Do I need to upgrade cabling to make the most of 8mb BB?

thenashlegend

Just a quick question regarding eircoms 8mb bb, we upgraded from 3mb a few weeks ago and it's not as quick as I had hoped. I know this is partly down to them outside line but would upgrading the internal cabling to STP and reducing the cable runs make THAT much of a difference?

From the master socket in the attic there is a cable to the phone socket in the hallway, sky have since taken a line from the hall socket for a box in the living room.

The router is fed from a second cable off the master socket, to an intermediate socket in the attic and then through the filter and down to the office.

Is this okay or would new cable and less of it be worth the investment?

homer911

Try plugging a laptop directly into the master socket and see what difference it makes

colm_mcm

When you say you upgraded from 3 to 8mb, do you actually know what the line is capable of? Its Up to 8mb that you signed up to.

tuxy

what speed is the modem connecting at?

thenashlegend

colm_mcm wrote: »

When you say you upgraded from 3 to 8mb, do you actually know what the line is capable of? Its Up to 8mb that you signed up to.

They said at the time that the line would carry about 7mb! I see downloads on bit torrent about 500-550kbps occasionally, then it can drop at other times. Even YouTube videos on occasion take much longer than they should to load up!

tuxy

Check the speed the modem is connecting at(not the speed you get with download tests) so we know if the problem is with the isp or the line.

thenashlegend

Hopefully that link will work! I'm guessing that's what you mean??

tuxy

Yeah that's it. Looks ok to me. Torrent is not a reliable test of speed because of the hugh variance in seeder speeds. Youtube provides more bandwidth to popular video so some videos can buffer so regardless of your internet speed.

The best way to test speed is to download a file from a reliable local server.

Here's a linux distrobution from a very fast Irish server

http://ftp.heanet.ie/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/debian-7.1.0-i386-CD-1.iso

What speed do you get when downloading this file?
Leave it running for a few minutes at least to allow the speed to stabilise.
Just delete the file when finished testing

I also forgot to ask as you conected to the router over wifi or cable?

thenashlegend

How quickly should that download on 8MB? Or what's a reasonable time frame? Its tapered off at 135KB/s on wireless, I'm sure it would improve when cabled!

I normally use a desktop, just happen to have a laptop here this evening.

tuxy

That's very slow alright I get about 750 kb/s on eircom 8mb
It would take me just under 15 mins to download the whole file.
If you have an ethernet cable disconnect the wireless and test with the cable.
Or at least test in the same room as the router to try to eliminate a poor wifi connection as the cause of the problem.

thenashlegend

Hard to believe but cabled to the laptop directly from the router its getting 75KB!

tuxy

Damn I have no idea what's wrong then
The guys over on the eircom customer service forum are usually good to respond to customer problems so maybe try asking them for help

http://www.boards.ie/ttforum/1293

thenashlegend

Its a strange one alright! It's as simple as, I wont be paying if its not improved in the next while. What can they do? Cut my service?

Thanks for all the help anyway, much appreciated!