Ridiculously slow broadband - Carrigaline, Cork with BT

daveyjoe

I have the 3mb package and I sync at the full 3072kbps. At peak times speed tends to go no lower than ~2mb

But... over the last couple of days I'm getting a max of 15KB/s on downloads and when I run a speedtest I get somewhere between 80-120kbps.

Is it possible that BT have put a cap on my download speed? I downloaded quite a lot when I was at home over christmas, if I was to guess then I would say 20-30GB but most of that was in December and not January.

Dave

smellslikeshoes

Its possible they have throttled your speeds, are you still syncing at the full 3mbit?

daveyjoe

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Its possible they have throttled your speeds, are you still syncing at the full 3mbit?

Yeah, as I said in my original post I am syncing at the full 3mbps. Have BT throttled users before? I haven't seen it mentioned on boards (I may have missed it).

daveyjoe

daveyjoe wrote: »

Yeah, as I said in my original post I am syncing at the full 3mbps. Have BT throttled users before? I haven't seen it mentioned on boards (I may have missed it).

Just logged into the download checker thing, apparently I have downloaded 64.39gigs. That's unbelievable never would have guessed it was that high. Is that figure only for the month of January? I'm not the only who uses the internet connection but over the course over 8 or 9 days (connection has been throttled since at least Thursday) it must be wrong! I did a lot of downloading over christmas but not much after January.

Will I be throttled until the end of January?

jmbkay

broad band is painfully slow in dublin too

smellslikeshoes

daveyjoe wrote: »

Yeah, as I said in my original post I am syncing at the full 3mbps. Have BT throttled users before? I haven't seen it mentioned on boards (I may have missed it).

If you made it clear in your orginal post if you were still syncing at 3mbit after the problems I wouldn't have had to ask.

Yes BT DO throttle and there has been plenty of talk on that here and elsewhere.

Your usage is calculated on a rolling 30 day cap, even though its not shown like that on the usage calculator. This means that you stay throttled until your usage over the last 30 days goes below a certain point (the general consensus here is 100gigs). If you have eaten through 64 gigs since start of January and you say that you used a lot over the Xmas period you are probably not going to get lower than 100gigs for the last 30 days till very near the end of January.

If you are sure that you haven't just underestimated how much you have used, then you should be taking a look out how secure your network and the computers on the network are.

Even though its the most likely cause I would give them a ring to confirm that you have been throttled as I was under the impression that when they throttled you your sync speed goes to the throttled speed and thats why I was so sure to ask you about it.

daveyjoe

I presume the 64GB is what I downloaded in the last 30 days. There is no way on earth that 64GB was downloaded in January. That's 6 gigs a day and I know that I haven't downloaded that much since 1st January!

Is it worth chancing my arm and giving BT a ring? Would I get anywhere with them?

smellslikeshoes

daveyjoe wrote: »

I presume the 64GB is what I downloaded in the last 30 days. There is no way on earth that 64GB was downloaded in January. That's 6 gigs a day and I know that I haven't downloaded that much since 1st January!

Is it worth chancing my arm and giving BT a ring? Would I get anywhere with them?

No as far as I'm aware it resets at the end of the calender month.

As far as ringing BT, I would definitely ring to at very least confirm if you have been throttled or not.

How secure is your network? Wireless enabled? WPA2/WEP?

daveyjoe

I leave my router open because it doesn't really bother me if other people use it (presuming they don't overuse it). I keep an eye on the 'connected clients' list in my router config and I've never seen a MAC address that I didn't know. I just added MAC address filtering now, so only known devices can use it. Couldn't be bothered to setup proper encryption, not worth the hassle.

daveyjoe

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

No as far as I'm aware it resets at the end of the calender month.

As far as ringing BT, I would definitely ring to at very least confirm if you have been throttled or not.

Does the attached screeny not confirm that I am being throttled?

I find it hard to believe that I or somebody else using the internet (I would have noticed the speed difference) downloaded 64gigs this month already. Bear in mind that I have been throttled for the last couple of days and I haven't downloaded anything except light webpages.

jor el

BT have been throttling people for months now, even on the "unlimited" package. The usage counter has traditionally been done, and reset, on calendar months, but the throttling count is done on a 30 day rolling cap, so it'll be 30 days, or longer since you're at 60G, before you come back below your monthly allowance.

Ringing them will get you nowhere, they're not budging on this issue.

Sierra Oscar

jor el wrote: »

BT have been throttling people for months now, even on the "unlimited" package. The usage counter has traditionally been done, and reset, on calendar months, but the throttling count is done on a 30 day rolling cap, so it'll be 30 days, or longer since you're at 60G, before you come back below your monthly allowance.

Ringing them will get you nowhere, they're not budging on this issue.

Well, I dunno about you but I have not reached my download limit for the month yet - I have only downloaded around 2GB worth of data (I know this because I only started using the Internet on Friday out of all of January), and my speeds are atrocious.

I mean, im getting high pings and download speeds of around 30KB/sec on a 8MB connection. This started yesterday.

Zynks

When BT throttles does the synch speed come down? I noticed yesterday my synch speed down from 3000-ish to 1216 kbps and it is the same today. For the last three years my modem never synched below the speed expected.

jor el

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Well, I dunno about you but I have not reached my download limit for the month yet - I have only downloaded around 2GB worth of data (I know this because I only started using the Internet on Friday out of all of January), and my speeds are atrocious.

I'm not with BT, so it doesn't effect me. But, they don't operate the throttling cap on the calendar month, it's based on your last 30 days, so it will depend on what you were downloading as far back as Dec 9th. If your total since then, is over the cap, then that's it.

I don't think the Sync speed will be different, if you are seeing a drop on this, there could be another issue with the line.

Zynks

jor el wrote: »

I don't think the Sync speed will be different, if you are seeing a drop on this, there could be another issue with the line.

Thanks, I suspected that but didn't want to get into a full wiring review without confirming it wasn't a throttling issue.

daveyjoe

Broadband back up to full speed now, wooOoOo!

jor el

You should confirm it's not throttling first though. From what I've read here before, the sync speed doesn't change, but I couldn't guarantee it.

daveyjoe

I can confirm that the sync speed doesn't change while you are being throttled.

Zynks

Thanks guys. You were right. It was an issue on my home setup. Back to normal now.