BT - 8meg which isnt.. its actually 5meg :(

ElectroBlaster

ElectroBlaster

ElectroBlaster

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Ok anyone with bt adsl here? I didnt know anything about this problem until tonight. A mate of mine in catterick phoned me up saying hes dumped bt and gone with sky broadband. The reason is he was suffering with a really bad amount of connection problems and stuff, he delved further and found his adsl was 5meg instead of 8meg and apparrantly this issue is quite widespread...

Sop off I trundle and check my router, says 8meg... ok so far I thought! but it isnt ok. I did a line test and I have found my true speed is 5meg.

Has anyone else here got this problem?
 
Thats because your speed isnt 8meg, its up up 8 megabyte depending upon what your line can support (a factor or distance from the exchange to line quality and to a lesser extent the ISP your with)
 
I am on 2mb - on BTs 8mb service... wow 5mb WHY are you complaining! I havent complained i just happen to live right on the edge of my exchange - you are lucky live with it and stop saying silly things like "Anyone else have this problem" lol

Welcome to MAX ADSL
 
When they say 8meg that’s the maximum speed and that speed will be reduced the farther away from the exchange you are to maintain a stable connection. Sky, NTL anyone else wont be able to improve it if on the same technology, (ADSL) as after all they are using the BT line anyway.

I’m on the 8meg package and get 7.2 but I know I’m only 250 metres away from the exchange.
Having said that when I first singed up with BT 8meg they told me after line test were complete that my maximum speed would be 4 meg. When I asked why they gave me the too far away from the exchange story. I told them that I knew how far away from it I was and that I was able to see from my routers statistics that there wasn’t any kind of problem with the quality if my line, to try it again and if it couldn’t be improved I would cancel all my services with them for miss advertising a product. Next day 7.2 meg so I believe they sometimes give you less speed to reduce their work load.
 
Dazza_Random said:
I am on 2mb - on BTs 8mb service... wow 5mb WHY are you complaining! I havent complained i just happen to live right on the edge of my exchange - you are lucky live with it and stop saying silly things like "Anyone else have this problem" lol

Welcome to MAX ADSL
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Well m8 people complaining to watchdog over it isnt silly. Exchanges are being downgraded all over the place from what I know. I live right next door to an exchange. I pay for 8meg and thats what I expect to get imho.
 
This was on The Gadget Show the other night.
There is a place to test your connection on their websites.
Apparently around 80% of broadband connections are nowhere near the rated speed.
The ISP cops out by advertising "up to" whatever they advertise.
Changing is not going to make any difference as it is down to the cables
that are installed underground.
Every ISP uses the same cable networks.
 
used to be on the BT network with zen, and could only manage around 5meg with a downstream snr of 12, it stayed like that for months, i finally got so fed up i contacted zen, they were good enough to email BT for the line to be re-trained (stuck BRAS profile), unfortunately BT refused to do this and so was stuck with an underperforming connection (no fault of zen's). Finally gave up on the BT connection and went with Sky, who were at the time getting panned for their connections, but were £25 a month cheaper. Been connected now for four months with a rock solid connection, getting 14meg down with no usage cap or trafic shaping. Dont know if things will stay like this for too long but im happy while it lasts.
 
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The Gadget Show is a load of crap - their speedtest can't max out a connection even if it is capable, so any conclusions they take from it are garbage.
Exchanges aren't being downgraded at all, and so far you haven't shown that your line's capable of 8Mbps - you could live in the exchange and still not have a line that's capable.

What speedtest did you run? What does the BT Speedtest say your IP profile is?
 
Living next to an exchange doesnt mean you have the shortest route from your house to the exchange. There could be any distance in km's of wire in between.
 
tolien said:
The Gadget Show is a load of crap - their speedtest can't max out a connection even if it is capable, so any conclusions they take from it are garbage.
Exchanges aren't being downgraded at all, and so far you haven't shown that your line's capable of 8Mbps - you could live in the exchange and still not have a line that's capable.

What speedtest did you run? What does the BT Speedtest say your IP profile is?
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Ok I had a 2meg line intitially which was setup years ago and it was termed "Classic broadband" and I always got full speed 24/7, a good few months ago I was offered this 8meg upgrade option so I decided to have it, im not a heavy user always downloading stuff and at first it was always at 8meg, no problems I thought. Im one of these people who just leaves things alone if they work and I havent had any trouble for so long it never crossed my mind to check the routers speed, ive only had one or two outages that I can honestly remember and the router is never turned off. So for how long this has been set at 5meg I dont know, im peeved because im paying for 8meg, getting 5meg and they say my line is only capable of 5 when I know dam well its capable of more.

My ip profile says 7168kbps down, but my true speed is 5.5meg
I will try another test tomorrow during the day and see what happens.
 
Who said anything about it being set to 5Mbps? Do you always get 5Mbps, especially at off peak times (early morning, late night, weekdays)?

If you're on the 7168kbps IP profile, you're connected at >7.2Mbps (and that's your "router's speed") and it's stable. Where are you getting that "they say" that your line's only capable of 5Mbps? The BT Guesstimator (which doesn't base its results on what your line's actually doing, but guesses based on planning records)?

Getting full rate at 2Mbps doesn't mean you're going to always get full rate at 8Mbps - you aren't the only one getting four times the speed, and your money can only buy so much capacity, especially at peak times. If you expect to get full rate all the time, consumer broadband isn't for you.
 
tolien said:
Who said anything about it being set to 5Mbps? Do you always get 5Mbps, especially at off peak times (early morning, late night, weekdays)?
If you're on the 7168kbps, you're connected at >7.2Mbps and it's stable.

Getting full rate at 2Mbps doesn't mean you're going to always get full rate at 8Mbps - you aren't the only one getting four times the speed, and your money can only buy so much capacity. If you expect to get full rate all the time, buy a leased line.
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Honestly m8 I dont know, thats the thing see. I dont keep an eye on that part of the router. I did when I first got 8meg but as the novelty quickly wore off I just forgot about it and got on with my business.

Tbh if this is the practice with all adsl isp's then is it worth me shifting to another like Sky?
 
ElectroBlaster said:
Honestly m8 I dont know, thats the thing see. I dont keep an eye on that part of the router. I did when I first got 8meg but as the novelty quickly wore off I just forgot about it and got on with my business.

Tbh if this is the practice with all adsl isp's then is it worth me shifting to another like Sky?
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If you can get ADSL2 then yeah, but if you cant you will be stuck on gdmt and things will be exactly the same.
 
ElectroBlaster said:
Honestly m8 I dont know, thats the thing see. I dont keep an eye on that part of the router. I did when I first got 8meg but as the novelty quickly wore off I just forgot about it and got on with my business.
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It's nothing to do with your router - if you're at the 7.2Mbps IP profile, it's stable enough.
It's either congestion (which you can't really do much about) or your ISP traffic shaping (which you could do something about, but 5.5Mbps sounds much higher than BT's normal)

Tbh if this is the practice with all adsl isp's then is it worth me shifting to another like Sky?
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Sky use ADSL too. It's the practice with every ISP that if you aren't paying thousands of pounds a month, they can't possibly have enough capacity for you to max out your connection 24/7.
Cable's no better - just look at all the people moaning in VM threads about getting less than the headline speed...
 
I am on Be* ADSL2, live under a mile from the exchange yet can only get 9Mb/s despite it being capable of 24Mb/s

C'est la vie. Was gutted when I moved from my house that had 20Mb Cable.
 
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