BT Speeds driving me mental!!

Mikebyrne

I just purchased BT broadbands 7.6 Mb package and all was fine for the first week or so getting regular speeds of 6.2 Mb at any time of the day.

Now I get speeds of 6.2 for about 10 minutes and it cuts down to a constant 700 kb/s until I restart the router where I again get speeds of 6.2 for 10 minutes and the cycle continues.

I rang customer services and they told me Im only supposed to get a throughput of 300 kb/s and its only guranteed not to fall below this speed as supposed to the gurantee of 6Mb.

I was also told its the contention ratio of 25:1 but when I was on ICE (yes ICE) I was on a contention ration of 36:1 and getting a constant speed of 2.4 from a 3MB line (Therefore making ICE 3 times better than BT???)

Does anyone have any opinions on this or any advice on what i can do??

homer911

I'm on the BT 1Mb package and would regularly get 900kbps+

Very occasionally it would drop to lower speeds. Currently my problem is not speed, but dropped connections - The connection could drop every couple of minutes, or stay up for an hour or two - very unreliable

brophis

A friend of mine is on the 7mb package and had similar issues with speed and dropped connection. He updated his firmware and things have been better since. Link There's no guarantee this is the issue but just something to try anyway.

I got my BT broadband modem on friday, the wired voyager 210 and it had the 3.01z firmware on it, surprising considering how out of date that firmware is now. First thing I did was update to 3.62a. I myself am on the 3mb package and it's been maxing out since I got it so hopefully I'll have no issues in the coming weeks.

Mikebyrne

Im on firmware 3.63

vibe666

Mikebyrne wrote: »

Now I get speeds of 6.2 for about 10 minutes and it cuts down to a constant 700 kb/s until I restart the router where I again get speeds of 6.2 for 10 minutes and the cycle continues.

i'm going to hazard a guess and say 'torrenting'.

assuming that's when it's doing that kind of thing try just downloading a nice big linux dvd iso via ftp from heanet maybe this one to test it properly. that should take around an hour and a half to come down, so if the speed keeps up you know it's likely not the conneciton, but what you're connecting to that's causing your issues.

I had the same problems myself when i started torrenting heavily. most modems aren't designed to handle the very high numbers of symultaneous concurrent connections that you get when torrenting.

you need to find yourself a decent modem that handles that kind of thing better or find a 3rd party firmware for the modem you have that allows you to adjust down the tcp conneciton tracking time to something the memory in the modem can handle.

by default some modems will keep track of all tcp connections from anything from a week to a month which is fine if you're googling your ex g/f's every now and again but when you're making (potentially) 1000's of connections an hour torenting the latest linux iso's it won't take long at all for your modem to get clagged up.

a lot of people tend to go for something like the linksys adsl2mue and wrt54g modem/router combo (I certainly did) with something like the dd-wrt or openwrt 3rd party firmwares to supercharge them so they can handle whatever you might want to throw at them.

google will be able to educate you in the best choice of modem if you're able to hold a good ftp download speed on your connection without it clagging up, it's been a couple of years since i needed to buy a new modem, i guess things may have moved on since i got my last one.

of course, after all that it might well be that you're not torrenting and you've got a crappy connection in which case I should probably shut up and get back to googling my ex's

Username!

The Voyager 210 latest F/W is 3.62a.

The Voyager 2110 lastest F/W is 3.63

In the coming weeks, their will be a updated F/W release which will solve a lot of these disconnection / speed issues.

qbasic

Username! wrote: »

The Voyager 210 latest F/W is 3.62a.

The Voyager 2110 lastest F/W is 3.63

In the coming weeks, their will be a updated F/W release which will solve a lot of these disconnection / speed issues.

How will the updated firmware fix speed/disconnection issues for non BT routers?

Username!

Ah ha... we have a paradox!

jack222

My speeds are still useless, ever since the upgrade they did two months ago.

speeds were never too good before but now they are terrible and talking to BT support is like banging your head off a wall.

My advice, switch to Eircom, they are a bit more expensive but you get what you are paying for

qbasic

Username! wrote: »

Ah ha... we have a paradox!

If thats what you want to call it. I would consider it another lame excuse that will be dished out to customers as to why their speeds are woeful.

A router regardless of the make and firmware should work on BT's network.

You don't work for BT by any chance?

Bohrio

qbasic wrote: »

If thats what you want to call it. I would consider it another lame excuse that will be dished out to customers as to why their speeds are woeful.

A router regardless of the make and firmware should work on BT's network.

You don't work for BT by any chance?

Username! makes it look as if it was some sort of magical firmware... although it is true that, If I remember correctly, over a year ago they had loads of problems with some people not synching with their new voyagers while the old Zyxels would and it turned out to be a firmware problem.

jack222

If there are problems with routers, BT should have contacted their customers and let them know, they should send a new router that works properly.


Instead they leave the customer to troubleshoot their issues....BT SUCK so bad

qbasic

Bohrio, judging from your comments here would I be correct in assuming you work for BT?

Bohrio

qbasic wrote: »

Bohrio, judging from your comments here would I be correct in assuming you work for BT?

Why is this so important!! even if we work for BT (I dont), what difference will it make... we are all regular users here, just trying to help!

Anyone here posting working for an ISP will never post on their ISP behalf or without their consent as it could get him/her fired...

so there is no point on asking that, as everyone will say no!

so, no I dont work for BT

molc

To be fair, Bohrio always seems helpful and to the point for me. I'm sure if the majority of complaints on here were due to Eircom, he'd be giving the same advice and been accused of working for Eircom

jack222

qbasic wrote: »

Bohrio, judging from your comments here would I be correct in assuming you work for BT?

He has already admitted he "used" to work for BT. Im surprised he speaks English

qbasic

I wasn't accusing Bohrio of being unhelpful or anything else. I merely wanted to know as he might be in a position to communicate to persons responsible in BT (if they didn't already know) that the majority of users having problems at the moment are having these problems as a result of network issues not dodgy modems, dodgy lines, expected levels of contention of floods.

They seem to be buying time by trying to pretend to everybody that the issue is a local to the user. I presume this is to avoid having to credit users for abysmal service while they correct the issue.

Praetor

qbasic wrote: »

I wasn't accusing Bohrio of being unhelpful or anything else. I merely wanted to know as he might be in a position to communicate to persons responsible in BT (if they didn't already know) that the majority of users having problems at the moment are having these problems as a result of network issues not dodgy modems, dodgy lines, expected levels of contention of floods.

They seem to be buying time by trying to pretend to everybody that the issue is a local to the user. I presume this is to avoid having to credit users for abysmal service while they correct the issue.

I dont think Bohrio wrote that as a complaint.. dont worry

I am pretty sure BT are aware of all this...

Bohrio

qbasic wrote: »

I wasn't accusing Bohrio of being unhelpful or anything else. I merely wanted to know as he might be in a position to communicate to persons responsible in BT (if they didn't already know) that the majority of users having problems at the moment are having these problems as a result of network issues not dodgy modems, dodgy lines, expected levels of contention of floods.

They seem to be buying time by trying to pretend to everybody that the issue is a local to the user. I presume this is to avoid having to credit users for abysmal service while they correct the issue.

Not to worry man! Unfortunately can't help you here although I agree that BT probably know about it

hamiltron

jack222 wrote: »

He has already admitted he "used" to work for BT. Im surprised he speaks English

Don't generalise about the linguistic ability of call centre personnel ... I have just switched to BT 25Mbit service and was pinged around (Northern Irish sounding) "Customer Care" for a day, being told that my account was in various stages of finalisation (although they were polite and with a very short waiting time).

I then got onto Tech Support to make sure that my existing modem would be ready to work with the new connection until my new router arrived from BT, and the Indian sounding guy there was excellent - had the account up and running in 3 minutes. Give me Indian Tech Support over European Customer Care any day!

vibe666

hamiltron wrote: »

Give me Indian Tech Support over European Customer Care any day!

you actually got through to the one single guy who is specifically employed to be the exception to prove the rule.

wait till you need to call them again before making statements like that, you might live to regret it.

kleefarr

I thought things were getting better over the last few days, but again last night had to reset the line a few times just to end up with a reported speed less than half of what it should be and couldn't run a poxy 300k online feed without stopping, jumping and having to restart it every 5 minutes.

I shall be following comregs suggested posted in another thread soon. :mad:

Earl

Bohiro is there any chance you could give me a PM? you helped me out brilliantly before but I'm having a bit of a headache now. I appreciate the fact that you don't want people bugging you all the time, but it's something to do with the 24mb upgrade and multiple identities. Cheers.