Your broadband speed - post here

[Wanyal]

Sky, 40Mb, In Bucks

[DaveLEL]

BT
Odd ping time has to be more than that !

but seems consistent

[heinsmit]

This thread just prompted me to do a speed test... on BT Infinity I'm only getting 20Mb. What gives?

[Macadee]

[deejayburnout]

This thread just prompted me to do a speed test... on BT Infinity I'm only getting 20Mb. What gives?

What is your quoted speed?

40 or 80?

[heinsmit]

80, went downstairs and tried and got 40 Mb, closer to router obviously but still not ideal.

Did the test on the website and should be getting 67-80 according to the estimate.

[csgohan4]

Bt infinity are pants, 62 sometimes and usually 20 after 4pm on Speed test, leaving them soon

[heinsmit]

Who can compete in speed and price?

[csgohan4]

I find Sky is reliable, i don't have Sky because they are not available, but thankfully they are in the place I am moving too.

Virgin, Plusnet and Talk talk have Traffic managament, BT used to have it and have done away with it, but I find it is still extremely slow during peak times after 4pm which is silly, it's a stealth traffic management.

Sky I have had no problems, they are also a bit cheaper

[heinsmit]

The lack of traffic management was part of my decision to get BT but as you say, seems to be done in a different guise.

BT Sport is also a factor

[csgohan4]

Problem with BT as well is their paid Freeview is a scam, it would be cheaper to subscribe to NOW tv and you get more chanels than BT. Glorified Freeview I say

[deejayburnout]

Not seen any traffic management with my Plusnet account. I have used about 600gb per month and no issues with slow down.

[heinsmit]

I'll have a look at Plusnet for sure - I'm going to try to avoid companies that do anything but broadband.

[watercooled]

Virgin now have very little in the way of traffic management; it only affects upload and it's nowhere near as draconian as it once was.

However, traffic management often serves a purpose to encourage people to do their bulk downloads at a time when the network will be less congested, and means people constantly saturating the network will have less of an impact on everyone else. Consequently, I've noticed some fairly severe peak-time congestion on Virgin that I hadn't noticed previously, so rather than just affecting the outliers, the congestion now affects everyone on the node.

What you're experiencing on BT may simply be congestion of some sort, not necessarily BT just trying to annoy you. I have friends on BT FTTC and they claim nothing of the sort. There are ways to get a rough idea which it may be: throttling will generally give you a fairly flat download speed when graphed, and ping time similar to off-peak. Congestion OTOH generally gives a more erratic download speed and often higher ping, although the latter is also related to how the ISP has QoS set up; ICMP may be prioritised or put at the back of the queue, so it's not a reliable way of testing.

News flash: ALL ISPs, or any large network for that matter, will have some form of QoS implemented to prevent catastrophic problems under conditions like link saturation. Some ISPs may be open about it (e.g. Plusnet), others may not mention it, but there's no getting away from it, whether or not you have an UNLIMITED*** plan. It's just the nature of providing residential broadband at a reasonable cost i.e. at some point along the line you will be sharing bandwidth with other users. If you want guaranteed bandwidth in the ISP's network, you pay about £1000 per month plus installation charges for a leased line. But then there's still no guarantee the network you're downloading from won't be congested.

Plusnet actually give a fairly good description of it, and why it is necessary. But don't kid yourself into thinking any residential ISP is free of it, just because they're not open about it. It's a combination of accepting you're not actually paying for a constant speed, and a bit of luck to find an ISP that might be less congested in your area.

Something else to bear in mind - one cause of speed issues on FTTC is crosstalk, which would affect any ISP using that infrastructure i.e. anyone providing FTTC, so it might be worth investigating before switching and tying yourself into another contract.

[heinsmit]

Virgin now have very little in the way of traffic management; it only affects upload and it's nowhere near as draconian as it once was.

However, traffic management often serves a purpose to encourage people to do their bulk downloads at a time when the network will be less congested, and means people constantly saturating the network will have less of an impact on everyone else. Consequently, I've noticed some fairly severe peak-time congestion on Virgin that I hadn't noticed previously, so rather than just affecting the outliers, the congestion now affects everyone on the node.

What you're experiencing on BT may simply be congestion of some sort, not necessarily BT just trying to annoy you. I have friends on BT FTTC and they claim nothing of the sort. There are ways to get a rough idea which it may be: throttling will generally give you a fairly flat download speed when graphed, and ping time similar to off-peak. Congestion OTOH generally gives a more erratic download speed and often higher ping, although the latter is also related to how the ISP has QoS set up; ICMP may be prioritised or put at the back of the queue, so it's not a reliable way of testing.

News flash: ALL ISPs, or any large network for that matter, will have some form of QoS implemented to prevent catastrophic problems under conditions like link saturation. Some ISPs may be open about it (e.g. Plusnet), others may not mention it, but there's no getting away from it, whether or not you have an UNLIMITED*** plan. It's just the nature of providing residential broadband at a reasonable cost i.e. at some point along the line you will be sharing bandwidth with other users. If you want guaranteed bandwidth in the ISP's network, you pay about £1000 per month plus installation charges for a leased line. But then there's still no guarantee the network you're downloading from won't be congested.

Plusnet actually give a fairly good description of it, and why it is necessary. But don't kid yourself into thinking any residential ISP is free of it, just because they're not open about it. It's a combination of accepting you're not actually paying for a constant speed, and a bit of luck to find an ISP that might be less congested in your area.

Something else to bear in mind - one cause of speed issues on FTTC is crosstalk, which would affect any ISP using that infrastructure i.e. anyone providing FTTC, so it might be worth investigating before switching and tying yourself into another contract.

Great post, thanks for the info

[HDGamer]