upto 16meg Sky BBand only gives me about 1.5meg

[Aminator]

Just wondering if anyone else is having same poor speed connections, im unsure on how to proceed with this.

Basically ive had Sky Max boradband for about 6 weeks but ive only just started using it as my laptop was in for repair/replacement.

Ive been using it with my 360 and all seems to be more or less ok.

but when im downloading the connection is topping out at about 150-160kbps

I was on tiscalis 2 meg service and used to consistantly get 250-260kbps.
I know my exchange was only unbundles a few months back and if theyve set it to be uncapped surely I should be getting more than my previous ISP, or not?

Anyone have any suggestions as to what to do as I am at a loss ?
thanks

[darren_eaf]

have a look at this link, and make sure you are connected correctly.

If you are, take the power out of the router for 10 seconds or so, then plug it back in

hope this helps

[Aminator]

thanks for that, been browsing the site,

have found out my line stats which show 8000kbps
im 1960m from my exchange

have wired directly into my bt line, still only getting about 1.5-2 meg
time to call sky bband support

[drummerjohn]

I reckon your BRAS profile is stuck at 2mb. Sky will need to get onto BT to change it. GOOD LUCK

[Rygar]

Originally Posted by drummerjohn

I reckon your BRAS profile is stuck at 2mb. Sky will need to get onto BT to change it. GOOD LUCK

He's on The Sky Max unbundled service. Nothing to do with BT Wholesale (so BRAS not releveant in the BTW Max sense either).

[Aminator]

I called up and spoke to Sky bband tech support.

I did do some test showing me that im 1.96km away from the exchange and that the town is capable of line speeds upto 8 meg.

The tech guy done a test and showed my line speed at about 7618kbps
I suggested after reading on another thread on another forums that as I had an isp before could it be that my ip was limited to allow only 2000kbps. He said that shouldnt be the case or his test would show a max of 2000kbps.

Then all of sudden whilst I was on the phone one of my torrents started downing at 400kbps, very very odd as I hadnt experienced these speeds before. The agent did ask me...what are you downloading to which I paused and after he said is it torrents, I stupidly said yes....after which my downstream dropped to about 5kbps, could he have throttled anything to affect my downloading ?

I explained I had done numerous speed test and all were showing between 1-3meg, I tried wiring my netgear wireless router directly to my line and that made no difference.

Also he said he was going to limit my 16meg line to 7 megs as having it at 16meg and only capable of 8meg would mean I would lose data packets in any downloading and that setting it to a more realistic capable speed would possibly benefit the downstream speed.

I am at a loss as im still getting crappy speed but very briefly had 4 mbps for a couple of minutes

[Rygar]

I wouldn't think the tech support guy could do something to an individual protocol on an individual line while you were on the phone.

I also wouldn't worry about the 7Mb speed, because at 2 kilometres from your exchange that is about the most you can expect on ADSL2+. However if you think you could live with the 40GB monthly limit, it might be an idea to change to the mid product and save yourself a fiver every month?

As for your problem can you get your downstream attenuation & SNR figures from your router and post them here. Also tell me how long it takes to download one of the 100MB files from this site>>>
http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test/

Try it during a busy time (6-9 PM) but also try it at a non busy time (say 4-7 AM).
Post both results. This is to rule out simple contention (network congestion)

[Aminator]

hi bud, ive currently go the uncapped 16 meg line with no download caps (fair use policy obv) for £10 a month (Sky bband max)

They have DEFINATLEY done something to my line because I am only getting 1/4 meg downstream all day yesterday after my call to them, i dont know what it could be, they said a BT engineer would be calling me back in 3-5 days, I asked in the meantime do I have to put up up with snail pace connection, yes he said.....at least he was honest

Thanks for all your help, I will try that test when I get home from work and post my findings!

Thanks again

[Aminator]

ok i just tried the twst file you said just now and I got it in 7mins1sec at an average speed of 243kbps.

how do i get the downstream att and and SNR figures for my sky (netgear wirelss router ?)

edit: this is what I got

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 7408 kbps 764 kbps
Line Attenuation 45.0 db 26.2 db
Noise Margin 7.4 db 13.0 db

[Rygar]

OK, so thats about a 2Mb speed (as you already know!) from a good http source at peak time. Would be interesting to see what result the same test gives at non peak time. If it getes dramatically better off peak then contention is the problem and not much can be done about it. If you get the same speeds then it points to another type of problem.

Re the attenuation, I am not familiar with netgear but you need to access via your browser, usually something like http://192.168.1.1

Then it will be under something like ADSL status/statistics Just look trough the various options. The only reason I am interested in this is to see if it ties in with your distance from the exchange. It could be that the wire connecting you to the exchange runs much further than the 2kM straight line distance.

[Aminator]

i posted it above, ill try redownloading the 100 meg file in the morning, I appreciate the help by the way mate

[Rygar]

OK, so that all ties in as one would expect. Really only 3 possibilities now when you get right down to it.

1) Contention
2) Througput speed being artificially limited (not necessarily on purpose though).
3) Something else using your bandwidth (another program, malware or unsecured wireless network)

I suspect you have probably checked & ruled out option 3 already though.

Lets see what that off peak test says.

[Aminator]

cant wait up quite till 4, tried yesterday and failed miserably, best I could do is now, 1am on a monday night which should be quite quiet.

again 100meg file downloaded in 7mins9sec at an average of 238KB/s

my wireless is secured and needs a pass key to connect to it so no one is pinching my bandwidth.

Only other thing I can think of is my firewall which is done by Zone alarm which I put on the other week...

Or my line being limited/throttled ?

I'll call sky again tomorrow

[Rygar]

I think a firewall will be more likely to stop it all together or nothing, so I dont think its that.

Think all you can do now is pester Sky. Certainly looks like something is wrong, as you are synced at over 7Mb but only getting 2Mb speeds.

[Aminator]

well I finally spoke to sky (tier 3 tech support)

they said I was having ***** loads of errors and I should have had the line capped as Im not even capable of getting 16 megs.

They capped it at 6meg to reduce errors and get a speedier connection. Wirelessly I was getting 4 meg, as soon as I put an ethernet cable from my laptop to the wireless router the speed increased to about 5.8meg

Bit happier now, but still my torrents only download at no more than 70kbps

Thanks for your help Rygar !