Weak Perlico Broadband

starjammer

I've been experiencing very slow speeds with 2mb Perlico Broadband. On Bandwith tests I'm getting 150kb/s on average whereas someone else I know with a 2mb BT has 850kb/s on average.

Not just this, but the connection will drop every half hour or so. I won't even notice this has happened, until I check my downloads and realise that they have dropped.

I'm using a Netgear wireless router. But when hooked up to the original perlico zyxel modem, speed's just as bad.

I've talked with Perlico, and they've insisted that the 150kb/s is quite normal and that I should 'disable anti-virus and firewalls'. Though all I have is McAfee Firewall.

Anyone suggest anything?

Thanks.

Daemonic

On a 2mbit line the max in kb/s is 256 (2048 / 8) but in practive around 230kb/s is the max. So your friend is either not getting 850 kb/s or has a much faster line.
As for your 150 kb/s, it's not lightning fast but is pretty good on a contended service.

quaidox

Daemonic wrote:

On a 2mbit line the max in kb/s is 256 (2048 / 8) but in practive around 230kb/s is the max. So your friend is either not getting 850 kb/s or has a much faster line.
As for your 150 kb/s, it's not lightning fast but is pretty good on a contended service.

i dont think you're right there daemonic, what you are working out is the download speed in Bytes per sec, not bits per sec. the original poster is doing a speed test which is in bits per sec, not a file download, which is usually denoted in bytes per sec. so her speed test is showing a crappy line speed. but if it's contention based as you state is it, then i am sure it fluctuates, and is not this bad all the time.

starjammer

Thanks for the repies.

My friend definitly has 850 because I did a bandwith test on their connection. Also I tried downloading a file and was getting 90kb/s on average on their connection wheras I get 8kb/s on my own connection. For the very same file.

Plus, my connection drops, freezing all downloads.

Something isn't right. I had 2mb eircom before, and never any problems like this. And was much faster.

Dankoozy

the moral of the story: don't switch to perlico?


the name 'perlico' for some reason makes me think it was designed to entice old/retired people to sign up with them. just the way the word is made. reminds me of old people

/gets 300-320k downloads on eircom 3mbit

Stephen

Starjammer, could you confirm whether or not you're talking in kiloBITS or kiloBYTES? There's no possible way your friend is getting 850 kilobytes per second on 2Mb, 850 kilobits is quite possible (and quite rubbish for 2Mb).

starjammer

Hey Stephen. Sorry yeah my friend's conn was 850 kiloBITS.

I'm just after doing a bandwidth test for my conn and I got 98 kiloBITS!

Can anyone think of a reason why my connection is so slow?

limklad

starjammer wrote:

I've talked with Perlico, and they've insisted that the 150kb/s is quite normal and that I should 'disable anti-virus and firewalls'. Though all I have is McAfee Firewall.

This is dangerous talk from Perilco. They should get hammered for this. especially since they quote 15okb/s is normal

SeanW

McAffee Firewall causes absolutely no problems whatsoever I've been using it in one form or another for more years than I care to remember. It was dangerous, and stupid for them to tell you to disable it.

Anti

I agree, turning your firewall and AV off is just asking for trouble, Do NOT do it.

When you are running the bandwidth test what site are you using ?

The ones i would reccomend are:

www.speedtest.net
www.dslreports.com/stest
www.speedtest.ie

And what you can also use is the public heanet ftp site, which host linux distros ftp://heanet.ie

The line i am on now is a 6mb ntl line, but untill recently was only a 2mb ntl line, And my speed would max out at 242kB/s any time day or night. 150kB/s is way to slow for a 2mb line.

Im guessing perlico is a adsl isp. So there could be a few reasons why your getting below average speeds.

1, You may be a fair distance from your exchange. The further away you are the weaker the signal is.

2. There is to much noise on your line. When you lift up the phone do you hear any crackeling at all or background noise? If so you can ring eircom and tell them to turn up/down the sigal.

3. The copper wire between your house and the exchange is old/damaged. Eircom will not fix this.

4. You have to much wire betwwen the modem and the phone socket. This really should be as short a possible.


Now if this was me i would ring perlico and cause havok. You are paying for 2mb you shout get the speeds to go along with it.

Yes at certain times of the day you might not hit your top download speed because you have a contention ratio of probably ~40/1. So at peak times 4pm-8pm when other people usually use it it might be slower, Even though i have never experienced this before.

So i suggest you try the test early morning, and late evening and see if there is much of a difference from the times you usually do it. Then ring perlico and speak to someone in tech and just complain that you are paying for a 2mb line, but getting just over 1mb speeds.

quaidox

hey anti, i am trying to connect to that ftp site you mention in your post but it is timing out. does it require a username and password?

starjammer

Hey Anti, thanks for the excellent reply. In reponse to your suggestions:

I was using the Internet Speed test on pcpitstop.com

I got 130kb/s speed when I tested it just now. On that speedtest.ie I just got 214kb/ps

What you said about background noise on the line! I do get that, a lot of crackling, it varies from weak to strong at time. So this could be interfering with the broadband? I'll have to ring eircom like you said.

The line for the broadband is running from the port and up the stairs, so I guess it is not as short as it could be.

The box you mentioned, the phone line segment of it has been damaged before and we had it repaired. But if Eircom won't fix a problem with the physical line what would I do?

I'll have to ring Perlico again after I hear back, because I told them I wasn't reaching the 2Mb speed I paid for and that I had suspicions it could be a problem with the physical line coming in, and they just said 'oh I don't know how to help you then.' and when I asked how I would be expected to fix this myself, they transferred me to level 3. That's when I got mr firewall removal man.

Thanks for the replies.

ALSO: Last night something extraordinary happened, for 15 whole minutes I had 814 kilobits on the bandwidth test and my file downloads were 200kb/s. As I said, this lasted 15mins, but it was the highlight of my 6 months with Perlico.

starjammer

And just to follow up, results from the test on dslreports.com

Download: 140Kb/s

Upload: 127KB/s

Latency: 192ms