Hi guys,
I hope that you can help. I am a little bit disappointed with my connection at the moment. Let me try and give you a breakdown of the issue so that it may help you distinguish where the fault may actually lie.
I have been a user of the BT Total Broadband service for a number of years. My ADSL 2+ has always been great, 18Mb Down, 1Mb Up. Latency has always been acceptable, ranging from about 30ms off-peak to about 50-60ms on peak for a server that I regularly game on.
BT infinity very recently became available in my area, the promise of a faster connection for little or no additional cost was a no brainer considering the quality of the connection that I have had from BT up until now.
The line was installed with ease and for the first day it was truly stunning. 50Mb Down, and 12Mb Up seemed brilliant, Latency also improved, dropping down to 15ms off peak, and 25-30ms on peak. For the first day it was absolutely stunning.
Since then, its just gone wrong, Most people would be happy with the connection, but I am not as I know that the service provided to me is/was better than that supplied to me by BT infinity.
Now, when running the speed checker, the speed is superb. Day or night the speeds are pretty consistant, never really dropping any lower than 45Mb Down / 10Mb up, it’s the latency that is the issue! Off peak, it can be as low as 10ms connecting to these servers, on peak it now shoots up to over 250ms between peak hours, making gaming near impossible.
The speed and latency tests don’t really help either (such as the BT speed test, pingtest.net and speedtest.net)
All three during peak hours report 45+Mbps downloads, 10+Mbps uploads and response times of sub 25ms. The problem is however, is that these tests are not really that accurate for the internet experience that I am getting
The speedtesters and ping testers are using best-case servers for the results, these resulting servers are therefore held within the BT network, and that’s why these speeds are great.
As soon as a server is outside of the BT Network, its poor. Very, very poor indeed.
As my latency is so good within the BT network, I can’t see there being any issues with the line. Not that it has stopped BT from running a new line from the cabinet to my house, and patching/checking for wet joints before they supposedly put this new line in. From my understanding it has to be BT’s connection out to other nodes on the internet.
Every time that I speak to BT by phone, they don’t seem to understand the problem as my speeds and latency are fine – (and on the BT WAN they are) – yet in reality the connection is very sub par.
My gaming server however seems fairly happy, like I say my old BT adsl 2+ connection to it always seems stable. I have even ran tests via a neighbours ADSL2+ circuit, and a 3g Dongle simultaneously as my infinity check Both still report < 60Ms response times during peak hours (when BT Infinity is 250Ms+ at the very same time)
Can any of you guys please shed some more light on the problem, and more importantly what I can do in an attempt to resolve it. There are not many LLU’s here, so changing ISP is not really an option for me.
Has anyone from BT Infinity had this problem, and was able to resolve it. If so how did you resolve it? Maybe I am explaining the problem to the their Customer Services Teams incorrectly?
I asked them to define what latency meant, and their answer was totally incorrect. I cant help but feel if I keep calling them (and they don’t understand my problem) it may never be resolved as a result.
I hope that you can help. I am a little bit disappointed with my connection at the moment. Let me try and give you a breakdown of the issue so that it may help you distinguish where the fault may actually lie.
I have been a user of the BT Total Broadband service for a number of years. My ADSL 2+ has always been great, 18Mb Down, 1Mb Up. Latency has always been acceptable, ranging from about 30ms off-peak to about 50-60ms on peak for a server that I regularly game on.
BT infinity very recently became available in my area, the promise of a faster connection for little or no additional cost was a no brainer considering the quality of the connection that I have had from BT up until now.
The line was installed with ease and for the first day it was truly stunning. 50Mb Down, and 12Mb Up seemed brilliant, Latency also improved, dropping down to 15ms off peak, and 25-30ms on peak. For the first day it was absolutely stunning.
Since then, its just gone wrong, Most people would be happy with the connection, but I am not as I know that the service provided to me is/was better than that supplied to me by BT infinity.
Now, when running the speed checker, the speed is superb. Day or night the speeds are pretty consistant, never really dropping any lower than 45Mb Down / 10Mb up, it’s the latency that is the issue! Off peak, it can be as low as 10ms connecting to these servers, on peak it now shoots up to over 250ms between peak hours, making gaming near impossible.
The speed and latency tests don’t really help either (such as the BT speed test, pingtest.net and speedtest.net)
All three during peak hours report 45+Mbps downloads, 10+Mbps uploads and response times of sub 25ms. The problem is however, is that these tests are not really that accurate for the internet experience that I am getting
The speedtesters and ping testers are using best-case servers for the results, these resulting servers are therefore held within the BT network, and that’s why these speeds are great.
As soon as a server is outside of the BT Network, its poor. Very, very poor indeed.
As my latency is so good within the BT network, I can’t see there being any issues with the line. Not that it has stopped BT from running a new line from the cabinet to my house, and patching/checking for wet joints before they supposedly put this new line in. From my understanding it has to be BT’s connection out to other nodes on the internet.
Every time that I speak to BT by phone, they don’t seem to understand the problem as my speeds and latency are fine – (and on the BT WAN they are) – yet in reality the connection is very sub par.
My gaming server however seems fairly happy, like I say my old BT adsl 2+ connection to it always seems stable. I have even ran tests via a neighbours ADSL2+ circuit, and a 3g Dongle simultaneously as my infinity check Both still report < 60Ms response times during peak hours (when BT Infinity is 250Ms+ at the very same time)
Can any of you guys please shed some more light on the problem, and more importantly what I can do in an attempt to resolve it. There are not many LLU’s here, so changing ISP is not really an option for me.
Has anyone from BT Infinity had this problem, and was able to resolve it. If so how did you resolve it? Maybe I am explaining the problem to the their Customer Services Teams incorrectly?
I asked them to define what latency meant, and their answer was totally incorrect. I cant help but feel if I keep calling them (and they don’t understand my problem) it may never be resolved as a result.
