Very slow internet

[#1]

Hi, we've been having intermittently slow internet for a while, and now it has reached the point where it is at a crawl more or less the whole time, and watching any streaming video (e.g. youtube, iplayer) is now completely impossible.
Our broadband product is Plusnet Premium and we have a Belkin wireless router. It reports that it is connected at 3824Kb/448Kb.
I have been using a little utility called Networx to see how much data is coming in. It seems to be in the range of 50-80KB/s most of the time, rarely getting above 100, even when downloading from sites that ought to be able to push data faster.
Broadband speed checker reports 736Kbps upload and 371Kbps download
I haven't been able to find any way of getting thorough stats out of my router, although with a "hidden page" url, I can get the following info:
Noise Margin: 22 dB upstream, 10 dB downstream
Attenuation: 48 dB upstream, 38dB downstream
I've got some new ASDL filters and cables on order to try out which should hopefully arrive soon. We already have ADSL filters fitted on each of our sockets (3 of them).
I guess I'm either experiencing some kind of throttling (although seems well below what I should get on my package), or there is a line problem?
Any pointers to how I can further diagnose this would be gratefully received.
thanks
Mark

[#2]

Hi mark with that synching i think you should be getting 3mbps download but im no expert just a customer.How olds your belkin?have you tried a different router?

[#3]

Hi Mark,
There's a lot of Belkin models (and versions) around, on mine I just click on 'ADSL Status' in the 'Internet Settings' section of the Home Page, this gives me plenty of stats (though mine reports 'Fast Path' on a connection that other routers report as 'Interleaved' and the errors are all '0'), it does correctly report upstream attenuation and noise margin (both up and down) to the nearest integer.
If you post the exact model and vesion (from the sticker underneath) I guess somebody can advise if you can access more stats.

[#4]

hi,
my router is a Belkin F5D7632-4 version 6011uk
interestingly this morning I measured my best connection speed ever - 1.53Mbps download, 0.38Mbs upload, although it is normally in the evenings that I use the internet, so I'm not sure that my problems have gone away just yet. I'll do some more tests this evening.
Mark

[#5]

Mark,
Even if your filters are fine and fitted in all the right places it is possible that the extensions are causing some loss of speed. To check this what you need to do is to put a filter in to the test socket inside the master socket (this will disable the extensions) and plug the router in to that without a phone; then look at the sync speed, noise margin and attenuation. If the sync speed is raised and/or the noise margin is reduced more investigation of what is going on is required; if they are pretty much the same all your internal extension wiring looks OK.

[#6]

thanks, I'll do the master socket test when my new cables and filters arrive.
I was off work this morning, so was able to do a few speed tests during the day. The results surprised me. I got some quite good connection speeds during the morning, but this evening, the speed has dropped right off again.
08:14 1.53Mbps

08:30 2.90Mbps

10:52 1.40Mbps

12:18 0.67 Mbps

12:52 0.88 Mbps

17:57 1.62 Mbps

19:37 0.11Mbps

20:26 0.13Mbps

does that make any sense? is it likely to be a wiring issue if it is time dependent?
Mark

[#7]

That could be exchange contention - have you checked?

[#8]

thanks,
how would I check for exchange contention?
Mark

[#9]

I'm having similar issues to yourself, I'm connecting at 11000 but rarely get above 500kbps on any speedtest (including the BT speed tester logged directly into the BT realm). Oddly, I get ~6.5Mbps (every so often day) then it falls back to the usual < 500kbps quickly.


I am connected into the test socket with no other devices (phones, PCs, ...) attached.
I wondered if it was exchange contention too but apparently my exchange is green.  (You can find out here http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/).
Have you tried the BT speed tester (http://speedtester.bt.com/)?  Do you get poor performance?
I have an open ticket currently sitting with support, which hopefully will result in an Engineer visit.
T

[#10]

thanks for the link, my exchange (Woolston) is showing green as well.
I can't run the BT speed tester:
"The Performance Tester is currently unable to run a speed test for your broadband connection. Please try again shortly, however if this problem persists, raise the issue with your service provider. "

[#11]

@btharper,
That fault will get raised to BT, as you've fallen below the minimum speed expected. We'll see what they say from there, but hopefully we can get it sorted for you.
@markheath,
I'm unable to run a line check at the moment, but it definitely looks to be a fault.

[#12]

Note the exchange checker only shows 20CN congestion not congestion for 21CN (ADSL2+) I believe.

[#13]

Thanks Mand - I hope so too. 🙂
I've been running a few pings to the PlusNET gateway I am connected to:

ping -t lo0-plusnet.pcl-ag04.plus.net

... and I've been seeing some packet loss.  Is this to be expected?
I assume pings may get dropped so this may be misleading.
T

[#14]

Just got an update on my support ticket (30883940).
I've been asked to run the bt speed tests again, do i really need to?  I have run over 20 such tests since I raised the ticket on the 22/11 and a high percentage are below the acceptable threshhold (as specified on the third BT test).
Any chance one of the PlusNET guys could look into speeding this along a little?
Thanks,
Theo

[#15]

I tried again to run the BT speed tester and it wanted a login and password. What do I use here? Is this my plusnet router login?