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[Helpneedadvice]

I know a few months back there were quite a few complaints about the extent of Eclipse's traffic shaping, but I thought they were mostly to have this under control when they brought out their new packages last month...  Just a thought - you arent on one of the Evo packages are you?

No I don't think so - I'm on "Home option 1", I believe.

I suggest that you try the MTU/RWIN values suggested by Kitz, even if just to eliminate that as a cause of the low throughput. Otherwise it's down to congestion or throttling, with the latter being more likely I think, so you'll need to raise it (again) with your ISP.

That will be my next step after i get the results of the ISPs tests. What might they be testing for, do you know?

[Helpneedadvice]

Hi again folks

My ISP is going to disconnect me for " 30 mins testing" of my line hopefully later today. Meanwhile, i typed my exchange into the exchange checker and it came up with:


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: 26 Jun 08

Could this be the cause of my throughput problems? However, it only mentions "during busy times" and some of my problems were off-peak.

[roseway]

The red virtual paths won't help, but I think it's unlikely that this would explain the severity of the slowdowns.

[kitz]

Echoing Erics comments - although the red VPs wont help - theres more to it than just exchange congestion.

Obviously I dont know for sure, but it seems like some form of throttling for it to be so slow.
Is there a possibility that you have exceeded a FUP?  Your ISP should be able to check that.

Ive also just had a quick scan around a few places..  and as mentioned in my post above - it would appear that users on the "old Eclipse packages" still appear to be getting some pretty slow speeds. This was immediately resolved by Eclipse transferring them on to the new products that they released last month.

Be careful if you ask them to do that though - make sure the new packages suit you.. and also make sure that they dont lock you into another new contract.
It wont harm to ask them something like "In view of the appallingly low speeds would it be possible to temporarily - and without any penalty or changes to my contract- swap me over to one of the new profiles just to make sure its not throttling at your end."

A decent ISP should do that if asked.
I had some speed problems earlier this year, and my ISP swapped my profile over to another account type just to make sure.   My speeds werent even anywhere near as low as yours but they were happy to do so just for a couple of days for the sake of elimination.

[Helpneedadvice]

HI guys - thanks for the tips. I'm still waiting on the ISP results. So far they just told me they weren't happy with the speeds they got from their results and are doing further tests, so I'm waiting to hear from them.

[kitz]

Good luck and hopefully you will hear something soon
Please let us know how it goes

[Helpneedadvice]

Hi folks - my ISP have come back and said the slow throughput speeds they got during testing are something to do with an issue with my "connection username" as "The speeds shown from our testing of your account do not match up with testing of other connections on the same package as yours." Not sure what this means - any ideas? How can problems with my username slow down my throughput? Surely I'm either logged on correctly or I'm not?

They are investigating with their infrastructure department apparantly and i may need a temporary username while it is sorted out

[roseway]

Frankly it sounds like gibberish to me, but maybe what they meant was simply that there's some issue with the way your particular account is set up at their end.

[kitz]

>> an issue with my "connection username"

Hmm .. 
Your username is used to authenticate you on to the Eclipse RADIUS, and is also by what they will allocate your "profile".  If the connection username was wrong then it wouldnt authenticate you on to their systems at all?

If your account had been allocated an incorrect profile then it should be a simple task for them to change that. 

I could be totally wrong, but to me it sounds more like there is perhaps something wrong with the their profiles (on the older accounts)... and I wouldnt be surprised if the "temporary user-name" had a profile for one of their new types of accounts.
... or knowing how bad the old Evo throttling is - wondering if there is a shortage of bandwidth allocation for the old type accounts?
Either way issuing you with another type of account solves your problem in the meantime until they get a fix..  and it shuts you up.

[Helpneedadvice]

Hi again folks! Story getting even more bizarre: ISP sent me an email today saying they needed to call a BT engineer out to check my line & asking me to call in to them with available times. I was confused to say the least!  Called in, guy who answered phone was as confused as me, he went away & made some enquiries and called me back. BT engineer not needed after all - email was sent to me in error!

In an embarrassed voice he told me that as a result of the Friday tests that they did, by logging on as me, they have discovered that the throughput problem is definitely internal to them and that it "doesn't happen very often that it is down to them, but this time it is and er... that I must have been very unlucky". That it had been escalated to their infra-structure dept. I asked if this was to do with my profile setup (as per Kitz's suggestion - I'm a good blagger as I am well out of my depth here!) and he replied "um.. it's not for me to say...but it could be" but "we are looking into it" and "we need to sort it out with some urgency!" He seemed to want to get off the phone before I asked any more questions, so now it has got me very curious...

I am now wondering how long I might have had this throughput problem going on exactly. When would my "profile" with them have been set up - would this be when I last changed my package with them?

I'd be grateful if someone could help clarify what exactly this ISP "profile" consists of so I have more info and at least sound more like I know what I'm talking about when discussing it with them?  (This is different from BT's IP profile obviously.) I presume that it has something to do with bandwidth and throttling at certain times of day?  Is there more to it than that? How does it work? Why would it be particularly bad on a Tuesday morning at 6:30am, but better on a Wednesday?

[roseway]

ISPs can control your throughput in all sorts of ways, and this is generally referred to as 'traffic management'. They will have a profile for each customer which specifies how that customer's traffic is managed. It looks as though your profile is wrongly set up for the package which you pay for. I find it very difficult to believe that correcting this should take very long.

[kitz]

>> I find it very difficult to believe that correcting this should take very long

Agreed - hence my confusion as to whats going on.
If it was that much of a problem, then IMHO they should transfer the customer to one of their new packages without any penalty.

I dont know how much you are paying atm, and how that price would compare to their new packages.
but iirc unless you go for the 1GB account then the new packages may be a little bit more expensive?
All that I am aware of is that many of their "old" customers have seen immediate speed improvements once transfered on to the new type accounts. Are you still in a contract period?

When I say old customers I must stress I mean those on the Evolution package getting less than 1Mbps throughput immediately increasing to more or less full line speed.
It would appear there is still a problem with the Evo accounts and Eclipse are very aware that speeds on this type of account are much lower than they should be.. and they are still "tweaking".

However I dont honestly know how it is affecting the old "Home Accounts" and if they have been caught up in it too. The other thing is they have moved some of their customers to tiscali datastream to try and "free up" some bandwidth..  which can bring problems in itself :/

[Helpneedadvice]

I pay £15/month for a 2 GB allowance (and £6/m on top for all my phone calls!) . (However with all the speedtests they've been requesting lately, I've had to pay for a lot more GBs over the top of my normal usage the last few months). A 10GB allowance on a new home package from them is currently £18/m. I've never had a contract period with them. I joined back in the days when they were rated in the top 3 and they had a policy that they didn't lock you in back then as once you were with them, you would never want to leave   

I was put on Tiscali equipment around 2 years ago by them and that's when my problems first started. As a result, I started having loads of dropouts which they eventually fixed after several months. Just recently, as a result of the first part of this fault,  they have moved me back to the BT equipt.

Been looking at ADSL24 - they offer a 3GB peak, 30GB off peak package for £16.50 and are highly rated on the DSLZone website. It's the hassle of changing my email address everywhere that stops me moving easily. With eclipse, you lose it virtually the minute you leave. However, now that BT are offering all calls for a similar figure (which was my other tie-in), i may well consider moving. Just gotta get the hundreds of places that i'm registered to reset set to a non-ISP email address first I guess!

[roseway]

I would certainly recommend getting an ISP-independent email account, and the sooner the better. And also consider registering your own domain with a company like 123-reg to give you total independence from lock-in. This costs next to nothing (£6.56 for two years the last time I renewed mine) and allows you to keep email addresses of the form anyone@yourdomain.co.uk however much you swap your actual email accounts about.

[kitz]

I was thinking about the "connection username" change, and last night the only logical reason I could think for that is:

Eclipse have purchased some more bandwidth, BUT are allocating this "pipe" only to those users on the new type accounts.

When you log-in the RADIUS authenticates the username and can be set to direct some types of accounts to certain centrals.  Normally most ISPs will allow a user to use any of their central pipes that are available.  However the RADIUS can be set so that different login domains are sent to specific pipes.
To do this the ISP has to set up different login domains in order to make sure that they are sent to a specific pipe.

For example when Ive done ISP testing in the past I would be issued with a different login name for eg  me@myISP1.net takes me on to their normal centrals.  me@myISP2.net takes me via different routing out on to the internet. Yet both logins are tied up to the same account with the same ISP.
When you mentioned it first, I think I was focusing on "the username" and didnt make the connection at the time with the login-domain which is the bit after the @ that changes

If Eclipse are allocating the additional bandwidth only to the new type accounts then it so makes sense that by changing your login domain (not account name) that in effect you are being put onto their new pipes which probably has plenty of spare bandwidth capacity.

Thinking about it - it fully explains why users on the old type accounts are seeing very slow speeds (the old pipes are full) yet their new accounts are fine.
I strongly suspect they were offering you a change of login domain when they said a change of "connection username" which in turn should bring your speeds back to normal. 



>> Been looking at ADSL24 - are highly rated on the DSLZone website.

Just a note
- Both sites are owned by the same person.
- Be aware of the Enta ALT