Broadband: Consumer Advice

[BobF64]

Biggest kicker is that AWE (Atomic Weapons Engineering) are 400yds behind my house and, unsurprisingly, they *definitely* get everything!!

They probably arent using DSL or Cable.

If youre paying for it, you can get some exceedingly fast stuff, but its not cheap.

[Ttaskmaster]

They probably arent using DSL or Cable.

Yeah, they're probably using hyper-secret space-age neural gel lines or something!!

If youre paying for it, you can get some exceedingly fast stuff, but its not cheap.

Apparently not... I did ask how much it would cost for them to lay fibre lines to the cabinet or property but even when I said money was no object and I'd be paying for the whole village to be connected, they simply told me, "That isn't a service we are able to offer at this time".

[BobF64]

Apparently not... I did ask how much it would cost for them to lay fibre lines to the cabinet or property but even when I said money was no object and I'd be paying for the whole village to be connected, they simply told me, "That isn't a service we are able to offer at this time".

Ahh no, persuading someone to lay fibre is one thing, although some place up in the north did it iirc.

What you could get is something like the BTnet Leased Line, those are pricey and fast, BTs site says theyre available in speeds between 2Mbps and 10Gbps. Thats 1:1, uncontended and symmetrical.

Looking at their pricing examples, because theres several factors involved in the cost, a 100Mbps line, 5 year contract, is only a mildly wallet lightening £667 (ex VAT) per month. But hey, its all yours!

[Spud1]

I've even carried out the tests on different computers, tried different routers...

4MB/s is actually a pretty darn fast speed and is good for fibre. Your Theoretical top speed is 8MB/s, if you have no congestion in your area, there is no load on the network, your phone line is in good condition (and made of copper), and crucially you are on a gigabit WIRED network with a decent network card.

Realistic speeds will vary between 2 and 6MB/s, although you may see 8 overnight when its really quiet.
I have a very similar connection and the above is based both on logic/fact, and also on my personal experience.

If I had to put money on the cause, I would suggest its a combination of your phone line quality (most likely internal wiring) and general load on the network. BT won't agree there is an issue as you've found.

Also, which Hub have you got? If its a HH4 then that may well be your issue, its terrible. Get hold of a HH3 or HH5 and you'll have a faster, more reliable connection anyway. What does the official BT speed test site say? As others have mentioned, game download services can be awful for download speeds and are not a good indicator.

edit: I must be getting old, I can't get my head around 4MB/s being SLOW! Wasn't long ago I was super excited at how fast my new 56kbps modem was (approx 5 KB/s download speed). Ah the days when a 120ms ping was a good thing

[MrRockliffe]

When living in Spain I was used to 0.5 down so, yes, it's not slow, but it's not what I'm paying for also.

BT's site suggests a speed of 67 down (Mb). Steam, origin etc have always been reliable download speed indicators for me, often providing greater throughput than a torrent.

I'm using a HH5 wireless on the 5GHz frequency (I've split the SSIDs so I can force the two different frequencies). Even on wired, however, I'm receiving the same results, so as you've stated, lower speeds must be as a result of external factors.

[Ttaskmaster]

4MB/s is actually a pretty darn fast speed and is good for fibre.

Is that 4MB/s actually megabits (Mb), or megabytes (MB)?

The national average is apparently now pushing 16-20Mb/s (which is why I'm so upset at only getting 0.5-0.7), although a nearby friend of mine gets a consistent 75+Mb/s.

If you're getting actual megabytes of speed, I wll be stunned... and looking to move in next door!!

[BobF64]

I get between 6 and 8 MegaBytes per second in Steam, in general, BUT if there are large new releases, speeds do drop to 4 or less.

This is on Fibre, syncing at roughly 74/19.

[barker967]

Just a quick thought on BT users getting slower than expected speeds on the fibre service. I recently had plusnet fibre installed and was quoted to get 77mb down and 16mb up. When the contractor working for kelly communications installed the fibre Modem and the plusnet router i was disappointed to find i was only getting 24meg, which then dropped down to 7.

After phoning plusnet and arranging for a proper BT engineer to come out, it turned out the contractor had put in the wrong Modem. They have 2, one for FTTC and one for FTTH. I cant remember which one had been put into my flat, but the BT guy swapped them and hey presto, i had 77meg down and 17meg up.

If anyone has a similar type of issue it may be worth looking into.

[Spud1]

Is that 4MB/s actually megabits (Mb), or megabytes (MB)?
The national average is apparently now pushing 16-20Mb/s (which is why I'm so upset at only getting 0.5-0.7), although a nearby friend of mine gets a consistent 75+Mb/s.
If you're getting actual megabytes of speed, I wll be stunned... and looking to move in next door!!

I currently have a 69 Megabit connection, which gives me a download rate of 4-8 Megabytes per second. The connection speed varies occasionally and will push higher than that. That is pretty typical of a BT infinity/fibre connection

It gets confusing but you don't tend to express connection speed in "per second" - only download/upload speeds, which are different. you can convert roughly between the two by dividing my 8. So my 69MB connection gives me a theortical max download speed of around 8MB/s. Real world I get 4-8 depending on network load/router/switch etc.

[MrRockliffe]

I currently have a 69 Megabit connection, which gives me a download rate of 4-8 Megabytes per second. The connection speed varies occasionally and will push higher than that. That is pretty typical of a BT infinity/fibre connection

It gets confusing but you don't tend to express connection speed in "per second" - only download/upload speeds, which are different. you can convert roughly between the two by dividing my 8. So my 69MB connection gives me a theortical max download speed of around 8MB/s. Real world I get 4-8 depending on network load/router/switch etc.

And ping

[Ttaskmaster]

It gets confusing but you don't tend to express connection speed in "per second" - only download/upload speeds, which are different. you can convert roughly between the two by dividing my 8.

Yep, that works precisely on my recorded performances.
I usually hear about peoples' line doing Mbps, so it always confuses when they then talk about MBps.... or in my case Kbps!!

And ping

My ping is usually good enough, TBH. It's just the line speed that has me wanting to go postal on BT. We're like an island of slow!

[abaxas]

I think (but don't quote me) that FTTC has a 15mbps minimum per connection from cab. This is shared so you still have the issue if you live in a high torrent area

Then you have contention at the exchange, which I understand if the BT standard 50-1.
Then you have another level of contention from pop > internet at large.

I'd be suprized if anyone with residential broadband gets more than 10-20kbps if you averaged it all out. (I know in the old adsl1 days of 512kbps, most ISPs had a ratio so that the per user speed was about 1-2kbps.

But in reality providing openreach have provided you with >15mbps to the cab, they have done all they need to do. If you get 0.00002bytes / sec from a certain website, why should they care, it's a third party.

Noting that speedtests are useless as most isps would natually prioritise that traffic.

Basically what I'm saying is that, you get what you are given! And providing the ISP is giving you >64kbps (ofcom broadband definition) they are not breaking contract.

[shaithis]

Basically what I'm saying is that, you get what you are given!

I prefer to say you get what you pay for!

Having been on 2 previous FTTC suppliers, the move to Zen showed that ALL the problems I had had were not to do with the BT OpenReach infrastructure.
In fact the last switch-over I could move between ISPs for a few days by changing the username/password on my router, on one ISP the slow speeds and disconnects were rife, on the other they were gone.

[abaxas]

I prefer to say you get what you pay for!

Having been on 2 previous FTTC suppliers, the move to Zen showed that ALL the problems I had had were not to do with the BT OpenReach infrastructure.
In fact the last switch-over I could move between ISPs for a few days by changing the username/password on my router, on one ISP the slow speeds and disconnects were rife, on the other they were gone.

I would tend to agree with that. I used to pay for a 40 quid PM for a standard adsl (8bmps) connection via plusnet. Instead of being the elcraaapo residential I went business.

Now I have 2bmps wireless broadband from a local COOP. It works and when it breaks I get to speak with Wendy who tells me what's wrong, how long it's going to take to fix it, then rings me back when it's fixed.

Service is what I need, not ultimate speed.

[abaxas]

EDIT : it's 7.99 PM