New Broadband - First 10 days

Toki

I have recently moved house and had broadband, Sky broadband connect, installed last Wednesday, the 18th of August.

However when I tried to connect the supplied Sky router it wouldn't sync. I was away with work until Friday night so phoned Sky and the problem was found to be a 10 metre extension cable I had coming from the main BT socket. Once I put the router into the main socket it connected on Saturday morning, but at a very slow rate. This morning it's still only running at 0.7Mb according to a speed test and has been consistently under 1Mb.

I understand that the speed will vary for the first 10 days but mine has been slow from the start. Could I have caused this by leaving the router to sync for a few days making the line think it had to reduce the speed?

Will it be able to sort itself out in the next few days? My estimated speed is 2.5Mb.

Thanks in advance.

Eyeballs99

If you are still able to cancel your broadband with sky (still within the first 14 days I believe) then I would get out and get out quick.

Sky broadband connect is the worst broadband i have ever had, Their packages they do with their own equipment in the exchange I have heard is very good, however if they dont have this then you will never receive anything more than what you are currently getting

I was with Sky broadband for a year due to my contract, they basically port throttle your line and cap it at very low speeds. I had many arguments with sky over that year but they would never admit it
In the end I left after my year was up, I went from getting 0.5mb-0.7Mb to 5mb+ down my line, i got this straight away and has been great ever since

i pay £18 a month and use Vivaciti, I have a cap at 30GB a month in peek and unlimited after that. I never go over and I do a fair amount of streaming and downloading. i would recommend it but there are other good ones out there.

With Sky I couldn’t run bbc iplayer (port blocked i believe) and I could never stream on youtube, all run great now

my opinion, Get out while you still can as nothing you have done or will be able to do will correct this issue

kwikbreaks

Sky Connect is resold BT IPstream. Actually it is massively oversold BT Ipstream and as indicated above not a good choice.

The reason it is running slow is almost certainly the BTw DLM routines - it has suffered a slow sync (probably because of the dodgy extension) and that has resulted in a low IP profile being set. Even now your sync rate has improved it won't deliver faster until the IP profile catches up with that higher sync. That may take anything up to five days but with any luck will be sooner.

Toki

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Sky Connect is resold BT IPstream. Actually it is massively oversold BT Ipstream and as indicated above not a good choice.

The reason it is running slow is almost certainly the BTw DLM routines - it has suffered a slow sync (probably because of the dodgy extension) and that has resulted in a low IP profile being set. Even now your sync rate has improved it won't deliver faster until the IP profile catches up with that higher sync. That may take anything up to five days but with any luck will be sooner.

Thanks for the explanation. I'll wait and see if it improves over the next couple of days. Is it this initial 10 days that decides the speed of the connection for the rest of the contract? Or does it constantly do these checks and changes the speed on an ongoing basis.

I appreciate what you say regarding Sky Connect, but my other options are limited, only LLU on my exchange are talk talk and there's no way I'm dealing with them again after my last experience.

Thanks!

kwikbreaks

The "First 10 days" with BTw Ipstream connections is in fact a bit of a myth. All that happens during the first 10 days which is different from any other period is that BT record the lowest sync achieved and refuse to look at reported issues where the sync being achieved is above 70% of that value. This means because of the initial problem a linesman could accidentally replace a section of yours with wet spaghetti and it would probably still be in spec.

What the DLM routines do 24x7 from day 1 is monitor resyncs - too many and your target noise margin is increased which reduces the sync rate but makes it less likely the connection will drop. The initial target is 6dB and it can go up in 3dB steps to 15dB. A stable line can be rewarded with a 3dB reductions right back to the initial 6dB but it takes a long time.

The other factor in the DLM is setting the IP profile rate - that is the maximum that your line can deliver and it gets set in steps depending on the sync. A low sync sets it down immediately but a faster sync doesn't lead to instant recovery - that can take from hours to days.

All that rubbish is one good reason for taking LLU instead of BT Ipstream if at all possible. Sky and O2 being the good offerings with the rest probably worse than a good IPstream ISP can offer.

See if you can get O2 LLU - http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php If so dump Sky and go wth them instead. If not then it's a bit more problematic and depends on how much you want to download.

I don't think that Sky actually employ throttling though - their abysmal performance is just the result of contention caused by cramming far too many customers onto limited BTw purchased capacity.

Toki

kwikbreaks wrote: »

The "First 10 days" with BTw Ipstream connections is in fact a bit of a myth. All that happens during the first 10 days which is different from any other period is that BT record the lowest sync achieved and refuse to look at reported issues where the sync being achieved is above 70% of that value. This means because of the initial problem a linesman could accidentally replace a section of yours with wet spaghetti and it would probably still be in spec.

What the DLM routines do 24x7 from day 1 is monitor resyncs - too many and your target noise margin is increased which reduces the sync rate but makes it less likely the connection will drop. The initial target is 6dB and it can go up in 3dB steps to 15dB. A stable line can be rewarded with a 3dB reductions right back to the initial 6dB but it takes a long time.

The other factor in the DLM is setting the IP profile rate - that is the maximum that your line can deliver and it gets set in steps depending on the sync. A low sync sets it down immediately but a faster sync doesn't lead to instant recovery - that can take from hours to days.

All that rubbish is one good reason for taking LLU instead of BT Ipstream if at all possible. Sky and O2 being the good offerings with the rest probably worse than a good IPstream ISP can offer.

See if you can get O2 LLU - http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php If so dump Sky and go wth them instead. If not then it's a bit more problematic and depends on how much you want to download.

I don't think that Sky actually employ throttling though - their abysmal performance is just the result of contention caused by cramming far too many customers onto limited BTw purchased capacity.

Thanks for the explanation, think I understand most of that.

I did check sam knows but only talk talk on my exchange I'm afraid. Sky did say it's likely mine would be LLU'd soon though. No date given so I'm not holding my breath.

I'll wait and see what happens over the next few days and hope the speed increases. I'm not going to be downloading a lot to be honest.

kwikbreaks

You could try the BT tester - http://speedtester.bt.com/ - which should tell you what your IP profile is. Unfortunately it's a PITA to use (or at least it was in the days when I suffered the BT tyranny) and you'll probably have to try several times to get it to work.

My first LLU ISP was UKOnline who are on the Easynet network just like Sky (same sort of thing as Be/O2) and their non-LLU product (same as your Sky Connect I think) got regular savage slatings in the UKO section of ThinkBroadBand.

You really need to decide if you are sticking with Sky quickly or you'll be tied into their 12 month (?) contract. Unfortunately with only 1 LLU operator you won't be able to get the cheapest non-LLU deals either but there are ISPs that will deliver a better service than Sky.

Toki

kwikbreaks wrote: »

You could try the BT tester - http://speedtester.bt.com/ - which should tell you what your IP profile is. Unfortunately it's a PITA to use (or at least it was in the days when I suffered the BT tyranny) and you'll probably have to try several times to get it to work.

My first LLU ISP was UKOnline who are on the Easynet network just like Sky (same sort of thing as Be/O2) and their non-LLU product (same as your Sky Connect I think) got regular savage slatings in the UKO section of ThinkBroadBand.

You really need to decide if you are sticking with Sky quickly or you'll be tied into their 12 month (?) contract. Unfortunately with only 1 LLU operator you won't be able to get the cheapest non-LLU deals either but there are ISPs that will deliver a better service than Sky.

I tried the BT Speedtester and that shows I am connecting at 750Kb and the speed I am getting is acceptable. My line is quite a long way from the exchange but I expected better than this! The estimate was for 2.5Mb connection. Is there anything I can do?

kwikbreaks

Could be noise pickup on your internal wiring if you have extensions and have done nothing to isolate the ring wire.

Post your router stats - http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

Toki

I've removed the Sky extension and the other extension which was connected for the phone.

Stats are

Connection Speed - Down - 928kbps - Up - 448kbps
Attenuation - Down - 63.5 db - Up - 31.5 db
Noise Margin - Down - 10.8 db - Up - 13 db

From my limited knowledge this is a poor line and probably getting the speed you would expect. Why was the estimated speed so high compared to the reality? Could I have a fault in the line?

Thanks.

kwikbreaks

Yes both the upstream and downstream attenuation figures are actually the highest numbers your router can report and may be even higher. The upstream is running at the maximum you can get on general IPstream home ADSL the business product does offer higher.

It would be instructive to reboot sometime tomorrow during the day to
a) see what your target noise margin is set to
b) see the maximum sync that you are likely to get

If the target margin is higher than 6dB it should eventually drop back to that so long as your line is stable which will improve your sync a bit but until the Infinity product or cable comes your way (if either ever do) your speed is going to be pretty poor.

Regarding the estimate - it is quite common for these to be way out as BT didn't (and likely still don't) keep detailed records of line routing. Once ADSL is connected the BT estimate usually gets updated.