Internet Speeds

Smickan

I've read so many bits of conflicting information after googling that I've ended up confusing myself further. I'd be seriously grateful if someone could help me.

We're currently with pipex which has gone totally downhill since being taken over by Tiscali [And apparently Virgin Media of late according to 'Jamie' from Sky.]

We're changing to Sky - whi i've heard some bad stuff about since we agreed to join, again all through googling - and found out that we are:

620 meters (as the crow flies) from the BT exchange.



Now. I thought that was a good thing but we have never had fantastic speeds and we've been put onto the 8mb speed with them (thoguh it's with BT as apparently sky isn't in our area just yet].

I'm not that techie minded but I can however forge my way through on occasions so please be gentle with me!

thinkbroadband.com's results are here: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/120206434789715412060.html

Is there anything we can do/ask for to get a better speed? Does it look like there's any problems etc?

Thanks Sorry if I've missed any information out.

Conor_3

How far you are as the crow flies is completely and utterly irrelevent. How far you are as the cable is routed is more important.

I've also stopped using thinkbroadbands tester as I find it seems to under report compared to others, probably due to the high load. Try https://www.five.tv/gadgetshow and click on the broadband link on the right. It compares the same as several others I've tried.

Red_Rose_Exile

The offer would have been up to 8Mb, however you would be lucky, in essence, to get much more than 4. As the crow flies, is great for crows assuming it has a following wind, but not a particularly good way for telephone lines? Have you notice that they dig up roads and not houses to lay cables. Hence your cable to the exchange may literally go right around the houses.

There is a possibility that the Easynet LLU( Local Loop Unbundled) on which Sky broadband is reliant upon has not yet been installed at your local exchange, although it was promised that 70% of the country would be covered by the end of 2007, and unless yours is a particularly rural part of Lincs, then it should have been done.

I would badger them, to see if there is a problem at the exchange

Btw, Pipex incidentally is owned by Tiscali, not virgin media, Virgin dropped out of buying last year, along with sky and BT, an attempt to poach you by the looks of things.

Smickan

Thanks for your help

We're not rural (Grimsby) so I will see if I can get some more information out of Sky when they ring, however Jamie said that they never told the customer services people when it would be done so he couldn't say - will ask again to see if I get the same response from someone else.

Thank you I thought it was just tiscali as - although we didn't find out they'd been bought by tiscali until christmas when we had to ring in, we hadn't heard anything at all since about virgin media buying them and neither had google.

The download speed from the link that Conor posted gave us 1231kbps. It's still waiting to do the upload speed apparently.

Conor_3

lol, sounds like you have an issue then.

Garz

The numbers are the theoretical maximum speeds you could possible get. If you want a decent service choose a known provider and try get as low contention ratio as you can afford. Be careful also on the agreement, if you become a high user some providers will slap you in with the heavy downloaders as your leeching all the bandwidth. Being tagged with those users will cripple your speeds too.

Conor_3

If you're syncing at aronud 8000kbps, you should expect a bit higher than 1200kbps.

Smickan, can you post the connection speed, line attenuation an noise margin dB readings your router is showing for the connection? Only need the downstream one.

Inactive

I would think the clue is in the word " Tiscali "..;)

ormus

also depends on the quality of the wires.
our area was wired in about 1935! and the copper wires are !!!!!!.
when it rains its even worse.
2mb is the max. no matter how close you are to the exchange.

chunter

who's got your actual phone line?
If it's BT, you can use their speedtester to find the actual speed
http://www.speedtester.bt.com/

Hillfly

Sorry to hijack your thtread but my rant below might give you some idea of the battle you may face to improve your service.

I am currently having a battle with BT via my ISP (Entanet). I have been on Max for quite while now and was getting a good speed of about 2800 kbps on a sync of about 3600 which given my rural location was pretty good (my BRAS profile was 3500). Then in summer last year it slowed right down to about 1600kbps thorughput, syncing at about 2000 and my BRAS profile came down to 1750.

I did nothing to effect this change whatsoever but my speed deteriorated massively. A BT engineer confirmed I should be synching at about 4000, there was no problems with my wiring and he tried switching me to another 'spare' cable from the local junction box to the exchange. The next day my phone line stopped working!

I got the phone line fixed and now another engineeer is due to visit to look into it further. The diffuclty is that everytime my ISP raise the issue, BT test the line, report no fault and close the case. You have to really push to even get the engineer out if there is no fault detectable on the line. Fortunately Entanet have been really goood and do try and push BT but they make it hard going. If you have an ISP with poor customer care you may be totally stuck.

I am going to see this though until BT either fix the issue or at least explain why my line speed has deteriorated so much all of a sudden. It simply unacceptable for them to keep fobbing me off. If i hadn't been getting better speeds form the start then i would know no different but i was and so they are going to have to explain or I will be going to oftel with a big fat complaint! As an online gamer the speed makes a differenne to me - especially when the wife wants to surf at the same time! Also downloads are a lot slower now.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

Anyway rant over and good luck with your case!