BBYW-1 @ 3Mbps - Reasonable?

[#1]

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Yikes! With Pauls settings www.Mybroadbandspeed.co.uk now reports doubled download speeds of 6100kbps peaking at 6775kbps. Uploads slowed from 380kbps to 340kbps.

As you got 340Kbps with the settings I suggested at one point I doubt if it's an MTU/RWIN issue. However, if you're still getting 200Kbps with the settings set back to 1430 etc., then try the windows defaults and give it a go.  That should rule out tweaking as the cause.  I'd expect an upload speed between 300 to 380Kbps.  However, remember that other factors can affect your upload speed.  If you're still getting slow uploads you'll need to do a BT Speedtest to get the definitive result (also try the Think Broadband speed tester I linked to) and also post your router stats.

[#2]

It seems these 2 speed test sites give rather different upload results.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html never gave a result below 370kbps.
http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk typically gave results of 200kbps but occasionally 340mbps.
Here are some results
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/121424555617120913317.html
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/121424803826950413821.html
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/121424820771775613870.html



OK - so lets call in the arbitrator http://www.broadband-speedtest.co.uk/?gclid=CNOq0cq8i5QCFQ6S1QodRmcbVw , this never gave an upload speed test result below 350kbps. (Incidentally the average download rate for plusnet 8mb £10/month was reportedly 2.28Mbps and my test results af 3 to 5Mbps made no impact.)
What bugged me was the way www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk upload measurement fell off to 200Mbps AFTER the progress dial reached 100%. It could be because it is the only one that does the test properly, or..

[#3]

Find a download server (e.g. a UK mirror of Linux images) that is relatively uncosntrained in bandwidth and pick a quiet time (off peak).  Start downloading a large file (say 100-500MB, perhaps larger) and check your average speed (there's different applications that show download speeds depending on your OS).  It will soon stabilise at what you can consider as your nominal download speed.  Make a note of the download duration (to calculate the average speed).  Also, check the stats on your router (some routers show down/up rates per minute, or per 5 minutes).
Find an upload server (the one that you usually want to upload stuff to) and repeat the experiment uploading for example the same file that your downloaded before.
I would tend to trust that the speeds you derive this way would be more reliable, than what different dsl speed testers tell you, especially so if the results you measure yourself are repeatable.
Hope this helps.

[#4]

Good common-sense advice MickKi, especially relevant if one only intends uploading to one or two particular places anyway.  Also its probably hard for a test site to get it right in such a short time, its bound to be less of an average. Thanks.

[#5]

@Stewie
The Think Broadband speedtester is pretty well respected and is often accepted as "evidence" in speed related issues if the BT tester is unavailable - as is often the case - although you'll still need to use the BT tester as "proof positive"!
If you go here on Think Broadband you'll get a fair few files of different sizes (up to 1GB) that you can download to do as Mikki suggests (for downloads only though).
I'd say given your results that you've got a pretty good connection though!
Edit: typos

[#6]

Yes - I'm more than happy with the connection - and the big efforts of those who help on this forum.  Iv'e learned a bit, hope other readers have too.

[#7]

After you folks kindly doubled my download speed by upping RWIN & MTU, my employers network admin heard about it and decided to send me this email ;-

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Title:  ROFL Guys, I recently have had major discussions with ** / ****** I.T. support team due to technical I.T. staff being unable to keep adsl routers and vpn tunnels up due to reading rubbish and generally misunderstanding articles on the Internet. One of the more technical and fun challenges to broadband tweaking beyond its expected rate is a setting called the maximum transmission unit (MTU). When a PC requests data from certain websites (or other servers / pcs), they use Path MTU Discovery to check what size packets to send back to your computer. If the site / server / pc etc. can't check what size packets to send, it reverts to the default of 1500, but if any of the gateways or routers along the path have a smaller MTU the data packet will be dropped. You can tweak the MTU settings on both your PC and your router, but you must ensure you use the same figure on both. This is very misunderstood and can cause more problems than you think, even using the free downloads from the internet and “supposed” expert sites. In my humble opinion. N