Two broadband lines, different speeds

TikTok90

Hi I have a two broadband lines into the house, a domestic one that achieves about 25Mb/s and is the original phone line. This is with Vodafone, but I've had other suppliers and the speeds has been the same.  For the last year or so I have had a second line that was installed by work. It is a TalkTalk business line and it routinely sits at 36Mb/s, a significant improvement over my domestic line.  I've tried arguing with Vodafone that they should be able to do better but they just say that it is delivering what they would expect. I've also tried talking to BT and they are hopeless. Generally speed checks suggest that I'm getting the low end of the speed I should expect.
Can anyone explain why I can have two lines that seem to be working properly yet the speeds are so significantly different - 30% roughly.

matelodave

Do they follow the same route, do they come from the same cabinet and are they from the same company. Was new cabling installed. Does one company still use LLU from the exchange or even have their own kit in the cabinets. There are a lot of variables. I'd also guess that if you've got a business line then there could also be a quality of service guarantee.

Even the quality of the cabling between the two incoming lines could be different, is one a lot older than the other, one could be old aluminium cabling and the other could be shiny new copper. One could be routed via more joints and distribution points than the other which could easily have a significant effect on the speeds that the cabling can accommodate and its more than possible that you could be getting service from two different FTTC cabinets, especially if one service has been up and running for a lot longer than the other.

My mate has significantly worse speed than his next door neighbour because he gets his service direct from the exchange whereas his neighbour gets his from a street cabinet about 100yds away.
My mate cannot get his line transferred to the cabinet because that's the way the cabling was routed and his feed doesn't go anywhere near the cabinet. he is hoping that he can get FTTP in the not too distant future because that is now availabe two street away but not in his road yet.

littleboo

Why are you talking to BT about a Vodafone service?

iniltous

Not sure why you mention BT when your ‘problem’ has absolutely nothing to do with them, I dare say if you called them and asked why your Vodafone line is slower than your Talk Talk line that they gave you any response at all , that didn’t have the word ‘off’ at the end of it .
As already stated, there are many possible reasons why lines to the same location can vary , but basically if it’s working within the range advised when you when you took out the contract, then they are delivering what they said they would , so no foul , no penalty.

You could access the router stats from both services and  post the results here to see if there anything obvious indicating a line issue that , providing you could get VF to get past the script that your line is within spec , could get Openreach ( not BT ) to investigate.

[Deleted User]

Why are you paying for a personal one as well as a work one?

Just use the work one for everything if it is faster.

TikTok90

matelodave said:

Do they follow the same route, do they come from the same cabinet and are they from the same company. Was new cabling installed. Does one company still use LLU from the exchange or even have their own kit in the cabinets. There are a lot of variables. I'd also guess that if you've got a business line then there could also be a quality of service guarantee.

Even the quality of the cabling between the two incoming lines could be different, is one a lot older than the other, one could be old aluminium cabling and the other could be shiny new copper. One could be routed via more joints and distribution points than the other which could easily have a significant effect on the speeds that the cabling can accommodate and its more than possible that you could be getting service from two different FTTC cabinets, especially if one service has been up and running for a lot longer than the other.

My mate has significantly worse speed than his next door neighbour because he gets his service direct from the exchange whereas his neighbour gets his from a street cabinet about 100yds away.
My mate cannot get his line transferred to the cabinet because that's the way the cabling was routed and his feed doesn't go anywhere near the cabinet. he is hoping that he can get FTTP in the not too distant future because that is now availabe two street away but not in his road yet.

No new cable was installed, they just terminated spare cores in the existing wire to the house.  What was done in the cabinet I don't know.  To the best of my knowledge they are both in the same cabinet, there aren't that many and it is far enough away as it is.

TikTok90

littleboo said:

Why are you talking to BT about a Vodafone service?

I will be coming out of contract with Vodafone in a little while so was trying to see if I could get BT to offer better performance than Vodafone.

TikTok90

iniltous said:

Not sure why you mention BT when your ‘problem’ has absolutely nothing to do with them, I dare say if you called them and asked why your Vodafone line is slower than your Talk Talk line that they gave you any response at all , that didn’t have the word ‘off’ at the end of it .
As already stated, there are many possible reasons why lines to the same location can vary , but basically if it’s working within the range advised when you when you took out the contract, then they are delivering what they said they would , so no foul , no penalty.

You could access the router stats from both services and  post the results here to see if there anything obvious indicating a line issue that , providing you could get VF to get past the script that your line is within spec , could get Openreach ( not BT ) to investigate.

I've given up discussing with Vodafone, not least because I have my own kit on that line and I have to reconnect their router before I can even get them to talk to me.  I was talking to BT because I am out of contract in a month or so and was hoping to get them to commit to the speed I'm getting on the other line.

TikTok90

[Deleted User] said:

Why are you paying for a personal one as well as a work one?

Just use the work one for everything if it is faster.

Work pays for the work one.  I pay for the other.  I like to keep these things separate.  Not least because it saves arguments with the kids when they are on holiday and gaming and I'm on a  work Teams call.

iniltous

As already stated , post the router statistics from the ( potentially underperforming ) VF ‘line’ , it could be that the line has a defect that isn’t serious enough to stop the line working or reduce performance to such an extent that it doesn’t reach the VF minimum speed guarantee, but is still impacting performance.
If you were speaking to BT regarding migrating the VF service, but insisting on any service with them at least matching  the performance of TT line , then it’s no surprise they won’t agree to that condition , after all it could be that the VF line is as good as it can be , it just happens to be less good that the TT line .

TikTok90

iniltous said:

As already stated , post the router statistics from the ( potentially underperforming ) VF ‘line’ , it could be that the line has a defect that isn’t serious enough to stop the line working or reduce performance to such an extent that it doesn’t reach the VF minimum speed guarantee, but is still impacting performance.
If you were speaking to BT regarding migrating the VF service, but insisting on any service with them at least matching  the performance of TT line , then it’s no surprise they won’t agree to that condition , after all it could be that the VF line is as good as it can be , it just happens to be less good that the TT line .

I'll see what I can do about the stats.  I'm not sure how to extract them from my EdgerouterX. Google time...