Broadband Fibre FAST!! But not as fast as what I was expecting!

Consecca

This one is best explained in a Loom video, (6mins watch time) please check it out here:
https://www.loom.com/share/fde2c8440dab4058aa14bdb59f3c39f5
Thanks
Consecca

mnbvcxz

Summary;
they have upgraded to bt halo 1 100mbs, presumably fttp? They are not sure what they had before but think it was similar but a slower speed. They are annoyed that web pages do not render/load any snappier. Particularly spotify and youtube 
content rich pages. Speed tests show a 14ms latency and pretty much their full 100mbs speed.

They have posted a six minute video explaining this and showing a few web pages loading in chrome on their apple computer.

Perhaps I am grumpy but while I can see that a video is a useful way to show how fast webpages are loading on your computer perhaps a shorter video with a text description in the forum would be more efficient.

All in all while you may have been misled by the marketing I don't think buying a faster download speed would necessarily lead to faster page loads. If your internet connection had been overloaded, perhaps too many people trying to watch netflix at the same time then a bigger internet connection would have helped. But if you had plenty before then now you still have plenty and more.

I don't know much about tuning web browsers but you can try looking for a faster loading browser. You could try tuning the settings, turning off extensions, addons and possible something? Try using someone else's dns servers to see if they are quicker than bt's. Faster more power full computer? Try an ethernet cable to rule out wifi? I'm sure if you google it there will be guides with tips on the internet. Though to an extent webpages are getting more complicated and heavier and you are partly reliant on the other end sending them out to you.

And you have probably just entered into a new 24 month contract... Still think of how many extra people can now sit in your home streaming 4k video and video conferencing without slowing each other down! Lucky you.

Good luck
 

matelodave

A faster internet speed wont always translate to faster download speeds as a lot will depend on where you are getting your content and their server speed, the overall network speed, the speed of your computer and your home wifi speed.
I've got FTTP and get a solid 76mbit's and some stuff comes down like the wind but others can be almost as slow as it was when we only had 2mbit's. There are big speed differences between my 5g and 2.4g wifi and in different parts of the house.

My speed difference was fairly dramatic, from 2 to 76mbit's so downloading stuff became significantly faster - I can update my GPS in 30 minutes rather than five hours and I can download a video within a few minutes rather than several hours or even overnight but even though my connection is pretty fast when I update my GPS the data only comes down at between 4-7mbit's which is a lot slower than my 76mbit's connection. I don't know whether that's what it gets sent at or whether it's a limitation on the speed of my computer. 

The internet is much like the road network, even if they build a motorway right to my front door I'll still have to negotiate the rest of the road network unless that motorway goes direct to my destination and I might even encounter other vehicles on the way. There are also times of the day when I can get better journey times and others when there is congestion and there might even be a queue at my destination. I might also be driving a Ferrari or a moped.

The same goes for the internet , even if you've got a fast and exclusive connection back to the exchange you still got the limitation of your computer and you have to share the rest of the network and servers with everyone else further down the line

Consecca

mnbvcxz said:

All in all while you may have been misled by the marketing I don't think buying a faster download speed would necessarily lead to faster page loads. If your internet connection had been overloaded, perhaps too many people trying to watch netflix at the same time then a bigger internet connection would have helped. But if you had plenty before then now you still have plenty and more.

Yea I can safely rule out "broadband monolopy" in the household as I live on my own, so I am the only one using it.

mnbvcxz said:

I don't know much about tuning web browsers but you can try looking for a faster loading browser. You could try tuning the settings, turning off extensions, addons and possible something? Try using someone else's dns servers to see if they are quicker than bt's. Faster more power full computer? Try an ethernet cable to rule out wifi? I'm sure if you google it there will be guides with tips on the internet. Though to an extent webpages are getting more complicated and heavier and you are partly reliant on the other end sending them out to you.

I mean I use Chrome, but you would think that would be the fastest one out giving that they pretty much dominate the web browsing experience, but will have to look into the other things you mentioned like settings within Chrome, tunining off extensions etc, see if there is anything in there that will help me gain some "percentages" in speed increase.  Every little helps as Tesco would say.  Will also try changing DNS.  More powerful computer, Hmm, that one might have to wait until I can save some money up. Yea I tried the ethernet cable though, No difference there.

Even if web pages are getting heavier and more complicated, the web speeds they advertise should still be more than enough to make light work of even the heavist of data websites when you consider they are advertised for multiple HD streaming and gaming, none of which I do anymore.

Consecca

matelodave said:

A faster internet speed wont always translate to faster download speeds as a lot will depend on where you are getting your content and their server speed, the overall network speed, the speed of your computer and your home wifi speed.
I've got FTTP and get a solid 76mbit's and some stuff comes down like the wind but others can be almost as slow as it was when we only had 2mbit's. There are big speed differences between my 5g and 2.4g wifi and in different parts of the house.

My speed difference was fairly dramatic, from 2 to 76mbit's so downloading stuff became significantly faster - I can update my GPS in 30 minutes rather than five hours and I can download a video within a few minutes rather than several hours or even overnight but even though my connection is pretty fast when I update my GPS the data only comes down at between 4-7mbit's which is a lot slower than my 76mbit's connection. I don't know whether that's what it gets sent at or whether it's a limitation on the speed of my computer. 

The internet is much like the road network, even if they build a motorway right to my front door I'll still have to negotiate the rest of the road network unless that motorway goes direct to my destination and I might even encounter other vehicles on the way. There are also times of the day when I can get better journey times and others when there is congestion and there might even be a queue at my destination. I might also be driving a Ferrari or a moped.

The same goes for the internet , even if you've got a fast and exclusive connection back to the exchange you still got the limitation of your computer and you have to share the rest of the network and servers with everyone else further down the line

Hi Matelodave, thanks for explaining that out using the motorway metaphor, it was very helpful to hear my issue reframed in this way.  I guess I just asumed faster broadband meant faster internet in layman's terms.  Period.  I think the next place I will check is my computer (my iMAC) maybe some of the spec in there needs updating or needs more Memory space perhaps? I'm not sure if low memory also affects internet speeds?

tempus_fugit

Measuring the speed at which web pages load is not really a good measure of your own broadband capabilities. If the server you are getting the page from is on a busy network or is just not up to the job, then it will take longer no matter your own broadband speed. For example, I often read the eBay user forums, and they are hellishly show. They were when we had our previous broadband (5Mbps download speed) and still are with our fibre broadband installed a couple of weeks ago (50Mbps download speed). So if the server at the other end is slow and badly managed or just getting a lot of traffic, that will affect the speed at which your pages load. There are other factors too, but you need to include everything else that you use your broadband for such as streaming video, uploading or downloading photos or videos etc. And as a previous poster said, if your previous speed was reasonably fast already, then many things will not really appear faster at all even if you double the speed of the connection.

Hi_Fidelity

Are you also connecting directly (wired) to the router? If you're using WiFi then real-world speeds can be much less than the headline connection speed. Example: let's say the WiFi gives you a real-world 25meg capability. Old broadband was 18meg, so was the limiting factor. New broadband is 50meg, but the WiFi means you can still only get 25meg ... so any improvement in useable speed will be far less than you might expect.

Chino

Hi_Fidelity said:

Are you also connecting directly (wired) to the router?

Consecca said:

Yea I tried the ethernet cable though, No difference there.

giraffe69

Surprising that there is no difference.

matelodave

giraffe69 said:

Surprising that there is no difference.

Downloading a files, is a lot different from accessing a web page from a server somewhere a long way away - possibly in the USA or even further.

I get the same speed test results whether I use 5mhz wiff as when I use direct ethernet connection = 76mbit/s but its a lot slower if I use 2.4Mhz = about 46mbit/s. I get excellent download speed when streaming stuff or downloading large files. However many websites I use are just as slow as they were when I only had a 2mbit/s service because the limitation was either in the processing power of my computer or the server speed. Bear in mind that when you access a web page there are two distinct operations - your request to the page and the page's response back and you are sharing the internet with millions (if not billions) of others at the same time.

However that said,it's a lot easier to notice a 36 fold increase between 2 and 76 mbit's so you can easily notice a 20-30 times increase whereas from 76 to say 150mbit's or 150-300mbit's is only twice as fast so you might only knock  a second or two of a website.that loaded in 3-4 seconds beforehand.

Consecca

Reading the newer responses, has led me to ask more precise questions than what I had orginally started with.
Is there a way i can manually increase wifi speed or will that not make a difference, given what @matelodave
has mentioned above. Or what factors of my internal computer spec might possibly be contributing to what appears to be "slower internet"?