BT broadband speed

newfoundglory

I am looking for someone with some good networking knowledge. I live in a house with 4 other students. BT recently upgraded (regraded) the speed of our broadband from the 512 to the new 2 megabits/s about a week ago. We have been frequently checking the speed of our broadband, using a number of different methods and websites to do this... but the speed appears not to have changed!

I am a computer scientist, and I have tried absolutely *everything* I can think of to fix this problem. My housemate was on the phone to BT for over an hour yesterday, who to cut a long story short, after much transferring around from person to person, denied that its their problem; but i'm convinced it is. BT simply don't care, and have been of no use... other than to confirm the line has been upgraded, and deny there are any line or broadband issues. When doing BT's own speed test it took over 3 minutes to complete, and the guy on the phone said at 2 megabits it should be done in less than 10 seconds. My knowledge of physical networking is perhaps more theoretical than practical. Anyway...

Our broadband comes in to a BT Voyager 200 router, which we connect to an 8 port network switch where 5 systems are connected on a 100 mbit wired ethernet network. Now, the router admin panel via the browser actually says there is an imcoming speed of approx 2270 kbit/s (ie, the new 2 megebit).

We have speed tested the connection on all the computers we have in the house with the network switch in place (including 3 Windows machines, 2 Apple Macs - 1 emac, and 1 powerbook - and 1 unix box running freebsd and linux)... then we removed the network switch and plugged in just a mac, and after this just the windows machine, directly into the router with nothing in between.

On every speed test we do we *still* get the same result which suggests the connection is still at 512! Downloads never exceed this speed from any site either. We have tried different cables. We have changed all micro-filters. This morning I updated the router firmware from the official site. And its not as though we are far from the BT exchange either - its just down the road!

BT (hahahah) even recommends we format and reinstall the windows machines because it could be spyware. Even though we claim our windows machines are clean, BT found it hard to understand that people simply don't write viruses and spyware for macs and unix operating systems.

BT did call us this morning and confess they had found a fault on the line at their end and said it was now fixed... but the speed has STILL NOT CHANGED!


So if there are any network engineers out there who can help... or if anyone else has experienced this problem... let me know. If you think I have tried everything... tell me! :eek:

Gallowgate_2

I got upgraded as well by BT and ran some tests. My 2mb work account is slower than my 512kb account. This doesn't help you, but at least you know that others think BT is pants as well

shrek101

Have you tried this speedtest

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedtest.asp

Report back what you got.

Gallowgate_2

456kps upstream
244kps downstream

newfoundglory

Yeah, we've tried that speed test too. At of 1 minute ago, a mighty unimpressive true/estimated result of:

Downstream 309 Kbps (38.6 KB/sec) 333 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream 222 Kbps (27.8 KB/sec) 239 Kbps (inc. overheads)

It does vary... it has been as low as 195 Kbps downstream at times ... making our upstream speed faster than the downstream! :eek:

BT will take no action unless its less than 48 Kbps i think they said... we lied and said that, but we are not hoping that they will actually get back to us with a solution.

shrek101

Theres something wrong with those speeds, there it should be much higher than that. Its either at BT's end, contention at exchange which even with that speed is still slow, or your system is at fault. Have you got a firewall installed? if yes just disable for a brief while to check speeds. adslguide forums are helpful for advice from Bt users.

newfoundglory

Yes, there is a built-in firewall on the router, and all the computers have firewalls on too. The router firewall I leave off... we did disable firewalls on some speed tests and it makes no difference.

My laptop has no touble getting the full 1 megebit connection when i'm at my parents house with the firewall active, so i don't think its a firewall issue.

crankup

How far from the exchange are you? This may be an issue for a 2Mb line although BT shoudl already test that.
Here's a link to a broadband forum - this page gives instructions on how to carry out some tests on your line yourself.
http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/t181.html

From here you can calculate your distance from the exchange automatically, plus do a "quiet line test" - might be useful in checking your connectors etc.

Hope this helps :-)
Crankup

Fran

newfoundglory wrote:

Yes, there is a built-in firewall on the router, and all the computers have firewalls on too. The router firewall I leave off... we did disable firewalls on some speed tests and it makes no difference.

My laptop has no touble getting the full 1 megebit connection when i'm at my parents house with the firewall active, so i don't think its a firewall issue.

Perhaps try using your router firewall - which HERE it is suggested is a better idea. (And turn XP SP2 firewall if you have it plus any other software firewalls off.)

newfoundglory wrote:

Now, the router admin panel via the browser actually says there is an imcoming speed of approx 2270 kbit/s (ie, the new 2 megebit).

Wouldn't that indicate that the speed is correct and that the problem lies somewhere in the router configuration or elsewhere further down the line?

vultura

If the router is reporting the speeds correctly then it would sound like a network issue, rather than the BT line/Broadband being at fault.

I know on Windows based PCs the speed can sometimes be improved by altering the MTU, but not sure if such a thing exists on Mac/Unix.

Are you running the latest drivers for your network cards?

Does another student have a Windows PC with network capability that you can plugin to the router and test with that?

NellyLock

hey, i would give it a bit of time, when we got our meg line (with a different service provider) the first few weeks were a bit mixed in regards to the speeds we were getting - sometimes less than 512k!(this happened on two different occasions - changed house after a year and rejoined). but after this things seemed to settle down and we got the connection we were expecting and it is constant speed now. see what happens in a couple of weeks, and if it gets no better then start complaining (also complain if you can be bothered that the service *should* be immediate)


as an asside when your running the speedcheck no-one on your network is uploading anything by anychance? if so try again with no u/loads

spyware for the mac will happen soon to shut up those people who think that it is sooo much more secure blah blah blah