BT Broadband Option3 concerns.

EireEV

Hi guys, new to this forum so if I'm repeating what other people have already highlighted, apologies.

I'm currently signed up with BT for their premium broadband offering of 384kb upstream & 3 meg downstream.

I've been using this service for just over 2 years now with no problems but recently my download speeds have plummeted and general browsing has slowed.

When running various speed test over the net my downstream speed seem to come in somewhere around the 500kb mark which is almost 6 times less than what I should be receiveing, granted the contention ration is 24:1 but this should not have this much of an impact and certainly not all of the time.

I've ruled out any firewall issue perhaps blocking some ports and I've also run a repair on my version of Windows XP, registry is fine and computer does is both virus and spyware free.

What's most astonishing is what I came across yesterday evening, I logged on to the settings of my Zyxel prestige modem - > 192.168.1.1, went to WAN -> system status and to my amazement it told me that my upstream speed is 384kb (correct) but my download speed is 512kb, yes 512kb, unbeliveable!! half a meg as compared to 3 meg! This seems to tie in with all the speed test that I've run to date

I asked my mate to go through the exact same process on the exact same modem (he's on a 1 meg line -> 128kb up 1024kb down - BT also) and he came up with 128kb up and 1024kb down, his download speed is double that of mine and he's only on a 1 meg line.

When downloading torrents I'm getting an average speed of 30-50k/sec as opposed to 75-150k/sec 3-4 months aho.

Just wondering if anybody has experienced something similar and can offer any advice.

Thanks in advance.

EireEv.

Sponge Bob

either your line or something attached to it has degraded

disconnect everything in the house from the line bar the modem ,turn it off for 5 mins , reconnect it and the filters firmly and then what ???

what are the upstream and downstream stats in the xyxel diagnostics before and after

I will wager your downstream is over 60db now beforee you start to isolate the problem

If there is an improvement after the unplug then plug the devices in one by one until you have a suspect like a sky box for example

EireEV

Thanks for this Sponge Bob, much appreciated.

As soon as you mentioned the Sky box alarm bells started to ring, I actually have a sky box connected to my phone line so I diconnected this and just left the actual phone line connected, download stream jumped from 512kb to 1536kb, great!!

But still my download stream is half what it should be, would the contention ration of 24:1 have that much affect on the line speed?

I've a phone connected downstairs (directly into the socket) and a pone connected to the ADSL filter upstairs, would wither of these 2 things have an affect on the speed?

Also the phone cable running from the ADSL filter to the modem is not long enough so it runs through a connecyion block and then another line runs to the modem, would this have an impact? Would it be better to run a direct line from the filter to the modem.

Thanks in advance

EireEV

Sponge Bob

well now your fixed half the problem at home by disconnecting sky you should look at the other possibilities

1. is EVERYTHING ( sky/modem/phones) in a filter ?? No unfiltered device should be plugged in .

2. modems can degrade over time with cheap components , you could buy the eircom wireless netopia in pc world for €25 in a dsl starter kit (orange and white box) , simply change the username and password and dns and it will work with BT and may fix things. Bt dns is crap, add at least one opendns.org server to the list of 2 dns servers.

3. filters can degrade as well and one could be dodge. you will get new filters with the netopia so swap out the old ones and see if that works .

4. did you do exactly what I said and what were the Db readings in the diagnostic / dsl line / downstream pane with EVERYTHING disconnected bar the modem and with EVERYTHING connected

(lets leave sky out of everything as Sky is notorious for buggering up dsl lines) ??

5. do you have a total of over 4 devices plugged into that line , you should cap out at 4 .

EireEV

Thanks for your ongoing support Sponge Bob.

1. is EVERYTHING ( sky/modem/phones) in a filter ?? No unfiltered device should be plugged in .

Phone line running from the sky box is now disconnected.
Phone and modem upstairs runs through a filter yes.
Phone line downstairs is connected directly to the phone socket so based on what you say I need to connect this to the socket via a filter?

modems can degrade over time with cheap components , you could buy the eircom wireless netopia in pc world for €25 in a dsl starter kit (orange and white box) , simply change the username and password and dns and it will work with BT and may fix things. Bt dns is crap, add at least one opendns.org server to the list of 2 dns servers.

Heard of DNS but not exactly sure what it is and how I can apply it to help resolve this situation. Could you provide some step by step instructions on how I go about setting this up if at all possible.

My modem is not wireless at the moment, I've heard a lot of bad things about wireless modems.

filters can degrade as well and one could be dodge. you will get new filters with the netopia so swap out the old ones and see if that works .

I will actually replace the current filter I have upstairs and buy one for the phone line downstairs.

did you do exactly what I said and what were the Db readings in the diagnostic / dsl line / downstream pane with EVERYTHING disconnected bar the modem and with EVERYTHING connected

I haven't done this yet sorry, will do this later this evening and post screen grab.

What are the Db readings, there were a few as far as I can remember?

do you have a total of over 4 devices plugged into that line , you should cap out at 4 .

At the moment I have the modem and a telephone upstairs and downstairs so 3 in total, would that be correct.

Thanks for all your help to date.

EireEV

EireEV

Hi - Connected phone line downstairs to a filter and hey presto am now connecting at 3072kb downstream.

Thanks for your help.

Sponge Bob

SO! A summary for the record

1. internal wiring issues caused a 3mbit line to degrade to 512k
2. NONE of this was eircoms fault
3. NONE of this was BTs fault
4. a LOT of this was Rupert Murdochs fault . Sky boxes are notorious for causing problems with DSL ...sometimes even when filtered .

watty

EVERYTHING not ADSL needs filtered. Not Sky's fault.

I always recommend a high quality master filter to feed all phone sockets with then a dedicated connection to ADSL modem.

Making sure to have plug in micro filters everywhere is messy and unreliable, though less flexible in that you can't plug the ADSL modem in anywhere. But with WiFi security broken m,aybe you want Cat5 everywhere
And WPA is only secure with a Radius server.

Little-Devil

EireEV wrote:

the contention ration is 24:1 but this should not have this much of an impact and certainly not all of the time.

If your on a 3MB, i think your contention ratio would be 48:1 and if its 1MB or 2MB it would 24:1, but sure if you call BT they can confirm this or someone on boards might be able to confirm this, not that it matters as you seem to have solved your problem.

dub45

Little-Devil wrote:

If your on a 3MB, i think your contention ratio would be 48:1 and if its 1MB or 2MB it would 24:1, but sure if you call BT they can confirm this or someone on boards might be able to confirm this, not that it matters as you seem to have solved your problem.

I don't know what you are basing that comment on as its usually the complete reverse - the higher the speed the lower the contention. I notice that the isps seem to have become notoriously reluctant to mention contention rates.
I emailed NTL last week asking what their contention rates are and I am still waiting on a response.

CuLT

Little-Devil wrote:

If your on a 3MB, i think your contention ratio would be 48:1 and if its 1MB or 2MB it would 24:1, but sure if you call BT they can confirm this or someone on boards might be able to confirm this, not that it matters as you seem to have solved your problem.

Logically, this makes no sense; I would also like to know what you're basing this on.

A search on the support section of the BT website for the word "contention" brings up the contention ratios.

1MB / 2MB = 48:1
3MB = 24:1

dub45

CuLT wrote:

Logically, this makes no sense; I would also like to know what you're basing this on.

A search on the support section of the BT website for the word "contention" brings up the contention ratios.

1MB / 2MB = 48:1
3MB = 24:1

Surely we shouldn't have to be searching to find contention rates though they are an integral part of the product?

CuLT

dub45 wrote:

Surely we shouldn't have to be searching to find contention rates though they are an integral part of the product?

Agreed, I was simply pointing out that it's not terribly difficult to find if you are looking for that information.

I think if you ask the average Joe Broadband Customer what his contention ratio is or would he rather it be higher or lower though, he's likely to give you a blank stare.

Speed, how much you can download, cost and whether it's always on ( thanks to eircom and other time based providers for introducing this piece of garbage into the equation :rolleyes: ) are generally what people base their comparisons and purchases on.

dub45

CuLT wrote:

Agreed, I was simply pointing out that it's not terribly difficult to find if you are looking for that information.

I think if you ask the average Joe Broadband Customer what his contention ratio is or would he rather it be higher or lower though, he's likely to give you a blank stare.

Speed, how much you can download, cost and whether it's always on ( thanks to eircom and other time based providers for introducing this piece of garbage into the equation :rolleyes: ) are generally what people base their comparisons and purchases on.

Apologies I did not mean to infer a criticism of your good self.

Surely it would not be impossible (and in fact would probably save the isps some support calls later) if in detailing each of their products they clearly stated:

Price:
Speed:
Permitted Monthly Transfers (and clearly stated how they were calculated and any actions to be taken against people breaking the cap incl. throttling, any charges etc etc)
Contention Rates:

ISPs should also be required to state clearly up front (and not buried in obscure language deep in Terms and Conditions) if they restrict any particular types of activity such as torrents, voip etc.

It should be very clear to the customer what exactly they are signing up for.