Broadband Speed - Question

[et0609]

Im really a bit thick when it comes to this. Several weeks ago a BT Openreach engineer visited as I had terrible noise on the phone line. He was ace and fixed the problem.

Then 3 days ago we had a really bad electrical storm, serious lightening and after it had passed, my telephone didnt work. BT did a line test and said it was fine. I bought a new telephone and that works ok now.

The problem is my broadband. My router says it is getting a downstream rate of 1.7mbps but when I do a speedtest I only get 1.2mbps. My line is only capable of 1.7mbps, so its slightly less than what I was getting before the storm. Reading up on the internet suggests the Attenuation levels could be vey high, mine are 63.5db but I am 5km from the exchange.

Orange (my broadband provider) are useless when asked for advice, so wondered if anyone on here was savvy with broadband issues? Last night a speedtest gave result of 0.2mbps, but this morning its back to 1.2mbps.

Can anyone tell me if my router is getting 1.7, why do I only get 1.2 at my PC? Im not connected wirelessly, Im using a cable and everything seems to work ok. Line test was ok, router works ok, PC is ok. Im confused, but maybe this is normal? A loss of half a meg speed is really a third of my broadband speed lost which is annoying.

Thanks

 

[Shude]

It is very difficult to measure broadband speed because the performance will always be limited by whatever end points you choose. If you are measuring between your router and the equipment it logs into at the exchange then it's probably 1.7meg. Speedtest will measure the performance between your PC and some server on the internet, which means it's going via your home wiring, home ADSL router, copper cables to the exchange, equipment within the exchange, fibre/copper/microwave(!) to your ISP, network equipment within your ISP, THEIR internet connection and then on to the ISP of the server you are trying to connect with, all the equipment and cables within and finally the server you are measuring speed with.

The half meg is lost somewhere in there I suspect.

 

[balge]

Hi
had an issue when I changed connection to Talktalk, supposed to be 'up to 24Mb', I was only getting 7 or 8, logged it a few times then complained and TT sent out a BT lineman to check it. He said it was 'acceptable' but I got him to try at the exchange and they managed to get it up to 16 - still had to pay £30 call-out (because the line had been 'acceptable') but I now have a 16Mb connection, which is nice...

BTW, speed checker rates my connection at the PC as 16Mb, but 19 at the modem, I'm 'losing' 3Mbps but as said above that's down to overheads in the connections.
If your paying for a 2Mb connection you're actually doing ok, if your supposed to be getting 20Mb you may have a problem.

5k is a long way from the exchange though...a very long way. Assuming your on ADSL not cable.
I'm less than a mile from the exchange I'm on currently

cheers

 

[@MARK]

You will never get your throughput to match the sync speed of your modem,

There will always be some overhead on the transmission.

So if you modem syncs at 1.7mbit/s then your real world throughput will be somewhere south of that number.

There are loads of things that can slow down the real speed from noise on your local line to a problem at the remote website etc. The slower the initial line, the more pronounced the effect.

A good example is retransmission.

If a packet of data gets lost on route then the PC will just resend it (maybe more than once) until it gets there. This is good because it means you eventually get the web page you requested however because it takes 2 or 3 goes to get through, the speed is of course a lot slower.

Most of this will however average out and not be noticeable to you when just surfing the web

 

[et0609]

Thanks for that information. So it looks like Im getting pretty much what Im capable of getting. I live in the Scottish Highlands and to be honest Im lucky to get broadband at all. I live in a railway station and outside on the wall is a call point which connects to Rail Enquiries. Because that thing was attached to my line somehow, BT had to do major work just to get me a broadband connection, so I guess Im quite lucky.

Still, 1.2 is better than 0.5 which I was getting before BT visited before. At least I can download a music file in less than a day now.

Cheers.

 

[SteveG_UK]

I'm somewhat over 5km from the exchange, 1930's house, phone lines overhead, on the edge of town and will never see cable
But I average 6Mb/s download
This may have been mentioned before (I'm new to these boards) but have you checked whether the (historical) third wire is connected in your master phone socket?
The copper pair that enters your house is connected to one of the twisted pairs in the cable that snakes around your house to other phone sockets. But, from the days when phones had 'real' bells which had to be made to ring, a capacitor connects one side of the incoming pair to a single conductor in one of the other internal twisted pairs. That single cable used to make the bell ring - now no longer used.
The problem is that the single 'bell' cable acts as a huge aerial and injects noise back into the system via the capacitor.
Rip off the third wire and improvements can be HUGE. I've seen speeds go from less than ½Mb/s to 2Mb/s.
BT never did cop a plea to the fact that their old style cabling wrecks broadband (even internal cabling was theirs in the old days so I guess they didn't want to accept liability) - though they did offer free 'Speed Boost' replacement socket plates a few years ago (which simply disconnected the ringer wire).
I've been in the computer 'biz' over twenty years - and I've seen this a lot. So well worth checking.
If you need detailed instructions I'm happy to do a 'guide'.