My Sky BB speed

lindabea

My BB download speed is consistently at around 1.77mbps; I think this is very slow, although adequate for my current needs. I don't do a lot of downloads - mostly general browsing. However, I would like to use 'On demand', and I need a min of 2mbps. B4 calling sky, can anyone please advise.

gonzo127

first thing first would be to find out what the expected speed you line should be doing so go http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker here and pop in your details should give something like this

The following services are available in your location:

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
BT Wholesale WBC (21CN)
AOL LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU
Orbital / VFast Wireless

Please select the options on the left for more information about broadband availability at your location.

at the left of this will be some buttons so click on the BT ADSL button then something like this will come up

According to BT Wholesale, houses at your postcode should be able to support
up to 2Mbps via ADSL
5Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max
6Mbps or greater via ADSL2+
Standard ADSL RAG results

You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
You can receive 512kbps ADSL
You can receive 256kbps ADSL

You are approximately 1.70km from the exchange. Note that this is the straight line distance - the actual cable length will be longer

once we have these details it will give an idea if there is something serioulsy wrong, or if you about what would be expected and therefore can give some advise which could speed things up

lindabea

Thanks Gonzo for your reply. Here are the details I obtained:

• BT Wholesale ADSL
• BT Wholesale ADSL Max
• BT Wholesale WBC (21CN)
• BT FTTC
• AOL LLU
• TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
• Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU

• ADSL is available in your area
• Your exchange is also enabled for ADSL Max services
• Your exchange is also enabled for ADSL2+ services

According to BT Wholesale, houses at your postcode should be able to support
up to 2Mbps via ADSL
6.5Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max
12Mbps or greater via ADSL2+
Standard ADSL RAG results

• You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 512kbps ADSL
• You can receive 256kbps ADSL

You are approximately 1.06km from the exchange. Note that this is the straight line distance - the actual cable length will be longer!


If I understand this correctly, it seems that my actual speed is very reasonable but not adequate for heavy downloads.

gonzo127

well according to them details above either your reading of your download speed is wrong, or else you have got something else up

can i ask which Sky broadband package you are one? as if its the free one that is limited in speed to 2mb and onyl has a 2gb download limit so would not be suitable for streaming/catchup tv etc

other than that first things first, we have to be careful when comparing units, for example in broadband you will get megabytes and megabits the difference being that a 'byte' is made up of 8 'bits' so you have to be careful when reading your speeds,

therefore when doing the download tests do you get MBps or Mbps as your line should be more than capable of supporting streaming for example my stats which are lower than yours, does support a couple of streams at any one time and my real word speeds are actualy 10Mbps on adsl2+ which is roughly 1.1 MBps, and is more than suitable for heavy downloads (i get through roughly 500GB per month on my connection)

macman

Post your router stats.

Bongedone

When I was getting a slow connection with Sky I swapped the filter. This massively increased the speed.

You should also try cabling your computer to the router as you may be on a channel that lots of other properties share.

GunJack

even better would be your actual line stats, you need to log into your router to find these...provide what gonzo has asked for first, to see if it's really worth you going that far

GunJack

that'll teach me not to refresh first

IF you're NOT on the 2meg limited package, you need to troubleshoot your connection, follow info here:-

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php

gonzo127

GunJack wrote: »

even better would be your actual line stats, you need to log into your router to find these...provide what gonzo has asked for first, to see if it's really worth you going that far

well this is always why i start at samknows instead of stright into the router as its easier to see if its worth going fully into things as my thoughts are that OP is either on the free but limited package, or the actual download is 17mbps and is showing as 1.7MBps with the confusion over the Bytes and bits terminology

lindabea

gonzo127 wrote: »

well this is always why i start at samknows instead of stright into the router as its easier to see if its worth going fully into things as my thoughts are that OP is either on the free but limited package, or the actual download is 17mbps and is showing as 1.7MBps with the confusion over the Bytes and bits terminology

Thank you guys for all your replies. As you suspected, I'm on the 2 GB limit and my line speed is1.77Mbps. Is this a reasonable speed for downloading films from Lovefilm or on demand from sky? I know I may need to upgrade to the BB unlimited, but I don't want to do that if I'm than limited to a slow speed.

gonzo127

lindabea wrote: »

Thank you guys for all your replies. As you suspected, I'm on the 2 GB limit and my line speed is1.77Mbps. Is this a reasonable speed for downloading films from Lovefilm or on demand from sky? I know I may need to upgrade to the BB unlimited, but I don't want to do that if I'm than limited to a slow speed.

the speed is not going to be the biggest problem as it would work with a standard definition stream,

your issue is the fact that your package is limited to only 2gb per month and iplayer for example will use roughly 350mb per hour for a standard definition program so will eat all your limit in around 5 hours without any other internet usage

per hour usage estimations

Low bandwidth streaming (480Kbps) = 190-210MB
Standard quality streaming (800Kbps) = 320-340MB
High quality streaming (1500Kbps) = 600-640MB
High definition streaming (2800Kbps) = 1.10-1.20GB

as to moving to the unlimited package, the speed would not then be a problem as Sky would remove the artificail cap on your speed and so i would expect on your line going by the estimations of same knows for you to get a 12mb line therefore being able to stream upto 3-4 HD quality streams at the same time (based on a 3-4mbps per HD stream)