BT Broadband Capping?
- Thread starter fastwunz
- Start date
Ok that is now the 16th - yes, 16th call back that i have received from India - non of which i have requested. They keep calling me and saying the same thing as the last person!!!
So, im sick of having to try and explain to a brick wall that i cannot identify the master socket. This time, i just lied, i said - 'yes, im plugged into the master socket and the speed is still appauling'. That shut them up and stated that they would get a repair sorted at the exchange.
Fortunately, i had already reported a line fault so hopefully this will prompt someone in England to call me. I just cant believe i have received calls from 16 people asking the same thing!!!!!!
I can see now why people get so angry, but i have been able to keep patient so far.........................so far.
When i get home from work ill do another line test to see if speeds have improved. If there is anything else that you guys can think of then please feel free to provide me with your opinions.
Damn you india / British Telecom........ damn you.
So, im sick of having to try and explain to a brick wall that i cannot identify the master socket. This time, i just lied, i said - 'yes, im plugged into the master socket and the speed is still appauling'. That shut them up and stated that they would get a repair sorted at the exchange.
Fortunately, i had already reported a line fault so hopefully this will prompt someone in England to call me. I just cant believe i have received calls from 16 people asking the same thing!!!!!!
I can see now why people get so angry, but i have been able to keep patient so far.........................so far.
When i get home from work ill do another line test to see if speeds have improved. If there is anything else that you guys can think of then please feel free to provide me with your opinions.
Damn you india / British Telecom........ damn you.
There has to be something to this, other than Paranoia (As BT would have us beleive). Please bare with me while I outline my experiences -
I have been on 8MB ADSL Max for a year and have always had good speeds until a month or two back. My sync rate has never fallen below 8128/448 that I have witnessed, yet my service is at a crawl now in comparrison. Downloads from the premium UK servers on 3DGamers.com used to give me download speeds of anything between 450KBs - 750KBs at anytime of the day, now I cant seem to get above 50KBs - 70KBs. The slowdown is across the board, for browsing, downloading, streaming, everything in fact, apart from one thing.
I had BT Vision installed last week and when the engineer asked me to do a speedtest (www.speedtest.net), I got 1945 down and about 380 up. I said that I had noticed that everything was much slower recently and he told me that with that speed, I may not be able to get the VOD service, although when it came to it, it runs fine. I then started to look into it a bit further and ran the BT speedtest and this showed me with a profile of 2000Kbs. This seems strange as I was certainly getting a hell of a lot more than that before. Here are my sync speed, SNR readings etc
Data rate (Kbps) 8128 448
Noise margin (dB) 16.4 24.0
Output power (dBm) 19.8 11.9
Attenuation (dB) 21.0 12.0
I rebooted the router and when I ran the speed test a little later, it was showing me a profile of 500Kb. Now from reading this thread, I know that the profile will take time to come back up to the sync speed. I thought I would try an experiment while the various speedtesters were telling me that my connection was 500Kbs. What I did was start off a download from 3DGamers, which very soon leveled out at 50KBs, then I started watching an episode of Band of Brothers on BT Visions Video On Demand service. The download speed from 3DGamers did not change drastically, it may have slowed by a couple of KBs. Now it has been explained to me that the VOD service requires an absolute minimum of 1.6mbs available bandwidth to run, which it then reserves for the stream.
How, if my IP profile was 500kbs (according to various broadband speed testers) and I could only get 50KBs from a certified premium download server, could I be getting a 1.6mbs connection for the VOD, unless there is some serious traffic shaping going on, including HTTP traffic. And why I am I suddenly unable to get an IP profile above 2mbs, when the equipment is all the same and plugged into the same socked (a filtered socket installed by a BT engineer).
Surely BT must be capping & shaping peoples ADSL, so they can guarantee bandwidth for BT Vision, I can think of no other reason why so many people are experiencing these problems.
I have been on 8MB ADSL Max for a year and have always had good speeds until a month or two back. My sync rate has never fallen below 8128/448 that I have witnessed, yet my service is at a crawl now in comparrison. Downloads from the premium UK servers on 3DGamers.com used to give me download speeds of anything between 450KBs - 750KBs at anytime of the day, now I cant seem to get above 50KBs - 70KBs. The slowdown is across the board, for browsing, downloading, streaming, everything in fact, apart from one thing.
I had BT Vision installed last week and when the engineer asked me to do a speedtest (www.speedtest.net), I got 1945 down and about 380 up. I said that I had noticed that everything was much slower recently and he told me that with that speed, I may not be able to get the VOD service, although when it came to it, it runs fine. I then started to look into it a bit further and ran the BT speedtest and this showed me with a profile of 2000Kbs. This seems strange as I was certainly getting a hell of a lot more than that before. Here are my sync speed, SNR readings etc
Data rate (Kbps) 8128 448
Noise margin (dB) 16.4 24.0
Output power (dBm) 19.8 11.9
Attenuation (dB) 21.0 12.0
I rebooted the router and when I ran the speed test a little later, it was showing me a profile of 500Kb. Now from reading this thread, I know that the profile will take time to come back up to the sync speed. I thought I would try an experiment while the various speedtesters were telling me that my connection was 500Kbs. What I did was start off a download from 3DGamers, which very soon leveled out at 50KBs, then I started watching an episode of Band of Brothers on BT Visions Video On Demand service. The download speed from 3DGamers did not change drastically, it may have slowed by a couple of KBs. Now it has been explained to me that the VOD service requires an absolute minimum of 1.6mbs available bandwidth to run, which it then reserves for the stream.
How, if my IP profile was 500kbs (according to various broadband speed testers) and I could only get 50KBs from a certified premium download server, could I be getting a 1.6mbs connection for the VOD, unless there is some serious traffic shaping going on, including HTTP traffic. And why I am I suddenly unable to get an IP profile above 2mbs, when the equipment is all the same and plugged into the same socked (a filtered socket installed by a BT engineer).
Surely BT must be capping & shaping peoples ADSL, so they can guarantee bandwidth for BT Vision, I can think of no other reason why so many people are experiencing these problems.
fastwunz said:
Have you tried locating where the phone line enters your property?
May need to walk around outside to spot it but that may help you figure out which socket is the master.
You could also trace the wiring inside and see where it goes from each socket.
judgec - unfortunately there are people who believe that it has nothing to do with the IP - which is utter rubbish. All weekend my speed was appaling - i got 30kbs maximum from gameshadow.
And then low and behold the weekend ends, it becomes monday moring and BAM! my internet is now running at 4meg.
So dont try and tell my that BT dont traffic shape and throttle broadband speed to its users. Its so painfully obivous.
No doubt this weekend it will die again.
And then low and behold the weekend ends, it becomes monday moring and BAM! my internet is now running at 4meg.
So dont try and tell my that BT dont traffic shape and throttle broadband speed to its users. Its so painfully obivous.
No doubt this weekend it will die again.
Need to keep focused on just one thing, the profile which you see when you use the BT Speedtester ( speedtester.bt.com ).
That is being set by BT Wholesale, not your ISP and that alone will determine the fastest data rate you will get.
If it is low then it doesn't matter if your ISP are throttling you or not as you can't get faster than the profile.
If it is high and you are still only getting low speeds then and only then can you start to worry about throttling, but even then it can be factors like local Exchange congestion so it is far from easy to determine at times.
That is being set by BT Wholesale, not your ISP and that alone will determine the fastest data rate you will get.
If it is low then it doesn't matter if your ISP are throttling you or not as you can't get faster than the profile.
If it is high and you are still only getting low speeds then and only then can you start to worry about throttling, but even then it can be factors like local Exchange congestion so it is far from easy to determine at times.
Over the last month, my profile does not seem to rise above 2000kbs, yet my sync rate has never dropped below 8128kbs. I have tested it at various times of the day, so I can't beleive its all down to congestion.
After doing a bit of reading, I will monitor it over the next couple of days, if the profile speed doesn't rise above 2000, I will contact BT Broadband and ask them to request that Btw investigate weather I have a stuck bRAS profile and to reset it, if this is the case.
After doing a bit of reading, I will monitor it over the next couple of days, if the profile speed doesn't rise above 2000, I will contact BT Broadband and ask them to request that Btw investigate weather I have a stuck bRAS profile and to reset it, if this is the case.
Last edited:
Soldato
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try changing your bt username as that gives you a new ip, somtimes I've found that helps speed things up for me.
JudgeC said:
pretty much what i experienced. one difference though - my ip profile on the bt speedtester always showed as 7150kbps which is what it should be when syncing at 8128kbps. yet i was getting 50-200kb/s on various speedtests during peak times and browsing got to be unbearable at times. and the limit 12kb/s on torrents ******* me off as well. i'm not a huge torrent user but i don't see why i should be penalised by protocol. they should punish heavy users, not everyone.....
bt were brilliant for a year but the last 2 months have been a nightmare. so i've left....
but it looks like your tied up with bt vision now... 
marc2003 said:pretty much what i experienced. one difference though - my ip profile on the bt speedtester always showed as 7150kbps which is what it should be when syncing at 8128kbps. yet i was getting 50-200kb/s on various speedtests during peak times and browsing got to be unbearable at times. and the limit 12kb/s on torrents ******* me off as well. i'm not a huge torrent user but i don't see why i should be penalised by protocol. they should punish heavy users, not everyone.....
bt were brilliant for a year but the last 2 months have been a nightmare. so i've left....
Yes, I have sold my soul into BT slavery for another 12 months. I have been with them since ADSL was first rolled out and I have always found the service to be reliable and fast, until now that is.
I don't do a lot of downloading, just game demo's, patches and maybe the odd torrent here and there, so I can hardly be classed as a heavy user. But I do pay $29.99 a year to 3DGamers for a subscription, so that when I want something game related, I can download at high speed without waiting about. This is a bit of a waste at the moment, as I can only get 50KBs.
I find it annoying and confusing, that I am synced at 8128kbs, have a profile of 2000kbs and get actual broadband performance that is barely equal to the 512kbs ADSL I had 6 years ago. This is hardly progress.
you have good line stats so i don't know why your profile is stuck at 2000kbps? i assume this means you're limited to around 2mb speeds off peak as well? 
and of course, trying to get bt to do anything is like banging your head against a brick wall. have you encountered the joys of indian tech support yet?
and of course, trying to get bt to do anything is like banging your head against a brick wall. have you encountered the joys of indian tech support yet?
marc2003 said:you have good line stats so i don't know why your profile is stuck at 2000kbps? i assume this means you're limited to around 2mb speeds off peak as well?
and of course, trying to get bt to do anything is like banging your head against a brick wall. have you encountered the joys of indian tech support yet?
I am trying to put it off, as I know its going to be a nightmare. But I guess it comes to us all in the end.
Whats worse, I am not using the BT HomeHub and I just know they are going to blame everything on that fact, even though everything was running fine without one and a BT Engineer confirmed the fact that I didn't need one. Even though I have Vision and they say it is compulsory. Lies, all of it.
JudgeC said:
hehe. don't get me started on bt and lies.....
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17754290
Soldato
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JudgeC said:
well i'm on bt broadband option 3, A while back an english bt broadband enginer told me that it does'nt matter what username or password you use anymore, many people know this but what allot of people don't know is when you change your user name or even a letter on your user name and log on again your issued with a different ip address, sometimes when I'm being capped I'll add a letter in my user name, log on again, get a new ip and sometimes I won't be capped anymore, strange I know.
JudgeC said:
I'm in the same boat but since I got BT Vision on the 25th May I've had a dire connection
they forgot to switch QOS on to which the poor engineer installing it had to ring BT India & then get pushed to wholesale. To make matters worse they switched other things off on my line like interleaving to fix the DL speed which has mangled my prolfile completely.I've had several calls from BT India saying we are doing this to the line & putting this service back on & YEAH IT WORKED! well for a week when they switched interleaving off again
In June my profile had dropped to 2mb stable coonection according to a line stats test at BT wholesale so I got an engineer out eventually who stated that my line & equipment in the house was fine & that my silly collection of routers all worked as we tested them all. He then said judging by what I was experiencing its at the exchange & no mater what service BT Wholesale switch on remotely it wont work as my line card needs removing & reinserting in differnt bank, that was friday. Bt wholesale have since done a lift & shift & not reconnected me due to finding a fault
oh well I'll have a stable connection again sometime & asoon as they reconnect me I'm gonna play games I was getting lag in all online games but playing them off line it was mint without bother so I really understand where U are comming from. I to dont use the white elephant & use a netgear router & wireless bridge for my vision service & it works very well streaming over wireless
Well I hope U get sorted as I do for myself
Kev!
And for the last 3 weeks I thought I was the only one with BT stress !
Fully agree with indian ' customer support ' comments , totally useless sums them up.
Speed has dropped and dropped , have been getting disconnected regularly for last 2 weeks but always fobbed off. Had them log a line fault 4 times , call backs assuming all ok but they are told it is not.
Finally ' believe it when it happens ' got an eng booked for tommorrow 1 - 6 pm so proberly turn up about 11am or not at all ?
Have got a 0800 for complaints now plus am writing twice a day to the complaints dept , emailing regularly too but no reply as yet.
Fully agree with indian ' customer support ' comments , totally useless sums them up.
Speed has dropped and dropped , have been getting disconnected regularly for last 2 weeks but always fobbed off. Had them log a line fault 4 times , call backs assuming all ok but they are told it is not.
Finally ' believe it when it happens ' got an eng booked for tommorrow 1 - 6 pm so proberly turn up about 11am or not at all ?
Have got a 0800 for complaints now plus am writing twice a day to the complaints dept , emailing regularly too but no reply as yet.