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Author Topic: Slow Download speeds  (Read 23412 times)

glen_m_32

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Slow Download speeds
« on: December 02, 2008, 11:26:53 PM »

HI,

I have been reading this site for a few months and love it, but now i am calling for some help. the history of my problem is.....

I was originally with SkyBB Connect 8mb but never once received a speed anywhere near that speed, at tops i would get 600kbps. all seems ok, but i am 1.6km(road length, 800m as the crow flies) from the exchange. Because of that, i changed to bt in hope of more speed. but it fluctuates so badly no matter what time of day of night i have tested it (usually between 130kbps-6.5mbps). my set up is this, Home HUb Version 2 plugged directly in the master socket (only socket in the whole house), currently i am using an ADSLNation Filter faceplate (also tried normal filter in test socket). i have PS3 wired, a G wireless laptop and an N wireless pc. i can transfer files from all Machines extremely quickly but the internet is still slow. I have tried speeptester.bt.com and have a Ipprofil of 7000kbps and i get an actual throughput of between 500-5998kbps. BUT i also use all the speedtests on Kitz site and they all never go above 2mbps, see speed test at the bottom of my post.

my line states are as follows (11.20pm)
Line state Connected
Connection time 0 days, 3:39:33
Downstream 8,064 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps


ADSL settings
VPI/VCI 0/38
Type PPPoA
Modulation ITU-T G.992.1
Latency type Interleave
Noise margin (Down/Up) 10.8 dB / 24.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 26.0 dB / 16.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.1 dBm
Loss of Framing (Local) 35
Loss of Signal (Local) 3
Loss of Power (Local) 0
FEC Errors (Down/Up) 204 / 0
CRC Errors (Down/Up) 6 / 2147480001
HEC Errors (Down/Up) 4 / 0
Error Seconds (Local) 113

Does anything look out of place? any indication of a problem?

I know this is long and has alot of info but i have tried to steer clear of asking as you do such a lot of work of others and i did not want to bother you but this has got enough. 1.5gb ps3 game can take up to 11 hours to download.

Thank you so much in advanced.

Glen (edited to add speed test results)

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dave.m

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2008, 11:42:55 PM »

Hi Glen,
Welcome to the forums.
As you have probably noticed at the top of the page, we have just had a down time for scheduled maintainance on the servers, so some of the boffins will probably have gone for a pint and may not be back for a while.
You will get a response with some comments from someone either later tonight or in the morning.

I see you used Maidenhead for a speed test on Speedtest.net
You will get a more accurate result if you click on the next pyramid to it, named Lomdon.
See this post about Virgins tests of testers:
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=3612.0

dave
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roseway

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2008, 07:37:09 AM »

Hi Glen

Your connection figures are fine, but there's an oddity in the error figures. Your connection is shown as interleaved, yet the router reports very high CRC errors and hardly any FEC errors. I'm going to assume that the router is reporting these figures wrongly, and the figures should be the other way round. If that's the case, and your IP profile is 7000, then there's nothing wrong with your connection.

As Dave says, you can't always believe speed testers, and the one you used does sometimes give strange results. The Thinkbroadband speed tester is one of the better ones. However, putting this aside, the reason for the low download speeds is going to be ISP traffic management and/or congestion, and unfortunately there's not much you can do about those things other than change ISP. If you look at the BT section of this page you'll see that BT reduce speeds in various ways depending on your usage and the time of day.
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  Eric

glen_m_32

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2008, 08:02:28 AM »

thank you for your very quick responses.

If i noticed a slow down in the evenings i would beleave it was BT throttling, but the fact that i done a speed test this morning at 6.15ish and my speed was aweful. To be fair i can not imagine traffic would have been an issue. I also downloaded the test file from btopenworld.com/speedtest and it went at 1.2mbps for about 5 seconds then dropped down to ~30kbps. Is 240-500kbps acceptable for a off peak period consider my line stats?

I would love to change ISP's but my exchange (EMWARBY) is not LLU'd yet and we do not get Virgin Media. i also tested that theory by changing from Sky to BT without any improvement. As for the CRC errors, the reporting of 2147480001 is apparently a fault with the home hub version 2.

thanks again

Glen



ps i will from more tests tonight when i get home work but they are all fairly similar
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roseway

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2008, 08:10:16 AM »

Are you a heavy user? If so, your connection may be throttled at any time of the day. The other thing which occurs is MTU/RWIN, and this page might be helpful.
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  Eric

glen_m_32

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2008, 08:18:54 AM »

i will have a read of that page, thank you.

I am not a heavy user, i have not got any P2P, no iplayer nothing like that. our average usage a day is 3hours of emails and internet shopping. The PS3 can sometimes download a big file that is not usually bigger that 1.6gb and that is very infrequent, once every 2-3 months.

I really appreciate all your help and have resorted to asking as a last resort.

Thanks

Glen
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HPsauce

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2008, 09:24:00 AM »

Just a thought - what OS are you running?
If it's XP have you done any TCP optimization (MTU/RWIN) recently?
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glen_m_32

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2008, 09:46:30 AM »

i am running XP home on two machines and PS3 operating system. I have done some TCP settings recently. BUT the guide on this site offers slightly different MTU settings. I used 1500. i will follow the guide on here to the T tonight and see what happens. But would that affect all 3 machines?
« Last Edit: December 03, 2008, 10:04:34 AM by glen_m_32 »
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kitz

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #8 on: December 03, 2008, 11:47:29 AM »

Hi

As eric says, that line looks perfectly fine, and you should be getting much higher speeds at least some point of the day.

Since you can never get above 2Mb, and your IP profile is set at 7000 which is correct for your sync speed, it would appear that the fault lies with the ISP.

I'm wondering if the ISP by mistake has the account set at 2Mb on their systems by mistake.

It may be worthwhile grabbing a copy of Netmeter.
Installing it on one of the PCs.
Make sure no other traffic is on the network (turn other PCs off)
The go grab a download file from either Zen or BT and monitor the throughput speed.

If it totally flatlines somewhere just under the 2Mb mark, then theres a strong possibility that the ISP has your account set at 2Mb.
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HPsauce

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #9 on: December 03, 2008, 12:07:08 PM »

Sorry, not awake earlier, Roseway had already asked re TCP  :-X
The ISP is BT retail reading between the lines...... do they "cap" throughput?
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kitz

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #10 on: December 03, 2008, 12:18:45 PM »

Not sure TBH..  but they will (as most ISPs) have the means to do so.

What Im not sure about is if BTr cap inline with the IPprofile like a lot of other ISPs do.  Its possible (and you sometimes see this happen even with the likes of Enta and Plusnet), whereby a profile increase isnt acted upon. 

Its not clear in these cases whether its a Delta report thats not been generated by BTw, or if for some reason the ISP 'missed it' and therefore not increased it on their side.  From reports Ive seen from Enta/Plusnet - it would appear than very occasionally the ISP doesnt seem to receive notification report from BTw.   

ATM it seems like this line is still capped at 2Mb..  which is the default profile for a newly maxed line.   Because Im not sure if/how BTr act on their delta reports I cant be certain...  but it could be a possibility.  My guess if a download file flatlines at 2Mb all the way..  then its something on the ISP system that hasnt been updated.
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glen_m_32

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #11 on: December 03, 2008, 12:25:26 PM »

hi kitz,

there is certainly no spyware/virii/malware etc,  i will use netmeter to double check my transfer rates, i already used it to monitor the speed of my network whilst setting up my pc as a media server for the PS3. Llike i said in my first post, my speed does reach 6.5mbps but that happens once every few months for all of 2 mins.

is there a possiblity that my phone line could be damaged and causing it slow?

FYI, when i start a download of any of the test files the speed starts about 800kBps then drops rapidly to 40 - 220kBps. i have seen it a few time as low as 4.5kBps.

thanks again

Glen
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kitz

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #12 on: December 03, 2008, 12:44:08 PM »

>> there is certainly no spyware/virii/malware etc,

When I was saying make sure the other pcs are switched off - I wanted to ensure that none of them were using any bandwidth which could sway the results you were seeing on netmeter.

>> is there a possiblity that my phone line could be damaged and causing it slow?

Not  really - otherwise your sync speed and IP profile would be slow.   Your throughput speed should more or less follow your IPprofile.  Theres a few cases when it wont, but thats to do with high error rates, and eventually the line would drop out, which I dont think is the case here.

If its being capped by the ISP then I'd expect it to look something like the image below (which is actually a screen cap from a stuck 2Mb bRAS profile - but the results would be similar). 






[attachment deleted by admin]
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glen_m_32

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #13 on: December 03, 2008, 02:02:15 PM »

Hi Kit, you are very efficient!

If i was capped, would it mean there was no chance that i could get over 2mbps, even at the start of some files when i get about 6mbps for a few seconds then it drops down to 2mbps?

thank you

glen
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kitz

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Re: Slow Download speeds
« Reply #14 on: December 03, 2008, 04:03:26 PM »

hmmm. if youre seeing the speeds for a few seconds then no.

Sometimes you may see a very slight blip of higher speeds at the beginning when downloading a file, but this is very brief and I believe it has something to do with the browser starting to cache the file before saving to a specific location. 
If its happening for a few seconds I really dont know, it could be something to do with ellacoya profiling which BTr do use?

Would be interesting if you could provide a screen grab. I'd like to see how consistent or variable the speed is.
Below is a now old screen grab but shows a line being restricted to 2Mbps downloads due to ellacoya profiling on type of traffic. As you will see it peaks and troughs slightly, but overall the restriction was 2Mbps.

You can also get spikes that are all over the place, which may be down to contention/congestion.

Best thing is if possible to post so I can have a look - I'm not promising anything but just sometimes it does give a clue.



[attachment deleted by admin]
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