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Incredibly slow download speed.
RaginRoss
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Over the past couple of days i've been experiencing incredibly slow download speeds on my home connection. I usually recieve around 1.5mb/s down and 512kb/s up with Pipex. Over the weekend, my connection was connecting then disconnecting every 10-20 seconds, at the time I just put this down to the unusually high winds we'd had.
Since Monday, my connection has gone back to being perfectly stable, but it's just horribly, horribly slow. The first thing I did was go into my router config and check out what my downstream was coming through as, which you can see below;
This is pretty much what it should be, so I messed around a little more, resetting my router a couple of times, doing a factory reset, fucking about with MTU settings, several different firmwares. None of this made any difference.
I tried several different speed tests, all of which saying my downstream is around 150kb/s, but my upstream is still 440kb/s or so.
So earlier on I called up Pipex and told them what had been happening, they got me to connect to some kind of phone line test thing that didn't really turn anything up, now they're planning to send round a BT engineer to take a look at things. This would be fine, except they'll be charging me £50 if the engineer decides that the problem is nothing to do with my phone line.
Since my downstream is still showing up as what it should be, i'm quite worried that they'll decide that nothing actually is wrong with my phone line then slap me with that fifty quid charge...
So does anybody have any advice on other things I should attempt, or is it looking pretty likely that the engineer is my only real option?
Since Monday, my connection has gone back to being perfectly stable, but it's just horribly, horribly slow. The first thing I did was go into my router config and check out what my downstream was coming through as, which you can see below;
This is pretty much what it should be, so I messed around a little more, resetting my router a couple of times, doing a factory reset, fucking about with MTU settings, several different firmwares. None of this made any difference.
I tried several different speed tests, all of which saying my downstream is around 150kb/s, but my upstream is still 440kb/s or so.
So earlier on I called up Pipex and told them what had been happening, they got me to connect to some kind of phone line test thing that didn't really turn anything up, now they're planning to send round a BT engineer to take a look at things. This would be fine, except they'll be charging me £50 if the engineer decides that the problem is nothing to do with my phone line.
Since my downstream is still showing up as what it should be, i'm quite worried that they'll decide that nothing actually is wrong with my phone line then slap me with that fifty quid charge...
So does anybody have any advice on other things I should attempt, or is it looking pretty likely that the engineer is my only real option?
RaginRoss on
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I've had BT do a line test on my phone line and they seemed to indicate that there could be a problem, hopefully they'll call me back tommorow at some point.
I could understand all this a lot easier if the connection speed i'm being told i'm connected at was actually right, that's what's making me worried that it's still my fault somehow.
The modem will get its speed from the PPPoE server, not from any tests it performs. If your ISP used DHCP you wouldn't get any indicator of speed at all unless your modem's firmware tracks the bandwidth you use.
Right cool, thanks.
So if i'm understanding that right, while my router and modem are telling me that i'm getting ~1.5mb/s, this is just something that the PPPoE server is telling them I should be getting, not what speed i'm actually currently recieving in my house?
It is basically telling your modem that ~1.5 mb/s is the maximum speed you are "allowed" under perfect circumstances (which you won't find outside of a laboratory), if the modem works in a manner similar to the cable users get. There are other factors such as the distance to where the connection to your ISP is terminated at, packet overhead, etc.
It is possible that there might be some damaged equipment on your ISPs end (my former one had some die that took out my entire area for about six hours), or that someone working on a road near your house damaged your phone line. The problem you described in the OP is how my line behaves when it is damaged. Construction workers who are preparing the road I live on to be paved have cut my line twice, and when it rains a lot the tempoary line acts up (the part where they spliced it would be submerged in water).
If you haven't any phone troubles the latter isn't very likely, but it is a possibility.
Actually, there's been a definate crackling noise on my phone over the last few days. I guess it definately is something on their end, hopefully they get it sorted by tommorow.
Thanks. :^:
There can be crackling and/or static (enough to drown out everything), or the line can go completely dead. The "line in use" light on my phone base would glow when that happened.
Those symptoms can come and go, so sometimes you don't notice them.