Ticket #53188667 - Connection less than half of sync speed

[#1]

Hi faulknerm88,
As I said in the ticket, I placed your account on the pro profile yesterday, which has no rate limits. If there was something wrong with the pro profile we'd have have all our pro customers complaining they were restricted. This would suggest that we are not restricting you in any way. I wish I had an idea about what could be causing this, and I have consulted a number of senior people here about the potential cause and we've still not been able to come up with a possible reason for it.
I realise this is not the answer you are looking for but having thoroughly investigated our systems, I'm afraid it's the only one I have.
Jojo

[#2]

I'm not suggesting that there's a problem with the Pro profile - as you say, if this was the case then it would no doubt affect a lot of customers.
However, there is definitely a problem with my connection, otherwise as you say there would not be a restriction (as you've applied the unrestricted Pro profile).
I'm not happy that I'm currently being billed for, and paying for, a service which I'm not able to make full use of.

Where do we go from here?

[#3]

Quote

Where do we go from here?

I can see that there has been much discussion about trying to eliminate a traffic management issue here which I'm confident we have done now.
I'm curious to know what your over all connection speeds are like at the moment as I can't see that that's been looked at yet. Do let us know because we are happy to help.
Also have you tried eliminating your hardware from the issue by trying another router?
Adam

[#4]

Hi Adam,
Thanks for your response.
Normal web downloads appear to be at close to my line speed all of the time. If I download a file from a web server, I see anywhere between 10Mbps and 15Mbps, which is fine. This is also backed up by speed tests which are showing a throughput in that sort of region.
I have replaced all hardware elements at my end - different router, different client machines, different cables (even isolating the connection entirely from the rest of my network - so it was just a single router and computer).
I have also tried carrying out the same downloads using a different internet connection, where I see the correct speeds as expected. I have done this using a different client machine in a different location and also using the same client machine (a laptop) at my work location, using my employers internet connection. When the laptop is at home, the speeds are restricted to the sub 500Kbps I showed earlier in this thread. When it is at work, I see in excess of 10Mbps on the same file downloads, from the same servers.

Appreciate your continued efforts.

[#5]

Totally off the wall: have you tried different MTU settings?

[#6]

Good call, that's something I haven't tried!
Still in the office at the moment, but heading home shortly so will have a tinker. Any suggestions as to what may work/help?
Cheers.

[#7]

I'd suggest trying lowering the setting on the router and if you are using XP the PC. If somewhere along the path it's only handing smaller packets and is therefore fragmenting them it would double the number of packets.

[#8]

The router setting was at 1480 - I have tried altering this between 564 (the min my router will accept) and 1500 (the max), however with little effect - other than a slight slow down at the lower end.

[#9]

Still the same before I left the house this morning.

[#10]

Due to the amount of data you're downloading I'm going to advise that you try to limit your upstream as I want to see if this helps with downstream packets getting through.

[#11]

There shouldn't be a lot of upstream anyway to be honest - I'm not uploading anything of any major size.
Apart from the usual upstream overheads when I'm browsing, all I typically should have is a little remote access from work, although I don't ever download files from my boxes at home (therefore uploading them from home). I also don't use P2P.

Are you seeing much upstream traffic from me, or is this something you're not able to differentiate?
Cheers,

[#12]

Quote

There shouldn't be a lot of upstream anyway to be honest

No problem in that case and no we weren't seeing a lot of upstream traffic.
I'd like to test this out on one of our test lines here. Would you mind firstly giving me some links where you're having a problem downloading from (PM them to me if you prefer) and can we agree on a 1 hour window perhaps between now and 5pm or tomorrow between 9am and 5pm if possible as you'd need to be disconnected for us to do that.
Adam.

[#13]

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_

Quote There shouldn't be a lot of upstream anyway to be honest No problem in that case and no we weren't seeing a lot of upstream traffic.

On some days we're seeing more than 1GB of upstream traffic. That's a significant amount in my book and would suggest more than just web browsing and moderate remote access.

Day	Uploaded (MB)
1	40.3103
2	337.1165
3	1505.6460
4	672.5046
5	1168.8002
6	170.6190
7	666.3440
8	82.9362
9	28.5719
10	14.1312
11	6.2885
12	51.9220
13	38.7326
14	127.7985
15	77.9861
16	33.9473
17	15.6329
18	11.3548
19	13.5400
20	506.6768
21	1106.8396
22	525.8707

[#14]

Hi Adam,
As it's USENET (NNTP) traffic, there is no specific link as such.
I could send you a link to download an NZB file, however you'd still need access to a client and a USENET server in order to download the actual file using the NZB - do you have this? In fact, do Plusnet still provide a NNTP service? If so, it may be possible for us to try it out using that?
Anytime 9-5 either today or tomorrow is fine for you to disconnect me for a while in order to try it out.

Bob - do you have a breakdown of what protocols the upstream traffic is on? As, apart from NNTP downloads, the only use I've had from my connection during the past month has been browsing, streaming and remote access. Last month, when my partner was living with me, she did use P2P and also online gaming, however I don't.

Cheers,

[#15]

Plusnet do still have the server usenet.plus.net but it doesn't have binaries so that won't help here.
Have you been able to prove if the slowdown occurs on different servers?