paths at this exchange are not operating within BT Wholesale's planning guidance, although they are still operating within the product specification.
At busy times, your ADSL connection may operate at a reduced speed, although not all customers on your exchange may be affected. You should only contact support if there is no current ETA date set.
The ETA fix time is: 01 Nov 07
Record last updated: 15 Oct 07
Historical information for this exchange:
Status Date
green 08 Oct 07
green 01 Oct 07
green 24 Sep 07
green 17 Sep 07
green 10 Sep 07
the other strange thing i have just noticed is that previously when checking what speeds i could hope to achieve, samknows and other sites reported up to a 5.5mb connection, now all these sites are only reporting a 2mb connection on adsl max :(
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>> Virtual paths: Red
:(
Theres a possibility that some of the slowness could be related to your exchange. This isnt conclusive because you could be on one of many VPs. The fix date isnt set in stone either.
Your only real hope of finding out whether its exchange congestion or not is by recording a very low speed so low on the BTw performance tester that it asks you to go on and do "test 3". I dont know the exact figure for this though Im afraid - In the past its requested me to do this at around 400 kbps.
>> i could hope to achieve, samknows and other sites reported up to a 5.5mb connection, now all these sites are only reporting a 2mb connection on adsl max
The checkers are only a guide but I wouldnt worry too much about that right now - iirc youre still in the training phase when your MSR is set? 2Mb is the default profile figure when you go on Max so it could be related to that.
AOL are doing "4Mbps" accounts for some accounts and if thats the case then they will be throttling your speeds down on their end. 3750 kbps is probably about right if they are giving you a 4Mbps profile after allowing for overheads. You could try MTU tweaking (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/tweak2.htm) to see if you can get a bit more.
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thanks Kitz
>>>> You could try MTU tweaking to see if you can get a bit more.
im addicted to your site, i've tweaked everything i can lol, i set the mtu to 1450 after doin your ping test but i think in another section you recommended 1430 if using AOL, so i might try changing it to that
I just tried getting in touch with AOL and askin them straight if they were capping/throttling (not sure if they are correct terms) my particular line/account to 4mb. would you believe i got the usual waffle. they asked what i used to do the speed test...
i replied bt wholesale tester cos they log the test as evidence lol
unbelievably he asked me to go to www.download.com and download a random file to see what average download speed i got.
he then admitted it was very low but said he couldnt check to see if i was capped in any way because their "tools were down for maintenance purposes"
yeah right o
in the end he gave the the mile long email telling me how to improve my speeds by deleting caches etc, yawn yawn, i was fed up by this time.
he did then decide my line wasnt capped in any way.
I'm contacting via live help just so i can keep a record :)
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I thought MTU of 1400 worked best with AOL..
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didnt really want to say until you had investigated all other possibilites to make sure it wasnt one of the other reasons... but youre not the first that Ive seen reporting this. In fact some users have been reporting even slower speeds than you have been seeing.
I strongly suspect that speeds for all protocols are being throttled on AOL. Ive seen too many reports that all peak time speeds are vastly reduced, and things like p2p and even YouTube is practically unusable. - Hence the coloured indicators on my ISP caps page (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/caps.htm)
Whether this is the effect that some of their central pipes are full or if they are traffic shaping I really dont know :/ Its been suspected for a long time that AOL have traffic shaping kit... and since they were taken over by TT they seem to have clamped down big time. :/
Sorry to be the bearer of possible bad news :(
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I thought MTU of 1400 worked best with AOL..
It is supposed to quote "AOL users should choose 1400. (TT users should also try 1400).
" although saying that I believe that they've been tweaking of late and you can use up to 1458 depending on the provision type.
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I have to say I've used a couple of AOL connections during peak time.. and it is pretty dire. Neither of them are on the same exchange as me though so there wasn't any chance of a comparison to see if it's related to the exchange or AOL.
The BT Virtual Paths showing as red could still be the problem, though, fingers crossed!
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thanks again folks for your thoughts on the matter
I know very little about adsl but i suspect AOL is gonna be the problem, I have now set my MTU to 1400 as advised
it might be interesting to see if there is any difference when the exchange thing gets resolved.
i guess all i can do is keep on checking
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SOMEONE GET ME SOME HELP! LOL - this is taking over my life ;)
tonight in the quest for speed i've tried the bt domain speed test hoping it would show my isp is throttling my account, alas i was unable to complete the test as it came back with an error. i did try to find out if i was on ipstream or datastream but can find no reference to either on my bt bills.
i've also downloaded netmeter in case im loosing some bandwidth to virii or malware (highly likely with all the crap i download :-[)
i have recently run S&D and ad aware tho
i was pretty sure i wasnt loosing any to the neighbours tho cos my router has always had the encryption on.
netmeter is pretty dead if i leave my laptop with just IE open and not touching it, but if i leave firefox open and unattended i get peaks of about 19 kB/s downloading every few seconds, tho having said that i've just seen its been pretty static for the last minute or so with no DL/UL activity. i really have no idea what is normal tho?
other thing i tried from another forum (one Kitz was also on) is running the whatisrunning thing through the command, dont know why i bother tho because i really wouldnt know what i was looking for, all the refernces seem to have connection to either my network ip address or my laptop name.
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>> i did try to find out if i was on ipstream
The bt domain speedtest does sometimes get very busy and goes through periods when it wont work and throws up errors.
AOL have LLU enabled some of their exchanges, but since they were taken over by TT, they have also been putting some of their users on the TalkTalk dslams.
You can check to see if your exchange is LLU enabled on the adsl checker (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adslchecker.php).
If you cant complete a BT test login (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/bttest.htm) and your exchange is LLU enabled then the chances are high that you are on LLU.
If you can complete a login then you are definitely on IPStream.
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>>>AOL have LLU enabled some of their exchanges
yep my exchange is enabled for AOL, CW and TT
>>>If you cant complete a BT test login and your exchange is LLU enabled then the chances are high that you are on LLU.
>>>If you can complete a login then you are definitely on IPStream.
I tried the above, my router accepted connecting to this but i could not load the digitaldemo test page, so I'm not sure if these means i'm LLU or ipstream or what lol
The lowestoft exchange is now showing as green tho for VP
i think its time to go back to AOL and complain again >:(
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>> my router accepted connecting to this
If you got a full connection (and not just sync) then it means that you are on IPStream.
If youre using AOLs DNS its possible that you couldnt browse to the digital demo site in your browser due to DNS not working when logged into the test site.
http://www.bt.net/digitaldemo would convert to
http://193.113.211.125/digitaldemo/
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Thank you for your patience Kitz
>>>If you got a full connection (and not just sync) then it means that you are on IPStream.
Sorry, being only little joe public, im not really sure how to work out whether it was just a sync or full connection
I tried again and could navigate to this page only... http://193.113.211.125/digitaldemo/
wasnt sure bout the aol dns either :-\
Lis
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>> could navigate to this page only... http://193.113.211.125/digitaldemo/
DNS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system) is what converts human readable webpages into computer readable format.
For our browsers to be able to fetch a page it needs to be converted into the IP address and its the job of a DNS server to do the translation. eg www.kitz.co.uk to 195.62.28.175.
DNS is normally allocated by default by our routers and is set to use our ISP DNS Servers (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/dns.htm) although they can be manually set to which ever ones you like.
However when you log onto say the BT domain - because its a restricted domain, your normal (ISP) DNS server cant be contacted to send back the conversion from human to computer readable format and why we have to use the IP address.
The fact that you couldn't navigate to that page using the web address but could using the IP address indicates that yes youre on IPStream and the only reason why you couldnt view the page previously was because your (AOL?) DNS server couldnt be contacted to fetch a result.
The above is a simplified version but hope it makes sense.
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thanks Kitz
i really appreciate you taking the time to explain things so i can understand ;D
i have a one more day on my 10 day training period before i go to war with AOL lol
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Good luck ;D
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I've kinda of noticed something else today...
when my ip profile was 5000 the best throughput speed i could get was about 3996 (1000 less than ip profile)
my ip profile dropped to 4500 on saturday, since then my best throughput speed has been about 3500 (again 1000 less than ip profile)
dunno if this means anything or why it might be.
AOL insist that my account is not capped in any way
I have been unable to do a bt performance test for last two days, it just keeps coming up with busy error, i asked someone else to try it and they came up with the same problem, so i dont know if my ip profile is still 4500 or not
Lis
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Its fairly normal for your throughput speed to be slightly less than your IP profile.. but I wouldnt expect it to be that much since the IP profile already makes an allowance for ATM and some other overheads.
With an IP profile of 7150 I have on occasions actually recorded 7.1Mbps several times.
When BTw adjust your IP profile, then the ISP is advised so that they can also apply any needed changes at their end too.
>> I have been unable to do a bt performance test for last two days, it just keeps coming up with busy error,
It does often seem to go through phases of this. Best time to try is normally during the mornings. Evenings its most likely to be busy.