BT Broadband crawling - is it just us?

[fleetwood]

BT Broadband seems to have ground to a snails pace this weekend - both at home and at work- is it just my area, or is anyone else finding this?

This is more than the usual weekend heavy use grind...

[Dave Fisher]

Hi Martin,

Yes I have noticed it seems to be running very slow this weekend. Been with BT now for a couple of years and this weekend is the worst its ever been and has been driving me mad all weekend!

Dave

[george]

Apartently theres a new `porn` filter ComicBloke, then more it sniffs out (pun intended) on your pc, the slower it gets. :D



Seriously, our (overpriced) 8mb BT connection at work is fine.

[TraceyHand]

hmmm...ours has been dodgy but we were blaming our new (and, so far, very unreliable) router..maybe it's not the hardware to blame?

I did switch back to the old router to test it....for a split second...til I blew it up using the wrong power input :eek:

[jont]

Ours has been fine also, but BT do tend to have more localised issues than the other operators.. which is better so long as you are not inside the local issue area.

[bentleybloke]

Our BT 2mb broadband which was adequate has been reduced to a crawl and it keeps connecting and disconnecting.

Tried different (but same model) router and new microfilter into master socket. No change.

Checkout speedtester.bt.com ours was 52kbps, I've told bt that is unacceptable and they acknowledge there is a problem.

[TiggyPig]

I had to send an email to the CEO of BT to get something done cceo@bt.com ( oops, did I just accidentally give out his email address )

Seems my line was throttled and instead of a 2000 profile, so I could get my full 2mb speed, mine was set at 1000, I wonder how many others are too.

Get on to BT, kick up stink. Why should you pay for Broadband speed and put up with dialup speeds.

Try here for a speedtest, the BT one never seems to work very well:

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/

Dont dial up BT support, those overseas guys are about as much use as mudflaps on a tortoise.

Take it to the top!

Also, checkout www.dslzoneuk.co.uk for ratings, Exchange info and LOADS more........

[Mark H]

Whilst it goes without saying that the "residential" BT broadband accounts should offer a decent service, we went down the BT business broadband route for about £7 extra a month. Support is very good and UK based, and based on a very small sample (us, and a mate's office nearby!) performance is signficantly better with the business service, which presumably uses the same equipment and is the same distance from the exchange. We regularly acheive 4-5Mbits, which is more than double that achieved nearby with the residential option.

PS we are in a country area and 3km from the exchange - two years ago we were told that any sort of broadband was not available.

[Jan]

I have business broadband and it's quite frankly rubbish. If I could get a different service I would do so today.

Regards,

[Darren B]

Hmmm i have to say it, but anyone who has brodband through there existing BT line wether it is with AOL, Sky who ever it is still on BT broadband, it is seperated at the exchange or main exchanges in to the relative companies hardware. but it all go's through BT 1st.

Peak traffic periods are the worst cause

D

[Mark H]

As mentioned earlier, it obviously depends where you are with BT - we haven't had a single problem with the business variety, and have been very impressed with the service:)

[Darren B]

I agree Mark, 2 sites and never a problem, its a bugger i cant get sdsl though

D

[Cheapprices4u]

as darrren says the problem atm is we all hav eto use bt in one was or another

untill more exchanges go unbundled were stuffed

but the copper is still the same from exchange to house, so if thats been poorly maintained over the last 30yrs or so dont matter really

dsl dont like bad copper

[Duncan Rounding]

Leading on from this thread...

The gadget show has an initiative to raise awareness of the 'up to xxMb' speeds advertsied by the ISPs as not being achievable.

This is a gripe of mine. I have the 20Mb servcie from Virgin and can never acheive above 10Mb down (and that's on ftp not http, http is lower at 6Mb), upload is good which is the only reason I keep their top level product.

Does anyone ever achieve these advertised 'up to' speeds?

[Mark H]

A colleague in the same area as us is 0.5km from the exchange and regularly downloads 1mbyte per second with BT, which I think translates into 8mbit, which is the maximum for his package (ie "up to 8mb"). We "only" get 4-5mbit as we are futher away, which was understood when we signed up. Also, we are getting siginificantly more than was estimated by BT using their speed estimator based on your telephone number, so we have no gripes at all.

[Darren B]

Same here - work is further away from home exchange and varies best would be about 3mb, home best would be 5mb, most of the time they are 2 to 4 during the day, mind you i get lag when someone logs in to the cctv system. But i i can easily run vpn's and without to much slow down. all good old fashion BT copper

D

[TraceyHand]

mind you i get lag when someone logs in to the cctv system.
D

:eek:
who would do such a thing?

[Darren B]

:eek:
who would do such a thing?
Morning miss bumps ;)

[Mark H]

Somebody here has just suggested that the BT residential service is ADSL, whereas the business service is ADSL+ . If this is true it would certainly warrant a few extra pounds a month, but anyone thinking of changing would be best to check first (I doknow for sure that the business version is ADSL+)

[Mike Hughes]

It's unlikely you'd ever get the full 8 Mpbs. After the overheads for protocols are taken into account it's more like 7 Mbps and that's before considering other traffic on the network.

BT did use contention ratios (i.e. sharing of the bandwidth) to get around the fact that you were sharing a backbone connection with other users. For home users this was 50:1 and for business it was 20:1 (i.e. there would be up to 50 or 20 users sharing the available bandwidth).

I don't think this is as much of a problem now as there's more bandwidth available from the local exchange to the network backbone. There is still traffic balancing to try and give everyone a fair share of what's available and at peak times they limit peer-to-peer protocols to stop everything slowing down. They also rate limit heavy users (anyone who exceeds 25GB of download in a month I believe) at peak times.

Mike

[TiggyPig]

Well I am on BT Broadband in my office and get 2.7MB out of 8Mb.

The office next door is on the same line but uses ORANGE and gets 7MB, they are all of 4ft away from me.

I was told it was my line that was the problem and the quality was poor. Yet the office next door is on the same line and it doesnt affect their speeds.

BT Told me my BRAS ( huh?) at the exchange was set to 3mb.... Looks like BT are capping / throttling connections again to get more people online.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[TiggyPig]

Well BT now reckon I have a noise level of 57db on my line and am lucky to have broadband at all. Strange how this noise doesnt affect people on Orange next door.......

[Darren B]

Odd i thought you could only have one broadband per copper line :confused:

[Darren B]

BRAS

Broadband Remote Access Server

There is loads of information on this around the internet, but basically if you have a noisey line, then your modem will try a sync all the time to get the best speed, BT then cap the number of sync events, which results in you line being capped, thus resulting in a reduced speed

D

[TraceyHand]

Broadband Remote Access Server

There is loads of information on this around the internet, but basically if you have a noisey line, then your modem will try a sync all the time to get the best speed, BT then cap the number of sync events, which results in you line being capped, thus resulting in a reduced speed

D

blimey, Darren
that was a bit technical :p
:)

[Darren B]

blimey, Darren
that was a bit technical :p
:)

That was a breif explaination, i can always give you a long winded version if you like :D you really must keep up miss bumps ;)

D

[TraceyHand]

That was a breif explaination, i can always give you a long winded version if you like :D

Please do...you know where to find me ;)

you really must keep up miss bumps ;)

not my job........

[Darren B]

Please do...you know where to find me ;)

Toooooooooooooooo far just to nip around for a chat



not my job........

God i have not heard someone say that for ages

D

[TraceyHand]

Toooooooooooooooo far just to nip around for a chat


well, you just found me in 3 different placed so it can't be that difficult ;)

ahh..the wonders of the world wide web...

[Darren B]

Well you obviously hang out in the same places

[bentleybloke]

A very helpful BT Openreach engineer visited us today (our broadband is with BT Business). He tested the line with his special gizmo and hey presto, as if by magic, it started working as it should. speedtester.bt.com reported full steam ahead too! He said you couldn't get a better result for a line test. I think they throttled it back until a complaint was received.

[jont]

BT holding back the nations connection speeds? Whatever next :confused:

[bentleybloke]

It's a cunning plan to get people to upgrade and sign on for 18 month contract.

[pinbrook]

Not as cunning as Virgin Media's current methods. I just phoned them to cancel my TV and Telephone packages, to be told all thier systems are currently down so they couldn't talk to me.

[bentleybloke]

How about this from P I P E X: I phoned them today to get my MAC ID so I can switch to a package from S K Y. P_ _ _X tell me that my local exchange isn't S_Y enabled and I won't be able to get boadband as part of said package. The woman kept me on the phone for ages, trying to get me to upgrade even after I told her that I walk the dog past my local exchange and I can see the word S_Y on equipment through the window!

[fleetwood]

I just phoned them to cancel my TV and Telephone packages, to be told all thier systems are currently down so they couldn't talk to me.

Jo,

Best tell them that you can no longer pay for their services, as your credit card has developed a fault :D

I'll bet the system in their sales dept is working just fine!!