BT Internet, do they cap connections?

Bleek

Bleek

Bleek

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I've noticed over the past few days my connection has dropped from 2mbit (best I can get in my village) to about 20-30kb, response times are shocking, 600ms+.

The thing is I uploaded and downloaded about 3GB of data to my second PC (at my girlfriends house) and ever since then my connection has been as above, bloody awful for three days now! :confused:
 
They do - but not that bad :(

Sounds like possibly you have something uploading or downloading torrent? spyware? or failing that the exchange is extremely congested/malfunctioning.

BT are pretty horrendous these days but most latency I have seen it 100-150ms on really bad days and usually speeds around 60-120KB/s when capped.


If possible please provide a tracert to bbc.co.uk.


EDIT: Note this thread will prolly get moved to the networking forum soon.
 
Never had a virus or any spyware on this pc, no downloads currently running.

Trace route to bbc.co.uk:


C:\Documents and Settings\Ed>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 217 ms 194 ms 197 ms esr7.sheffield3.broadband.bt.net [217.47.73.146]

3 208 ms 195 ms 193 ms 217.47.73.13
4 213 ms 195 ms 146 ms 217.41.167.6
5 170 ms 193 ms 193 ms 217.41.176.9
6 156 ms 194 ms 197 ms 217.41.176.74
7 208 ms 191 ms 148 ms 217.41.176.58
8 163 ms 194 ms 194 ms 217.47.110.178
9 165 ms 194 ms 195 ms 217.32.171.233
10 199 ms 52 ms 30 ms 62.172.102.49
11 203 ms 146 ms 195 ms core1-pos9-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.
114]
12 206 ms 194 ms 196 ms 194.74.65.42
13 163 ms 193 ms 195 ms 212.58.238.153
14 164 ms 195 ms 147 ms virtual-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138]

Trace complete.
 
Yes horrifically.

My parents get about 500kib/s of their 8192kib/s connection, despite this plus very minimal use of the connection, they are almost permanently rate capped to 256 or even 128kib/s
 
Never had problems before now, but seeing as it's been a few days... something is wrong.

20-30kb with REALLY bad response times is slower than a 56k line!
 
Rodneypooleg said:
try a speedtest too.

http://speedtester.bt.com/

have you rebooted router recently?
What speed does that register before and after?
Is it slow all day everyday?
Click to expand...

I should mention I've been in IT for over ten years, it's not a local issue. :)


As for the speed test:

Starting Test Image not loaded

The Performance Tester is now testing Broadband connection. Your configured download throughput speed for this service is 250 k
 
I used to be with BT and they were horrendous. We got about a fifth of the bandwidth we were paying for at the best of times, and most of the time the connection was being throttled to about half a Mb/s.

I'm now with 02 and I get 7Mb/s out of 8Mb/s even at peak time and no throttling yet.
 
Not at all here. Only problem I have is inconsistant sync speeds as the area and exchange are poo. If I can get synced at about 7meg I can download all day 24/7 at 600kb/sec.
 
I live in a small village, my 8Mb line is capped to 100kb/s after 5pm, between 12am - 3pm it runs at about 850kb/s.

Would love to tell BT where to put it, but the parents dont want to change their email address's :(

I think 'Be' or Eclipse are supposed to never cap their connections...
 
You can keep the email addy I think if you pay (or remember to dial up every now and again - personally I don't even have a modem any more).

I'm getting sick of it between 5pm and 1am I rarely see more than 100KB/s and latency in games goes all screwy with constant roller coaster 30-80ms.
 
NightSt@lk3r said:
BT have been capping me during peak hours for the last 2 or 3 years, takes the **** TBH.
Click to expand...


I had the same problem when I had them a couple years ago. I'd be capped from exactly 6pm till around 10pm. After calling, they denied it, even though it happened at exactly 6pm each and every single day.

Went to BE as soon as they enabled my exchange.
 
Basically if you are with bt and you want to download torrents, you need to do it between 12.00 midnight and 11.30 roughly! Also I think this only happens after you reach your cap, as when I have just paid the bill I get good speeds during the day!
 
ghost101 said:
http://seekbroadband.com/focus/2009...uses-bt-of-capping-broadband-download-speeds/

Apparently they start speed capping after 17.30.

Anyone have any clear policy on their capping? Do you get capped regardless of what your usage is? If so, that seems highly unfair.
Click to expand...
I can agree with that, im on the option 3 package £30.00, unlimited upto 8mbps, it's unusable from about 17.30-22.30. My usage is mainly surfing the web, a wee bit of gaming (1 hour per night) i dont download much in the way of music/video. An example was the crysis demo, i tryed to download it at 6.30pm, was gonna take 4.5 hours, i waited to 2 am, had it in 45 mins.
 
johnboy1998 said:
Basically if you are with bt and you want to download torrents, you need to do it between 12.00 midnight and 11.30 roughly! Also I think this only happens after you reach your cap, as when I have just paid the bill I get good speeds during the day!
Click to expand...

This isn't true.

I'm not downloading torrents I'm trying to BROWSE the web, getting to this forum was taking minutes and it took a good few to display a single topic! That's not capping, that's broken. :(

I've never been capped before, ever. 2mbit is the most I can get here, and in the past I've always got it if not a little more.
 
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