Plusnet fault or throttling? Please help.

[#1]

Hi,

I've been having problems with webpages timing out, downloads running in the 10s of KB/s etc. Streaming sometimes started and worked, sometimes just stopped.

I thought it might be wifi so I connect via ethernet. No change. No change across multiple devices. No problem with speedtest.net or fast.com tests. Both show the correct bandwidth.

Then someone suggests I try a different test and low and behold I have an answer. Single thread bandwidth is throttled down to 0.7 Mb and that took a little while to get there. It started out at 0.1. Ping on this line used to be ~100ms, now it's 366ms. What's going on?

No wonder I'm having issues. Is there any explanation or way to fix this. It's on my parents line so I'm not the bill-payer. I think they're considering extending their current contract and I might have to advise them against.

[#2]

My suggestion, if you want community help, is to have a look at the sticky at the top pf this forum 'ADSL - Speed faults' and supply the information requested. Your initial post gives us nothing on which to base suggestions.

[#3]

You could also look at a number of other threads reporting odd results from the thinkbroadband tester. If you are getting the expected speeds from ookla and others, then ignore thinkbroadband.

[#4]

While it's a shame that TBB is inconsistent for some, I wouldn't totally discount it.

The fact it shows single and multi is useful as speed testers that only do multi can hide packet loss which will impact on normal use.

First things first, though, if the OPs parents haven't done it already, then turn everything off and back on  - it may get better all by its self  🙂

[#5]

There are a multiplicity of reasons why the single thread and multi thread reported speeds might be markedly different, particularly down to your PC and the other concurrent use of the connection.  See here - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/flash-speed-test.html#336

Why does the tbb result differ so much from the HTTPx6 result?

There are many possible reasons, but the most likely issues are that the connection or the provider is experiencing contention. The HTTPx6 test by making six data requests can flood your broadband connection, where as a single download will go through more peaks and troughs if your ISP is busy, or something else is using your connection.

Another possibility is that your computer may be ramping the TCP RWIN size very slowly, or it is set too low. The multiple requests of the HTTPx6 method help over this.

We want to run both tests, so that when looking at the wider dataset we may be able to analyse the wider picture, on contention in the UK, or how prevalent computer issues may be.

If the 6x speed is looking good, that rather suggests that the line itself and the service are fine.  As other have indicated providing the fundamental information required for assessing a perceived speed issue is the right place to start.  See the speed issues thread link below.

The acid test is do you actually see any operational issues?  Speed tests are somewhat artificial and generally have little bearing on internet usability.