Duff internet?

[ttaskmaster]

Hola,

A friend of mine recently got himself a nice new gaming rig, but his home internet is utterly abysmal.
Neither of us are particularly knowledgable about networks, so I need your help figuring out why his Wifi is so naff and what can be done to improve it.

He is in a small 1-bed terrace house in Abbots Langley, but his wireless connectivity is sporadic at best. A quick set of tests at SpeedTest.net showed a ping of over 1000ms and down/upload speeds of 0.4!!

The BT Home Hub router is downstairs and the PC is upstairs, an estimated 12' from the Hub. Adding in a wireless extender did nothing to improve things and connecting directly to the hub via cable also does nothing.

He's on BT Broadband via the phone line - Estimated speed on his line is a mere 1Mb!!
Assuming a straight line, his phone line from the exchange 3 miles away crosses a river, a railway and the M25.

He's not in a particularly rural area and other houses in his road do have BT Infinity/Cable. But back when the cable company installed it (before he bought the house mid-90s), the company did not add a cable connection to his house, for some reason. If he wants cable, it will cost an extra £380 as they have to raise a streetworks order to dig up the road and put a connection in. BT and Virgin are apparently the only options.

Are there things we can do within the house to straighten this out?
Is there perhaps a line fault somewhere?
Are there other options for sorting this out?

What are people's thoughts?

 

[ttaskmaster]

Have you tried a wired connection to the router?

Adding in a wireless extender did nothing to improve things and connecting directly to the hub via cable also does nothing.

Yep!

 

[ttaskmaster]

Has he spoken to BT to see if Infinity is available for him?

BT think it is available... until they check the address and realise there is no cable connection. That said, I don't know where his phone comes from, as there are no telegraph wires outside the house...

You can also check here - look for FTTC in the table you get after entering his phone number.

It says he can get 330Mbps FTTP, 1.5Mbps WBC ADSL 2+, 1 ADSL Max and 2 WBC fixed rate.
Then again, my own number comes up with something similar and we *definitely* don't have fibre optics round our way!

You could also get the line stats from his router and post them on this thread - this page will show you where to look

I'll have to have him check this when he gets home.

 

[ttaskmaster]

you can get FTTP? You lucky...

Nah, BT are just trying to sell it to us.
I guarantee we don't have that kind of cabling out our way, as I keep getting told when I take BT up on their offer!

 

[ttaskmaster]

Post a screenshot of the BT wholesale result.

Well, this is what BT says he can get out his way:

 

[ttaskmaster]

FTTP on demand in an area without FTTC is a very rare thing. If you fancy paying astronomical install fees and can find an ISP willing to submit an order then that could be an option.

He's just after the same reasonable speeds everyone else gets for the same average price that everyone else pays.
I don't even know what FTTP even means...

 

[ttaskmaster]

Router says line speed is 1.98Mbps.
Also noticed he now has FTTC available on BT Wholesale:

 

[ttaskmaster]

With FTTC being available that’s clearly going to be the best option for gaming and reducing pings.

I'm a little suspicious that the FTTC option didn't show up in my initial line search, though... Makes me wonder if BT are pulling random generic quotes out of their behind, rather than checking the actual line.

Either way, I'll try and get him to phone them up again, but given how often he's been on at them these past few years I think he's almost given up and resigned to having almost non-existent internet.

Certainly at those speeds he has pretty much wasted the (for him) large amount of money he just dropped on getting a high-end gaming PC sorted (FX8350 with a 270X). The final kicker is that he'll be having a couple of operations soon and will be off work for several weeks each time. The idea was that I get him a PC and a Steam account so he can enjoy his recovery... the lack of internet has utterly killed this idea!

However the underline issue is most likely being caused by poor internal wiring.

I'm also very worried that his BT Home Hub 3 can't broadcast his wifi a mere 12 feet even with a wireless extender in the mix... I have the same hub and none of these problems.


Actually - He's previously only used a MAC (hence me finally getting him on a PC), which did all the wifi config itself, to the point where he's never logged in as Admin on his router before and now has to get his password reset.
Might that have anything to do with it, do you think?

Has he tried the test socket to see if this helps to improve his speed?

He has tested everything he possibly can numerous times, along with BT also checking the line on many occasions. Usually whenever he loses service or something, they say it's an exchange problem, but always that the line is perfectly sound. I do not believe them, myself.

Does he have micro filters on all telephone devices connected to the phone line?

Those little ADSL things? I believe so. Will check that also.

 

[ttaskmaster]

OK, he's over at my house now and while the internet speed itself is just what I'd expect on mine, the connection on his machine still drops out periodically.
He can connect to my router and has been downloading Steam games, but when the connection drops he cannot get internet access. His kit is nice and new and we're even using the same wireless dongle, so it has to be something in his machine settings.

What kind of settings do I need to look at?