Sudden drop in internet speed

[Englander]

Hello all,
the last few days have been strife with problems with my internet. Originally, my BT Homehub (I'm on the BT 8Mb unlimited option) decided to stop working for no obvious reason and we decided we'd buy a shiny new router because I personally had no intention of getting a 4th BT Homehub. So we popped down to the shops and bought a Belkin802.11n router and managed to get it up and running after a few calls to the tech support people. The problem now, though, is that the internet is going phenomenally slow. It's nigh on impossible to do anything - google alone takes about 15 seconds to load and youtube and the iPlayer are a complete joke.



I was wondering if this is more likely to be a problem with BT or if the issue is with the router. Any help, please?

Michael

[nightkhaos]

In all honesty this is not something that will be easily debugged by us. I would recommend calling BT and requesting they look into the issue. Things I would recommend you do first (because they will ask you to do this):

1) Try Restarting your Router
2) Check your ADSL filters are in place everywhere.
3) Try Restarting your Computer
4) Acquire Lenhart Children

[Englander]

In all honesty this is not something that will be easily debugged by us. I would recommend calling BT and requesting they look into the issue. Things I would recommend you do first (because they will ask you to do this):

1) Try Restarting your Router
2) Check your ADSL filters are in place everywhere.
3) Try Restarting your Computer
4) Acquire Lenhart Children

Righto, thanks.

[alsenior]

unplug it for about a day. this will couse your line profile to reset and should bring you back to your normal speed

[nightkhaos]

unplug it for about a day. this will couse your line profile to reset and should bring you back to your normal speed

24 hours without Internets? Are you crazy?

[Zhaoman]

haha

[Bitemarks666]

24 hours without Internets? Are you crazy?

I know how you feel I went 2 months when I moved to my own house but I was up me mam and dads almost everyday

[Englander]

Nice, I'll give this a go over the weekend whilst I'm at my dad's house. It is rather odd as sometimes (like earlier this morning) my internet is running at normal speed but then it drops right back down to ridiculously slow speeds. Still, I'll give the unplugging thing a try.

[Englander]

Well, I left it unplugged over the weekend and it's still very slow :S

Might have to ring BT up

[watercooled]

While you're at it, try disconnecting the bell wire. Apparently some people notice big speed boosts just by doing this. And best of all - it costs nothing!
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/se...radsl.html#235
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

[Paranoid2000]

What speed is your router syncing at? What line stats is it reporting? (e.g. attenuation, signal strength, CRC errors). If the sync speed is low, then that suggests line problems - moving your router to the master socket may help (and do try using the test socket, under the screw-on cover) but if your external phone line is poor, then there is not much any router can do (though some are better at dealing with poor line conditions).

If you are seeing good sync speeds, then something else is causing the problem. Assuming you had a good connection in the past, try changing the method of connection (switching from wireless to wired) and also check that no-one else is swamping your network with traffic (disconnect other PCs and check the router activity lights - also check the router wireless stats pages to see which other PCs have been connected and confirm that they are yours). A high ping value (shown in your Speedtest result) is a good indicator of a congested network.

[v0x]

ADSL2 uses Line Training to establish a BRAS profile for your line - basically, if you have a poor quality line, it'll pick up on it and reduce your speed to increase reliability.

It could be that something has dragged your BRAS profile right down. I've seen thunderstorms do this frequently, as well as broken wires or badly wired sockets. The profiling is done on the exchange side of the line and changing your equipment won't always immediately fix this.

BT will ask you to use http://speedtester.bt.com/ to test your line. Last time I checked if its 512kbps or up, they won't bother to do much, since this is considered acceptable. If you're adamant, they may reset your BRAS profile.

You can, as an early post suggested essentially reset your own BRAS profile by disconnecting your router or modem from the phoneline and unplugging it. Leaving it anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours, and doing a rain dance may help. You're basically attempting to convince the exchange to reset your BRAS profile and start line training from scratch.

If say, it was a thunderstorm that wrecked your profile, then the above, or simply waiting a few days will fix your problem. If its a bad wire, you'll likely find that after unplugging and replugging your router your speeds will increase, only to decrease over the coming few days as your BRAS profile is again adjusted for your line.

As Paranoid2000 correctly notes, you can use metrics such as attenuation, signal strength, CRC errors(or read-solomon errors) to assess the condition of your line in real time. http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm has a good expatiation of these metrics.

Paranoid2000 also correctly notes that it could be that something, somewhere in your house is saturating your connection. If you're running a bittorrent client that's configured to open say, 200 connections, this can, especially on cheaper consumer routers, fill up the devices available memory and cause significant slow downs without actually saturating the connection. It could also be that you have a malware infection somewhere. It's worth checking if any particular device is causing the slowdowns.

Good luck!

[Domestic_Ginger]

Check none of your neighbours are broadcasting on the same channel; was my problem.....