AOL drop in dl speed.

danmanchester

Been with AOL since last November. Not the best ISP, but by no means the worst and pretty much 100% reliable. I don't use their AOL9 browser nonsense software, I just put my username and password in the router...Paying £29.99 each month for the unlimited "up to 8mb" connection.

Anyway, in the last few days I've started to notice a drop in speed between 6pm and midnight, not just a little drop in speed - I mean a MASSIVE drop. I normally average 6.3 mb downloads but right now at this moment I'm getting about 480kbps !

Todays speedtests:
Date 04/10/07 17:38:36
Speed Down 6332.92 Kbps ( 6.2 Mbps )
Speed Up 357.39 Kbps ( 0.3 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk

Date 04/10/07 18:10:41
Speed Down 474.02 Kbps ( 0.5 Mbps )
Speed Up 365.46 Kbps ( 0.4 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk

I've phoned them the last few days only to be told there's nothing wrong with my line, "speed does slow at peak times" ( funny but it hasn't before...) and generally just passed from one tech support person to another until it becomes obvious I'm getting nowhere. I've even directly asked if I'm being throttled and been told "No" so I've no idea what is happening or why.

By the way they refuse to accept my speedtest results, despite telling them I have been using 5 different speedtest sites....:rolleyes:

Just wondered if anyone else on AOL has experienced anything similar.

Realising I am banging my head against a brick wall I asked for a MAC, and I'm tied in till Nov 6th..so that's when I will start the process leaving AOL.

So I have one more month at least of paying the top price for a limited unlimited service!

End of rant :mad: ( and potential warning for anyone thinking of signing up to their "UNLIMITED" broadband. :rotfl:

novice-saver

"UNLIMITED" in their terms means how much you can download, not how fast it arrives.

Speed drops like that are (almost certainly) caused by lots of people using AOL in your neighbourhood at the same time when they get home from work/school.

I believe contention for bandwidth is about 50 to 1 on AOL.

albertross_2

What you describe is probably the norm on adsl in this country. I'd be careful who you move to, because getting 6.2Mbps downloads is quite good, you could end up worse off.

You are paying double the going rate for upto 8meg currently, so should at least save some money when you move or renegotiate with AOL.

mr_fishey

I had the same problem with AOL.I have a 2 meg connection and was downloading at just under that speed.Then just like yourself my d/l speed dropped to below 1 meg even though my router ws connecting at 4meg.I to tried phoning but got no where,I even got told that it was down to me only having 512meg of RAM !!! I finally made a complaint to the ISPA and low and behold my speed went back up to its original 2meg.This has happened twice now and both times after complaining my speed went back up.
Here is the link http://www.ispa.org.uk/ ,just look for the bit where you can make a complaint.

Itchy_Niagras

My speeds have taken a massive hit these past few weeks. Whenever I've phoned AOL, the Bombay Boys simply run though their script of troubleshooting exercises, irrespective of whether or not they are relevant to the problem. Furthermore, they will never admit that there is any speed problem at the point of delivery. It's always a case of "problem: what problem?"

I'm growing tired of this debacle. Last night my speed was worse than dial-up ... at 2am!:mad:

Donnie

£30 per month!?!? Sorry, I just had to write it.
Be Broadband are good.

Sylvester

It's part of AOL's fair usage policy between 6pm and 11pm

Just drop your connection and re-connect and try to d/l again until you get a decent d/l speed.

Sometimes you have to do it 3 or 4 times, but usually you get a good speed in the end .

Itchy_Niagras

Sylvester wrote: »

It's part of AOL's fair usage policy between 6pm and 11pm

But it's sometimes been occurring in the afternoons as well!:(

Iconic

Is it something to do with this:

'AOL will be implementing a traffic management system regarding P2P's (BitTorrent, utorrent, limewire etc). So when the AOL network is busy i.e at peak times etc, all download speeds regarding P2P's will be reduced. This won't effect browsing, downloading from servers. All connection speeds will remain the same. This will start 1st October'

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=aol&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=1