SKY - Do they throttle back

theloft

I am with SKY and download speead is around 14 to 17 Mbps which should be OK. This is fine in the mornings and web pages come up quickly, but in the evenings, I experience real problems.
Yesterday evening trying to log on to various websites, it was hopeless. 1. Opening sites, slow, kept getting the whirling circle.
2. When I did manage to log on, everything was slow. 3. Great difficulty logging out of one site to get to another. Anyone else experiencing this problem? I have tried IE, Firefox & Chrome, but all the same. Is it SKY or just too many people logging on ? Any info on this would be appreciated. Another thing, for the first time for ages I checked my BB Speed this morning. I usually use Broadband Speed Checker which used to be instant, but now despite three attempts, it states "Preparing Download Test" and nothing happens! Eventually went on to Which? site and this was OK.

Pincher

It's like the M25 near Chertsey in rush hour.


It is possible another ISP is more expensive, and so less popular in your area, so you are sharing the bandwidth with fewer people.


John Lewis does broadband, too, reassuringly expensive.

onomatopoeia99

Pincher wrote: »

It is possible another ISP is more expensive, and so less popular in your area, so you are sharing the bandwidth with fewer people.

Peak time slowdowns are down to ISPs under-provisioning their links, either from their backhaul network or to the rest of the Internet, or if the links to the backhaul network in the subscriber's area are congested.

As I understand it Sky are LLU and consequently have their own backhaul network in most areas, so it's all under their control. The main shared backhaul networks are those operated by Openreach (20CN and 21CN), and for all their faults (of which there are many), Openreach are good about ensuring that their network is not the point of contention.

A cheap ISP is more likely to under-provision to keep costs down, which will result in contention and packet loss.

You get what you pay for. I wouldn't use any of the ones that advertise on the telly and compete on price.

macman

I can only speak for my own line, but I have been on Sky LLU for just over a year now and get a rock steady 9Mbps, with minimal variation regardless of the time of day. Have only had to call tech support once and that issue was resolved quickly and effficiently.