Broadband Speed Issues - 03/10/09

[#1]

I am a pretty patient person on the whole but frankly 5 days of this now for me and i am starting to get very very annoyed, especially because my work from home relies on the Internet being fast and stable. Unfortunately its a similar story for the other 2 plusnet accounts i manage on behalf of family members. So much for paying for the pro service.

Which gateway
You are currently connected to the "City Lifeline, Juniper 9" gateway. This gateway is sometimes known as pcl-ag02.

[#2]

I'm on this one right now: Telehouse North, Juniper 6" gateway. This gateway is sometimes known as thn-ag1.
It's actually been OK since Friday, and I managed a pretty stable 6.5Mb/s after midnight(I downloaded three iPlayer programs).
Just a thought, but I think the chart showing what speeds to expect on what protocol, on what account, at what time, is rather too complicated. Are you sure your system's just not bogged down with deciding who to give what bandwidth at what time to where? 

[#3]

@Zendaijun
That looks like you've got a problem with your line and absolutely nothing to do with the general speed problems.
What does https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=stable_rate say for your current line speed?

[#4]

Hi thanks for your reply
Telephone number:
01XXXXXXX64
Phone exchange:
ST JOHNS
Estimated line speed:
8 - Checked on 2009-10-22 12:35:51
Current line speed:
7150
I doubt its the line to be honest but will check again all my equipment. There is new phone wire to this house and i have backup equipment for all the internal wiring.
Although i did go over my download limit a few days ago and bought a few extra GB to tide me over for the rest of the month maybe it hasnt kicked in properly and im stuck at 128.

[#5]

Have you disconnected/reconnected since you bought the extra GB?

[#6]

yes router has been switched off for 30 mins at least a few times since then, i will do it again during lunch time.

[#7]

It sounds as if you haven't been put back on the correct profile since you paid for the extra. Have you rung support and asked about it?
If they don't get your speed back before the end of your billing period you should ask for a refund of the extra you paid.

[#8]

I'm having awful throughput tonight (8.2kB/sec and forecasting 2 1/2 hours to download a 75meg file!). Everytime I check my gateway I appear to be on thn-ag2 Telehouse North Jupiter 5. Is anyone else having issues with this gateway? I've tried rebooting but just end up back on the same gateway everytime.
I had a BT engineer out on Friday who found a fault with some hardware at the exchange and I'm currently in the 3 day period for re-profiling but the router is syncing at 2500k, so I'm suprised just how poor my throughput speeds are tonight!

[#9]

Can I just ask a bleedin obvious question to PlusNet...
Why the hell should we jump through these hoops, rebooting routers so we get connected to a certain gateway - JUST SORT OUT ALL YOUR GATEWAYS SO THE WHOLE NETWORK IS BALANCED. I don't mind if that drops my average speed from my usual 6Mb - 7Mb, just as long as its stable at that speed. This constant yo-yo-ing between reasonable speeds in off-peak times, to near dial-up performance in peak hours, despite my router reporting a connection of about 7.6Mb, it feels like a dial-up connection with on sites with images, video or Flash in it.
We're paying PlusNet for a service that we can't use properly - just sort it out PlusNet, you've had long enough to get your head around what's causing it - if it continues, you're going to be losing customers.

[#10]

Oh great idea - they want to experiment with a change to see if it improves things and so sensibly do it on just a couple of gateways. You want them to experiment on the whole damn system! I'm sure if the experiment is a success they will roll it out across all gateways ASAP.

[#11]

Where does it say they're experimenting with a change? And if they are, I wish they'd bl**dy well hurry up about it, this has been ongoing for a month or more, haven't they had long enough to "experiment" with changes? The implication with the word "experiment" is they don't have a damn clue what's going on here. I appreciate these things are complicated and involve lots of systems and sub-systems, but they're supposed to be the experts.
I'm really not sure I want to give my £15.99 a month to a bunch of people "experimenting" with things. Shouldn't they know what they're doing. Kinda conjures up images of them just unplugging and plugging in cables randomly - which I suspect is what's actually going on here.
Why should customers need to know which gateway they're connected to. The majority of people don't even realise there are different gateways, nor should they need to. Most non-technical people will just assume they're connected to the Internet, not to different gateways. Why should they need to keep rebooting their router until they get onto a gateway that works? They should all work. This is 2009, is this really the best broadband that Britain can produce? Quite honestly it's a joke!
If this carries on much longer, I'll be requested my MAC code and looking elsewhere - and I guess I won't be the only one.

[#12]

Still stuck at 128k i have a ticket open id: 30489203 i would be grateful if someone could look at this for me. My usage is 16gb of 20gb so i shouldn't be stuck on this slow a speed, dialup speeds are not fun  

[#13]

Can you try rebooting your modem/router and try again please.
Basically for some reason when we upped the usage on Pro from 15GB to 20GB your account wasn't unrestricted. I'm going to see if any other customers were affected too.
I've fixed your account now.

[#14]

Thanks chris its like someone hit the lightspeed button again problem is fixed now.

[#15]

@MacOS10
We identified that a number of our switches were "running hot" during peak times of the day and on Friday, we tried a change on a couple of them to reduce their CPU usage.  Rather than do that on our entire network, we did this on a couple.  Should this hasve made a considerable improvement (and for a number it seems to have done), we'll roll these changes across the rest of our network.
Bob will post further details once finalised.