Internet Slow.. Help?

[JeffC]

have been with orange for quite a while now, but the last few months the connection keeps going really slow, I even bought a new computer as i thought the prob was that as it was soooo old, I can unplug the livebox and turn back on which seems to help for a while but eventually will go slow agaon, Ive complained to Orange and eventually they sent out a new live box which hasnt really helped. ive noticed its worse on a night and if the kids are on wifi on their phones its a waste of time takes ages for a page to load up. it quite often goes off and the red lights flash on the livebox, has done the same with old and new box, ive done a master reset on them and that doesnt help either

I dont understand how internet speed works so Is there a fix for this? anything i can do to speed it up and if i changed to another supplier will that help ? swmbos parents have sky broadband and theirs is really quick. :suspect:

[Captain Colonial]

I suspect you already know its Orange being a poor ISP. The fact it gets worse at night is unsurprising, as many ISPs throttle the broadband speeds to allow more people to use the available bandwidth. The offspring logging in will not help, especially if theyre doing omething graphic intensive like gaming or downloading films. Time to do some research and get a new ISP. Do you have a filter plugged in line on the phone line wall connection?

[tex]

you need to know jeff what speed its supposed to be running at. With basic sky you should be getting about 20mb so it is pretty quick. Turn off anything connected to the net except your main pc then run a speed test, some websites can give you this for free. Then connect your system back up one at a time if you have good speed on the main pc. Does it slow up? Could be switching server is the solution if you cant get the speed they say, or it could be simply where you live the fone line isnt that quick.

[GreigM]

There can be a number of causes but this sounds like a problem with contention/congestion.

What kind of bandwidth are you getting? - use http://speedtest.bbmax.co.uk at different times of day for a couple of days, will give a picture of how your speed goes up/down.

Check if there are problems with your exchange here: http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

Basically you connection is shared with other people using the same exchange and ISP - and there is a "contention ration" which means that you effectively share the line with other houses - this is why it slows down in the evening as basically the connections in your local area are busy. Contention ratio for home users is usually 50:1, meaning that for each line BT provides it is shared by up to 50 customers - business accounts usually work at 20:1.

So you could ask your ISP what your contention ratio is and see if you can go onto a "business" account or otherwise get onto a better ratio.

The other factor could be congestion in the exchange - basically meaning the exchange is packed with connections and is struggling to cope - this should show up in the report above, but not necessarily - you can request that your connection be "moved" in the exchange, which can help.

Check your "raw" speed potential here: http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ This shows what BT thinks your line should carry - if the actual from the bbmax speedtest above is consistently a large bit lower then the problem lies with Orange.

Let me know how you get on - I have contacts within BT who can do more investigation if needed.....

[JeffC]

cheers all.

ive just checked the above links, download was 8667 and upload 953, computer is always fast on a morning although it wasnt working at all when i came to it, had to unplug livebox again :angry:

is it a straight forward thing to change providers? Ive been with the same one for years, cant remember the original but orange took it over, and if you changed what happens to the email settings do they all need to be changed :suspect:

[GreigM]

Thats quite good speeds - a lot better than I get at home

It could be that the wireless function of the livebox is just terrible at handling multiple clients, try a controlled test in the evening by asking the kids to not use it for a few seconds while you test - if the speed remains good then you're wasting your time moving. Might be as well asking your neighbours what they are getting as theirs may be no better on other providers.

As said above, it does also depend what the kids are doing on it - if they are streaming music/video it will all have an impact, but if its normal browsing/facebook/email kind of stuff then you shouldn't see a big problem with that kind of speed.

If you are finding the speed is good when the kids disconnect, but very poor again when they are on but not necessarily doing too much it could be simple wireless interference (how far are you from the wireless) - could you try running yourself off a network cable and try again - if the speed is good you need to replace the livebox with a better router/wireless...this may be your problem as it sounds a bit S***. I'm a big fan of Draytek routers as they are very reliable and have a lot of advanced features (including bandwidth throttling, which means you could effectively limit the amount of bandwidth the kids get, making yourself the priority)....but can be complex to set up.

If you do decide to change providers it should be straightforward to move, the new provider should do all the notifications for transferring the account, but if you are on email accounts given by Orange (or whoever they took over) then you will lose those addresses and have to start again.

As for me - I'm due to get BT Infinity in March.....can't wait....if it was available for you I'd suggest switching to that.

[frubpato?]

BT Infinity ! Dont get your hopes up too much , the engineer who came said it was running at 36mb so far I havent had anything more than 11mb . Although the engineer did say that it took a couple of weeks to settle down and "bleed" into the cable ! what the devil.

[GreigM]

BT Infinity ! Dont get your hopes up too much , the engineer who came said it was running at 36mb so far I havent had anything more than 11mb . Although the engineer did say that it took a couple of weeks to settle down and "bleed" into the cable ! what the devil.

given my current 3Mb, 11 would be a big step up.....its all relative

[Jumpy07]

Also worth tuning your TCP/IP Stack.. use TCp optimiser.. excellent little tool for this http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

Also worth installed one of the new BT ADSL NTE's http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BT-Plate-ADSL-NTE-5-Broadband-Accelerator-/270903546947?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3f131c1443 these make a big difference to your ADSL speed...

Best Regards

Craig

[XTR2Turbo]

I recommend virgin cable broadband. On speed test I get 25MB download and 2.5 upload. And that is via wireless. I think I would get 30 on a cable

[Mike H]

Sounds like you're being 'IP Profiled'!

Complain.

Mike

[SootySport]

If Jeff c is getting about 8.5meg.in the morning and a lot slower in the evening, peak times, then yes Orange are throttling/profiling your speed. BT also do it. The only company that I know that doesn't throttle speeds is Sky.

[AidanPlace]

I was with Zen for their version of infinity and that's not throtttled. Fantastic service but not cheap.

Have now changed to BT because of cost and it's throttled really badly in the evenings. Which is a pain with 3 computers a PS3 and phones connected. Beginning to wish I hadn't

Aidan

[greenandmean]

Getting exactly the same thing with Talk Talk just about every evening, funnily its only about half an hour then seems to run ok again.

[Ian Podmore]

We moved from BT phone / Orange (was Wanadoo) broadband to virgin cable. Not looked back.

It's dead easy.

At least don't have to try and have a conversation with Orange support again. My life is worth more than that!