BT Internet 8mbit - Severe Traffic Shaping and Throttling

Spike_UK · 12 Oct 2007 at 21:08

I'm on the 8mbit option from BT and lately my speeds have gone from bad to shocking.

My HomeHub has been restarted serveral times and even left off for an hour to see if it helps but still no joy and it is plugged directly into the master socket.

It is also showing my lines as...

Downstream 7,424 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps

Which all looks about normal.

However, my speedtests are like this...

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/19213814618063226964.html
http://www.speedtest.net/result/192036765.png
http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/results.php?t=1192140652&v=2500257

While the connection is usable for basic surfing, anything big takes ages. I've just downloaded a Xbox Live Arcade game at 40meg and it took nearly 35 minutes! I've not just kicked off the UT3 demo at 1.2gb and no matter what mirror I use it'll never go ever 60k/sec, even if i use a download manager and multiple segments.

There aren't any reported problems for my area so it looks like it's just me. This line has only been installed for 4 months and although it's always connected at 8mbit, it's never been super fast. Download rates have always been 200-400k/sec instead of around 700-800k/sec I'd expect.

Just incase it was a stuck IP Profile I used the official BT Speedtester.

At 6am this morning it looks like this...

IP profile for your line is - 6000 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 7424 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 5189 kbps

The result taken just two minutes ago is...

IP profile for your line is - 6000 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 7424 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 392 kbps

Is this traffic shaping and throttling gone mad?

marc2003 · 12 Oct 2007 at 21:44

welcome to BT.

you're not alone. plenty of people (including myself) have had these issues with bt. not a lot you can do apart from leave.

DavidQ · 12 Oct 2007 at 21:50

This is the very reason why I moved from BT to UKFSN a few months back, I would avoid BT like the plague and I'm sure everyone will tell you the same thing. Most ISP's have their own way of traffic management but BT's for me was awful.. i got 50k a sec on torrents and 200k a sec on newsgroups.

marc2003 · 12 Oct 2007 at 21:53

DQN said:
This is the very reason why I moved from BT to UKFSN a few months back, I would avoid BT like the plague and I'm sure everyone will tell you the same thing. Most ISP's have their own way of traffic management but BT's for me was awful.. i got 50k a sec on torrents and 200k a sec on newsgroups.

you were lucky getting 50k on torrents -i was getting 12. although that annoyed me, i could live with it because i don't download much. in the end, it was the http throttling that made me leave. i couldn't even browse forums like these during the evenings. i too am with ukfsn. it's ******* great.

mohawk · 13 Oct 2007 at 17:52

man bt suck so god damn much, just spent 30 mins on the phone talking to there "technical advisers" about the bt home hub and there throttling, to the point where they said "well thats peak times, there is nothing we can do" they are just such a bad isp. but being out in the sticks we cant really get any decent services.

deffiently need to get rid of the bt home hub though... can anyone reccomend a decent router with good wireless N?

also torrents atm for me going at 6.6kbps...

speed test results

IP profile for your line is - 6500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 7616 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 5804 kbps
...whatever

marc2003 · 13 Oct 2007 at 17:57

mohawk said:
but being out in the sticks we cant really get any decent services.

eh? there are loads of decent isps you can get on a normal bt line. so what if you can't get cable/llu? you have a decent line. switch to a proper isp. job done.

postmanfw · 14 Oct 2007 at 01:42

A mates got a BT line and its the same story. Really slow during the day but picks up late at night usually around 1am

Glad i am with ukfsn. True it drops during peak time but no to the silly speeds of BT.

Its also the same story with aol/cfh

12 month contracts make it a pain/impossible to leave...ukfsn only on a monthly one so easy to leave if it goes downhill

Sirrel Squirrel · 14 Oct 2007 at 01:53

BT are awful now, there was a big thread about it on here around April time when they introduced traffic shaping, I think they shape between 4pm and midnight. I dropped BT as soon as my contract was up and signed up with BE for unlimited usage, no shaping and 8mb a month for only 14 quid (4 quid extra for 24mb). Beat that BT (where's the middle finger smiley)

GSDog · 14 Oct 2007 at 13:16

I left BT about 3-4 months ago for exactly the same reasons. They capped my 8128kbps with an IP Profile of 7150 to 250kbps ALL weekends... and weekdays after 4pm it often went below 500kbps. My downloads rarely exceeded 60kbps at weekends, but browsing felt even slower than that, more like dial-up with pages taking sometimes 10 seconds to load.

I ruled out everything else possible and came to the conclusion that BT must have been shaping my connection. I looked at other forums and found loads of others with the same problem. I phoned BT and was told "No no no no no Mr *****, BT no traffic shaping" - they completely denied it and told me to delete my cookies (LOL). I told them I had done everything, viruses scans, deleted cookies, disabled firewalls and AV's, checked every ADSL filter in the house, checked my mastersocket, changed routers and tired it on 3 different computers.

I got so fedup that I left them and I am sooooo pleased I did. I have had 4 months of fast broadband with no problems with ADSL24 (Entanet) and amazing customer support.

The very second that I was swtiched over to ADSL24, my speeds went from 600kbps to 6935kbps.

celliott · 14 Oct 2007 at 13:33

Although I think the Homehub is a pile of crap, im generally quite happy with my BT connection. I have yet to notice any throttling, and can quite easily get 250Kb/s on torrents which is fine for me. Im using an old Voyager 205 with modified firmware, cost £10 on ebay.

Neal · 15 Oct 2007 at 09:38

celliott said:
Although I think the Homehub is a pile of crap, im generally quite happy with my BT connection. I have yet to notice any throttling, and can quite easily get 250Kb/s on torrents which is fine for me. Im using an old Voyager 205 with modified firmware, cost £10 on ebay.

Ditto, exactly the same router on BT... never had any issues, 150 - 200kb/s on utorrent.

I have a home hub but its in the cupbaord collecting dust. I might stick it on the bay

tipsy · 16 Oct 2007 at 01:19

I left BT mainly due to their constant lying and messing with my line saying it was damaged when it was really traffic shaping. I left & went with adsl24 on a max line but considering BT had messed up my profile I went back to a fixed 2mb service on unlimite bandwidth, can dl all day now without hassles

Kobrakai · 16 Oct 2007 at 01:22

BT are absolutely terrible, Just look at my screenshots below. They have sent engineers out to my house that spent half a day here and changed every wire including the phone socket itself. They said “we aren’t denying there’s a problem we just don’t know what it is”.