Incredibly slow broadband speed, BT say it's fine

stupot101

Hi,

Since the weekend I've been getting 0.1mb, which is down from an average of 3 to 4 mb.

So I called BT, they tried a few things, and then said an engineer will have to call out. He arrived promptly this morning (unfortunately I couldn't be here) and tested the line. Without doing anything he got a speed of 4mb on his own laptop, and after changing the access point thing got 6mb. I got home and I'm still getting 0.1, on both my laptops and my Xbox Live connection seems slow as well.

Tonight I've disabled and restarted the connection, tried using a hard wired connection, ran CCleaner, and generally scratched my head a lot. I'm getting a 80ms ping on speedtest.net, but 0.1mb. Is this not unusual? Shouldn't the ping be much slower for the speed I'm getting?

Any ideas?

I'm running Windows Vista on a Compaq CQ60, through a new BT Home Hub 2.0.

The old laptop is an old Advent running XP.

pcombo

what is your line stats.

S0litaire

Couple of things:

How many devices are attached to the modem?

What modem are you using? (wired or wireless?)

Do you or anyone in your family use P2P? Also what programs run when you start the machines up.

If the BT guy could connect his laptop direct and get a good speed it sounds like it be something in your machines, try 1 machine at a time and see if the speed changes.

Try in "safe mode with networking", if you get good speed then it's a problem with either a virus or a program running when you boot the machines.

stupot101

http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2609420

"target IP does not respond to ICMP ping" Which is strange, as I followed their instructions to make my address pingable. If I were to run another with Windows Firewall disabled would it work?

cheesecake0117

1.They could possibly be an issue with the either the modem or internal wiring.
2.They may have cut your speed. They might of somehow changed which option you are on which means you have gone over the montly usage.

Their tests will show no probelms as the phone line is perfectly fine.

stupot101

S0litaire wrote: »

Couple of things:

How many devices are attached to the modem?

What modem are you using? (wired or wireless?)

Do you or anyone in your family use P2P? Also what programs run when you start the machines up.

If the BT guy could connect his laptop direct and get a good speed it sounds like it be something in your machines, try 1 machine at a time and see if the speed changes.

Try in "safe mode with networking", if you get good speed then it's a problem with either a virus or a program running when you boot the machines.

Using a BT Homehub. Usually wirelessly, but have tried it wired today too. So there is nothing attached to the hub. Just the laptop and Xbox wirelessly.

Yes I use p2p. iPlayer, Sky Player and Vuze mostly. I have all the relevant ports forwarded for these.

I don't see any unusual programmes running at start up in msconfig. Kontiki and uTorrent, which I have just uninstalled.

I'll try "safe mode with networking" now.

stupot101

cheesecake0117 wrote: »

1.They could possibly be an issue with the either the modem or internal wiring.
2.They may have cut your speed. They might of somehow changed which option you are on which means you have gone over the montly usage.

Their tests will show no probelms as the phone line is perfectly fine.

Re: 2. They do this? I was on BT option 2, and went over my download allowance, quite spectacularly, in November and December. I upgraded to option three (unlimited) which was meant to start today. The customer services staff and engineer knew nothing about it if they have limited my speed.

pcombo

Of course they dont there only T1 script reading. If you want decent support you need to speak to a T3 support which will be very hard with bt. And there line contention ratio is about 50:1 no doubt making it slower. Best to go with companies that use LLU as they offer more stable connections and not as many people connected to the same link.

cheesecake0117

stupot101 wrote: »

Re: 2. They do this? I was on BT option 2, and went over my download allowance, quite spectacularly, in November and December. I upgraded to option three (unlimited) which was meant to start today. The customer services staff and engineer knew nothing about it if they have limited my speed.

We had a very similar issue had an engineer out told us the line is fine. after speking to them again they told us we had been over the download limit despite being on option 3 They then said they changed some setting on the modem told us to reboot it and the speed was back to normal.

stupot101

cheesecake0117 wrote: »

We had a very similar issue had an engineer out told us the line is fine. after speking to them again they told us we had been over the download limit despite being on option 3 They then said they changed some setting on the modem told us to reboot it and the speed was back to normal.

Was it just the normal customer services number you spoke to to get the limit lifted? I have the number for the excess usage team, maybe they can help. I have to call them to try and get the excess usage charge reduced - it will probably put me overdrawn this month. :mad: I upgraded to option three so hopefully they will.

pcombo wrote: »

Of course they dont there only T1 script reading. If you want decent support you need to speak to a T3 support which will be very hard with bt. And there line contention ratio is about 50:1 no doubt making it slower. Best to go with companies that use LLU as they offer more stable connections and not as many people connected to the same link.

I thought the opposite was true! Which shows my level of IT knowledge. Back when my mother was with Talk Talk I assumed every other company using LLU was as bad as them.

stupot101

S0litaire wrote: »

Try in "safe mode with networking", if you get good speed then it's a problem with either a virus or a program running when you boot the machines.

The speed was no different in safe mode.

If my ping is normal (76 - 80ms average) and my speed is 0.1mb, would this point to BT limiting it?