This is a rather long rant about the quality of experience I have been seeing in connection with domestic and broadband ADSL services.
I would like to hear about other peoples experiences – see the request for information at the end of this post.
There is a site which I came across recently which I found to be a useful starting point
when investigating broadband speed issues.
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/speeds.htm
This offer access to a number of speed test services which can be used
freely.
Secondly, I want to recount a recent experience I have had with one ISP which will remain anonymous for now!
My daughter has a broadband service at her flat in Glasgow where I sometimes
stay. I decided to do some spot checks on its performance. I have used a
number of tools to do these tests and here is a summary of my findings. I
should say that this has resulted in an approach to her ISP to complain
about the performance she experiences.
Her service is a 8Meg service so is configured as follows
448 kbps upstream
8128 kbps downstream
I did speed tests over a number days using a number of test tools
and found that the performance was consistently in the region of 350kbps up
and down stream (in my view poor).
I phoned her ISP to make them aware of the and the ISP required me to
perform some tests before they would escalate this to BT!
1 Confirm that the phone line was working OK with no audio interference (
crackle etc)
2 Perform speed tests using a BT provided tool
1 I did test one by using the BT automatic phone line testing facility and
this returned a clean bill of health. I also confirmed that the line was
clean with no distortion or audio interference.
2 The BT speed tested can be used two ways.
Either by accessing over your normal ISP configuration
or by reconfiguring your ADSL connection to connect to the BT service
separate from you normal ISP service.
I did a number of tests starting last evening using both methods.
The results are interesting and summarised below!
(Linda has a 1:50 contended service and she lives in Bishopbrigs, north side
of Glasgow)
16th Jan 900pm download speed 360kbps
11.40pm 893kbps
(Up to this point these results are pretty consistent with my previous tests
over a number of weeks – these tests have been fairly consistent in term of
the downstream speed performance and the time of day when they are performed
– interestingly my daughter complains of being dropped from the MSN service
from time to time – I am not sure yet if this is actually relevant in this
context!)
17th Jan 00.17am 3827 kbps ( via the ISP)
06.45am 2761 kbps ( via the ISP)
07.05am full test direct to the BT service – so
no ISP
Configured Upstream 448kbps
Configured Downstream 8128kbps
Performance Downstream 6555kbps
Now I found this last test result very interesting so I reconfigured to use
the ISP and did another test using speedtest.net
Here are the results
17th Jan 7.10am downstream 6432kbps
upstream 380kbps
07.15am downstream 6446kbps
upstream 364kbps
This is quite remarkable – almost as if doing the full test direct to BT
lead to a fault fix, which I am sure is not the case!
The following day I asked my daughter to perform a series of tests
throughout the afternoon and evening. Basically, we seem to be back to a
performance which is of the order of a 400 – 1200k but more often than not
in the hundreds of k’s.
I wondered if others people might have had similar experiences.
( I should add that I had the same test done from my home location which is
a 2 Mbps ADSL service and the results there were pretty acceptable 1.8Mbps
down and 250kbps upload)
To access the BT test you need to re-configure your access router to use the
following user name and password
User name speedtest@speedtest_domain
PWD testing
Address of the test site is speedtest.bt.com – 217.32.107.42
I did find this site to be very busy and had to make a few attempts to get
the test to work – you also need to give the phone number of your line as
part of the test! I think BT might keep a record of any tests that you
perform to assist in fault resolution!
If you are able to run this test I would be very interested to hear the
result. My interest in this is fueled by recent performance problems
which were experienced in a school using an ADSL ( 1:20 contention).
If you can record the following:
Type of service you have – ADSL 512k, 1Mbps, 2Mbps or 8 Mbps
The actual connection speed achieved for both the up and down links ( you
need to access the router diagnostic system to confirm this)
The actual ping performance, actual down and up link speeds.
There is another online speed test tool which I have found to be
particularly easy to use. Here is the address!
http://www.speedtest.net/
Any feed back would be most welcome! just post your results by replying to this post.
Jim