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Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

nocky
Hooked
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎13-04-2020

Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

Until a week and a half ago, my Internet connection ran a very nice 71Mbps down and 20Mbps up. This was very consistent regardless of the time of day with occaissional blips.

Since the 4th April my connection speed has dropped to 41Mbps down and 16Mbps up. This was a sudden and very consistent drop and is regardless of the end point I am speed testing against. This is speeds from the router and from end devices, there is no local speed issue. The router itself shows maxrate at 91Mbps down and 26Mbps up and the current rate at 70Mbps down and 20Mbps up. The disparity between these figures to me look like Plusnet is speed limiting their service probably on a service area basis, limiting me down to 41Mbps down. Plusnet themselves are silent on the issue either on their web page or via Twitter. If this is happening we can understand due to load attributed to the stay at home rules, but the silence is not understandable. Anyone else experiencing this? Is there anyone here from Plusnet who could confirm this?

21 REPLIES 21
Baldrick1
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

@nocky 

Plusnet pay BT/Openreach to supply you an 80/20 service. What makes you believe that Plusnet would deliberately irritate you by deliberately throttling your service?

It’s much more likely that with many more people either working from home or streaming movies is causing the normal traffic loading through background infrastructure to have changed, resulting in SVLANs running hot and other data bottlenecks slowing things down.

There’s plenty of issues that can be laid at Plusnet’s door but they are not by definition to blame for everything that doesn’t work as it should.

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nocky
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Registered: ‎13-04-2020

Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

Because

(a) I have not confirmed they are throttling, but the evidence implies it. The post puts out a hypothesis for confirmation. Feel free to show evidence if you have any.

(b) I have done measurements over the period which shows that the limitation is consistent - all times, day and night. Contention occurs across the day in a more variable way

(c) Measurements show the same impact whether the speed measurement is to the Netflix Open Connect hosts or to external sites - contention in interconnects would have showed a variation there also.

(d) the speed drop in both up and downstream took place from one day to the next. Consistent before that day, still consistent after but at a specific lower speed.

(e) the alternative hypothesis, much less likely, is that some work has taken place locally which has dropped the interconnect performance of the local PoP.

Also forgive me but your tone is not well intentioned and seems to be very trollish. I can give you benefit of the doubt but unless you can be helpful, do go away.

nocky
Hooked
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Registered: ‎13-04-2020

Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

Also, I am not implying they are throttling just me. I am looking for evidence of throttling on a more systematic basis.

orby
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

I wondered if the same was happening to me, for the last 4 weeks my speeds were consitently lower, about 10mbps down on usual, however last few days it's back to where it used to be, around 72mbps / 18mbps - these are the speeds I've had for about 4 years pretty much every day or night.

I'm not sure what caused the slight drop, but if it's due to the big increase in home users, it's odd that mines now gone up again.

During througout this, my router maintained a connection of 80/20 give or take.

nocky
Hooked
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Registered: ‎13-04-2020

Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

If I could suggest it, please take measurements (over Ethernet directly connected to the router or directly from a functionality of the router) over a 24 hour period to rule out contention. The time period you have is different to what I have for my marked drop in speed, plus mine was a much larger drop from 71Mbps to 41Mbps. Please report your findings.

orby
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

my tests are always via ethernet, ever since i've had ADSL then fibre, I try to do a speed test once or twice a week and the modem router is connected directly to a proper fibre master socket (a BT fitted socket that has filter built in to seperate fibre from phone at that point). 

I suppose my issue could have been a BT exchange/cabinet issue that they've resolved that affect me (and others perhaps). I try and test at various times and days to get a fair crack on the whip so to speak.

Digitalspirit
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

I have exactly the same issue. Consistently high down/upload speeds 60+Mbps for literally years and around the same time you mention, my speed went from 60Mbps to 48Mbps and has stayed there ever since with little fluctuation, so that looks like throttling as opposed to a fault. I have raised a ticket with Plusnet and provided speed test and DSL checker results which corroborate this. My downstream handback threshold is 55.2Mbps (impacted), so I am now under that based on DSL checker results. I should be getting at least 61.4Mbps (impacted), which I consistently was until about a week ago, coincidence? I don't think so! There's 100% something fishy going on here, a little transparency wouldn't go amiss. Silence is deafening.

bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19


@nocky wrote:

The disparity between these figures to me look like Plusnet is speed limiting their service probably on a service area basis, limiting me down to 41Mbps down. Plusnet themselves are silent on the issue either on their web page or via Twitter. If this is happening we can understand due to load attributed to the stay at home rules, but the silence is not understandable. Anyone else experiencing this? Is there anyone here from Plusnet who could confirm this?



I can confirm that we are definitely *not* doing anything like this.

I can also share that we have adequate bandwidth, even considering the shift in daytime traffic due to all the homeworking.

The observations in this thread are almost certainly down to something else, or account/line specific issues.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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nocky
Hooked
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Registered: ‎13-04-2020

Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

So the administration view is that there is no throttling taking place. The evidence points to otherwise but I will now at least go to the pain of reporting a fault to Plusnet and we shall see what the root cause is.

Others who are experiencing a sudden change in performance should still undertake measurements to confirm whether the performance loss is contention or otherwise related, and I hope you would post here until we have a confirmed root cause analysis.

I am certainly continuing to recorded data until otherwise proven.

nocky
Hooked
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎13-04-2020

Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

Curiously without doing anything to my router, speedtest results undertaken this afternoon show a speed improvement to 62Mbps down and 15Mbps. Previous speed tests for the week and a bit until a short while ago showed 41Mbps down/16up. Will watch my speed tests further.

CorbyDave
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

I have dropped from 50mbps to 21mbps for the last 10 days. All tests show nothing amiss. Plusnet tell me it must be an internal problem. Two routers, three filters, ethernet connection and test socket all tell me it's not. My Plusnet account says I have a download speed of 21mbps - Plusnet support tells me I have 55mbps and don't have access to my account web page. Something strange going on.

bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

@CorbyDave, yeah that doesn't sound right. I imagine there's something amiss with your account profile. If so, that should have been spotted! Sad

Whilst support can't log into your online account, they do have visibility of this. I'll take a look tomorrow when I'm back at work if it hasn't been sorted before then.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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CorbyDave
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Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

Thank you
RewindJack
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Registered: ‎08-04-2020

Re: Plusnet speed limiting connections due to Covid-19

@bobpullen they ain't the only one.. im suppose to be getting up to 40 but currently sitting at 25 way below my minimum. I have tried contacting plusnet multiple times about this and they are ignoring me. Is there any way I can get ahold of someone to look into this because I just renewed my contract for basically nothing otherwise.