Broadband speed

Sheepfan

At the moment I am signed up to Tiscali's 1mb service yet my connection only averages about 500kbps - I know there are lot of variables (distance from BT exchange etc), but is this really low or just something I am going to have to accept...?

Any advice much appreciated...

Mr_Skint_2

http://www.adslguide.org.uk Get the results here then post them on the forum....

Then an informed reply can be made

Choose speed test from the left, dont use your connection for anything else
whilst running the test.

Gavin57

I know that my Tiscali connection was slow at the weekend seemed to have improved last night. You can check your speed here.

trigger_mike

my service is naff as well, im on bt broadband, im signed up to the 512kps but ages ago the service has changed to 2mps but i've not be upgraded, computer says im running at 100kps though that link you highlight says im running 458kbps downsteam and 242kbps upsteam, (i dont relly understand all that though)

safesound

Gavin57 wrote:

I know that my Tiscali connection was slow at the weekend seemed to have improved last night. You can check your speed here.

1800 ~
Not bad for a 1mb connection although I agree it was very slow over the weekend.

Rex_Mundi

There is also a very good speedtest out there for anyone getting their broadband through a BT phone line. They have an official BT speedtest that will check your line by cutting out your ISP. If you have any speed problems, this is a good way of seeing if the problems are due to contention on the BT network or problems with your internet provider.

Here's how to use the test..................

Go to your modem or router. Log out of your broadband (make sure you remember your login details). Reconnect to broadband using these details....

Username: speedtest@speedtest_domain
Password: (leave blank)

When you connect to this network. Open your browser and go to the page http://speedtester.bt.com/ You will be prompted for your phone number. Enter this and click Go. This test will show you how your broadband is performing on the BT network before it gets to your ISP. You can do this test only once every 30 minutes.

Once you have finished the test. You need to go back to your modem/router and enter your login details for your normal ISP.

Fran

***Boardguide comment***

Sheepfan,

I have moved this to the Internet Access board. I hope this is ok.

spandit

Rex_Mundi - I couldn't get that to work. Using http://speedcheck.ispconnect.co.uk/ I get speeds of ~800kbps in the mornings, but only 100-150kbps from midday to midnight. I've sent tiscali an email and I've had a few suggestions for what to do to solve the speed problem. None of them work, so does anyone else have any ideas?

jamesebaker

The reason for this is that tiscali have a fair usage policy and "shape" your broadband over peak times - effectively limiting your speeds:

Fair usage policy
Tiscali's Fair Usage Policy is designed to make sure your broadband service is quick and reliable whenever you use it.
A very small number of customers use Peer to Peer or file sharing software, which constantly sends and receives video and other very large files, throughout the day. This type of activity uses a lot of bandwidth and can significantly reduce the speed at which other customers can access the internet during peak hours. Approximately 1% of customers use more than 30% of the available bandwidth during peak hours. We don't believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers.
This fair usage policy automatically identifies the very small number of extremely heavy users and manages their bandwidth only during peak hours (being 6pm to 11pm Monday to Friday, and 12pm to 4pm on weekends), to protect the service for all our other customers. Outside peak hours, the use of the internet by these heavy users is unaffected.
We think this is the fairest approach. It protects the quality of service for the vast majority of our customers when they most use the service, while at the same time allowing the extremely heavy users to continue to send and receive without restriction outside of peak hours.

Rex_Mundi

spandit wrote:

Rex_Mundi - I couldn't get that to work. Using http://speedcheck.ispconnect.co.uk/ I get speeds of ~800kbps in the mornings, but only 100-150kbps from midday to midnight. I've sent tiscali an email and I've had a few suggestions for what to do to solve the speed problem. None of them work, so does anyone else have any ideas?

To get a slowdown in the afternoons/evenings looks like your problem could be down to contention on the network. The speedtest I posted above would help to give you more of an idea of where the contention is happening (your local exchange or Tiscali).

Did you goto the login bit where you login to Tiscali and reconnect using the above details? This will only log you into the BT speedtest network (only the speedtest page will work on this network, not normal surfing. No 'normal' web pages will load/display). How did the test not work for you (how far did you get)?

spandit

Rex_Mundi - I'm not using the modem that Tiscali provided, as I am using my own Netgear router. When I changed the login name in the router settings I got the "Page cannot be displayed" message, as if it wasn't connected at all.

jamesebaker - The bandwidth speed limiting that Tiscali may explain my 6pm-11pm speeds, but what about 2pm in the afternoon? Last month I uploaded/downloaded about 8GB of data (use Skype a lot, especially for sending files). Would this class me as a heavy user?