Abysmal Download speed

[#1]

Hi folks,
I have discovered that my download speed as reported by My Broadband speedtest and now BT is now under 500Kbps. The BT test stated that, although my line is capable of 3648Kbps, my IPprofile is limited to 500Kbps. This has been raised with Chris Parr on James'  BSFaults page but without further comment. Certainly BB performance is now slug-like but I detect that alot of others seem to be currently in the same boat. Are BT up to something, are they no longer able to cope with the levels of connection??? Up until  March 1 my (acceptable) speed was around 3000Kbps, rarely different for nearly a year.
colintivy 

[#2]

Colin,
To be fair, a blog about Broadband Speeds isn't really going to be the best way of getting technical support from us
Give me a few and I'll have a look at your line.

[#3]

Colin,
Can you try rebooting your router and running another speedtest please?

[#4]

Hi James,
Thanks for that.
BT (after a lot of stuttering) gave :-
        Connection down rate    3680Kbps
                          up  rate        448Kbps
                          IP Profile    3000Kbps
            Actual IP throughput    867Kbps
My Broadband        Down rate    951Kbps
                                Up rate    375Kbps
Some improvement but still not a sgood as before.

colintivy 

[#5]

Colin - Did you reboot the router?
Those results are what I would expect for your old profile, which was set to 1000Kbps.

[#6]

Hi James,
Yes I did reboot Router as requested.
It Is odd that yesterday the IP Profile was only 500Kbps, now 3000Kbps. System now a bit more lively so far.I will keep an eye on it. After months of reasonability it seems strange that I have had this instability together with so many others from what I have read in your blog and elsewhere.
Action very much appreciated.
colintivy  🙂

[#7]

Hi James,
Since my last post Mybroadband speed has leaped to:-  Down 2885/ UP 376 ! , which is just about what it used to be. Your help now very much appreciated.
colintivy 🙂

[#8]

Good - That's what I'd have hoped for now that the profile has updated

[#9]

Hi James,
Being of a suspicious mind I did a check this morning....MBS  2756 Down 375 Up.  BT  3712 Down  448  Up  IP profile 3000 IP throughput 2623 (all Kbps).
Not so suspicious now!
I am puzzled why my profile got mucked about. I did have a thought that BT were up to something. Was the improvement obtained by your efforts alone?
Still very grateful,
colintivy 🙂 🙂

[#10]

Hi folks,

I have noted discussion in various forums about the pros & cons of leaving ones router:-
                                                          (a) on all the time
                                                          (b) off at night
                                                          (c) on only when wanted
(a) & (c) seemed to revolve about electronic safety vs power cost vs electronic reliability with mixed views. Now I see that advice is now more focussed upon the effect on BT and their manipulation of the performance of the users circuit. I was of the (c) persuasion which also seemed to have a deleterious effect upon the ability to connect by the absence of appropriate addresses on opening up. This was always cured, when apparent, by reconfiguring the interface settings (the subject of posts elsewhere). I have now tried (a) and notice that, so far, I have got on to PN without delay 
Having also been subject to serious downgrading by BT of my connection recently, which appears to have been resolved by James etc., I now note that since leaving my router permanently on, the speeds have reduced somewhat, although not to the same extent as before.  ie  BT Tester =  (07/03/09) 3680/448 IPp 3000  to  1200/448  IPp 2000 yesterday.
Any views???

colintivy 

[#11]

Quote from: Jameseh

Good - That's what I'd have hoped for now that the profile has updated

Hi James,
Sorry to say, we are back to square 1. Connection back to a crawl. BT Test Down 2336/ up 448 IPp 500 Throughput 426, MBS Down 451 UP 375. Rebooted router no change. Note my recent post also (before I checked !!!).
colintivy 😞

[#12]

Hi Colin,
As far as you can tell, are you experiencing drops in connectivity?  That's the likely reason for your profile changes as you'll be resyncing at different speeds following a disconnection.
It's important to make sure that your internal wiring is as good as possible.  By this, I mean to make sure that all of your used telephone sockets are filtered and that your router is connecting to your master socket via a filter.
If we can eliminate the connection drops, we should be able to eliminate the profile changes.

[#13]

when your on a long line the reasoning behind leaving the router on 24/7 is that once you have a gd sync you want to keep it that way.
best time sync(turn on) is midday(daylight) when noise is genraly lower and a better sync is gained.
if your leaving your router on 24/7 now and your profile is going down this is most likely because your router is losing sync overnight and resyncing why noise is high meaning a low sync and reduction in your ip profile.
try pluging your filter into the test socket on the master socket and pluging your router in with out any extension leads and see if your router loses sync overnight for 24/48 hours if it stays rock solid you will need to sort internal wiring out

[#14]

Hi Asbo dog,
Thanks for that. Would you argue that option (b) is more desirable then (a) ? I will try it I think, it seems safer if 24/7 may be causing some difficulty.

As far as checking wiring is concerned, the house does not have the luxury of a posh faceplate/filter/test point. The main socket (such that it is) is by the front door and all my gear is upstairs in a back bedroom. This makes experiments a bit difficult and likely to be subject to adverse comment from management. What is odd is that I have not had this difficulty before after many months of relatively acceptable performance. We are about 2 miles from the exchange with mostly overhead wiring to it but no obvious works have been undertaken to it to my knowledge. Things really went bad in the last week or so and remain so at present. You will see at my associated post that James somehow got a super update but this was short-lived. He asked me to check internal wiring similarly to you (great minds think alike) but, as you see,this is not easy and also nothing that I am aware of has changed in the house at all. I will respond to his comment separately, it is a pity that the two posts have got inter-connected.
colintivy

[#15]

Hi James,
Thanks for that. If you look at Asbo Dog's reply and my comments to him in my post on Router switching, things are not all that easy. I am not aware of losing connections while I am online, just snail-like access now. MBS still shows awful speeds today. OldJim has referred me to details on how to extract performance information from my Voyager 210 which I did not know existed when I have time. I might report them to you if I am successful. The main thrust of my case is that nothing has changed here since joining PN that I know of and the dramatic change has been sudden and repeated after a marked improvement that you achieved.
colintivy