Sky Broadband Speed Issues...

markyb

markyb

markyb

Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2002
Posts
3,212
Location
Essex
Guys, Your advice please.

Me and my Girl friend moved recently into a brand new house, it’s only been built a number of months and are the first people the live there.
When I moved in I set everything up with Sky, TV, Phone and Broadband. I was told it would be around 1.5mb broadband (~distance from the exchange?)

The activation period was set on a certain date, but the modem was posted 5 days before the activation period. I installed it anyway and it worked out the box. Come day or night I was getting a steady 170kbs (Just under 2mb Broadband) which is more than useable and gaming was good.

The first day of the start of my broadband package arrived and the speed dropped to a constant 30kbs. I called up sky and was told it was normal and that it would take sometime to my line to settle in. It did and sat around 1.7mb. Ever since then my broadband speeds are like a yo yo. Some times it will be perfectly fine, other times less than >50kbs

The last couple of months have been ok-ish. I can play games no problem in the evening with an OK ping. But it seems to be getting worse…
Currently I’m downloading from a quick mirror at 50-30kbs. Gaming currently is a joke, being kicked out of Xbox live parties and face with lag.

What can I do? If I go to another provider will I get constant speeds? I've checked my number in BE internet's website and they say I can get 3.5mb.

I was with Pipex 8mb broadband in my flat for 3 years and never had a problem. 8mb 100% of the time, come day and night. I’ve spoke to Sky and they said it is traffic shaping and that people who are on their 8mb are faced with the same service.

Thanks for reading, any advice? This is really annoying me.
 
First can you post the stats from your router...

if you dont know how then type this address in explorere / firefox

http://192.168.0.1/

username and password is usually admin / sky

then on the first page that pops up there is a link at the bottom that says show statistics, post the stats from there.

it could be a number of things that are causing the issue. how are you connecting? straight into the master socket in the house or is it plugged into an extension.

how long has the connection been active? Sky say 10 days to bed in the line but it can take longer.
 
Sure, thanks.

The speed of 1.5mb is workable, however I'm more annoyed by the almost half speed cap in the evenings of ~50kbs. Lines been active for almost 4 months now.

Heres the stats, Pluged into the main socket. No Ext.

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1792 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 62.0 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 5.7 db 18.0 db
 
Hi, I'm also with Sky broadband. I was experiencing dropouts recently. What was happening was, the line was set at 5.6mbps, and the line could only handle 4.5mbps. As a result the line kept 'rebooting' because the Noise signal was below 7db. A couple of calls to sky (24/7) and I got through to someone who knew what they were talking, and reconfigured the connection to a lower rate, this increased the Noise signal to 16db which was 100% stable.

I know your problem is inconsistent speeds, but I'd suggest you try phoning them again. theres 2 tiers of customer support, 1 tier to do all the troubleshooting BS, and they pass you to the second tier who know what they're talking about. Someone will be able to reconfigure your line better.

I know how frustrating it can be. I was a fool way back who trusted Bulldog broadband which was a disaster, I suggest reading on DSL forums, having a look in your router settings, particularly the Noise Margin which shows the strength of the signal from the exchange.

Hope it helps,
 
I'm with Sky Broadband too, recently I recieved a letter informing me that they were upgrading my bb speed and download rates will be limited during this time. 2.5 weeks on, my download rate doesn't reach above 40kbs..
Is this Sky being slow to upgrade or is it time to call! :confused:
 
iamTakeo said:
Hi, I'm also with Sky broadband. I was experiencing dropouts recently. What was happening was, the line was set at 5.6mbps, and the line could only handle 4.5mbps. As a result the line kept 'rebooting' because the Noise signal was below 7db. A couple of calls to sky (24/7) and I got through to someone who knew what they were talking, and reconfigured the connection to a lower rate, this increased the Noise signal to 16db which was 100% stable.

I know your problem is inconsistent speeds, but I'd suggest you try phoning them again. theres 2 tiers of customer support, 1 tier to do all the troubleshooting BS, and they pass you to the second tier who know what they're talking about. Someone will be able to reconfigure your line better.

I know how frustrating it can be. I was a fool way back who trusted Bulldog broadband which was a disaster, I suggest reading on DSL forums, having a look in your router settings, particularly the Noise Margin which shows the strength of the signal from the exchange.

Hope it helps,
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice mate. It's really starting to get to me. Just the time and effort of calling them up. Then trying to relax with some online action on the xbox to be faced with lag.... :(

Someone is meant to be calling me in the morning. However all they keep going on about is the Traffic Shaping and that this is normal to expect slower speeds in the evening <-- this true of all providers?
 
Sylv said:
I'm with Sky Broadband too, recently I recieved a letter informing me that they were upgrading my bb speed and download rates will be limited during this time. 2.5 weeks on, my download rate doesn't reach above 40kbs..
Is this Sky being slow to upgrade or is it time to call! :confused:
Click to expand...

Must be Essex ;) I'm in Braintree. Give them a call. Try and do it in the morning tho. I can never get through, even after holding for 10-15 minutes...
 
iamTakeo said:
Hi, I'm also with Sky broadband. I was experiencing dropouts recently. What was happening was, the line was set at 5.6mbps, and the line could only handle 4.5mbps. As a result the line kept 'rebooting' because the Noise signal was below 7db. A couple of calls to sky (24/7) and I got through to someone who knew what they were talking, and reconfigured the connection to a lower rate, this increased the Noise signal to 16db which was 100% stable.

I know your problem is inconsistent speeds, but I'd suggest you try phoning them again. theres 2 tiers of customer support, 1 tier to do all the troubleshooting BS, and they pass you to the second tier who know what they're talking about. Someone will be able to reconfigure your line better.

I know how frustrating it can be. I was a fool way back who trusted Bulldog broadband which was a disaster, I suggest reading on DSL forums, having a look in your router settings, particularly the Noise Margin which shows the strength of the signal from the exchange.

Hope it helps,
Click to expand...

what he said.

the 5.7db level in your stats is too low and sky's inbuilt line testing system is rebooting your line as its ubstable. be persistent with tier 1 and make sure they do the test asked of you.... it'll be frustrating but once you get through to tier 2 support they should be able to sort it in minutes.
 
i had a friend who was getting 8mb with his BT broadband because he was so close to his exchange but decided to save some money and go with sky bb.needless to say they promised him the same speed but he actually was getting only 2 mb.he changed back not long after.also have atleast 2 other friends/relatives who went with sky and changed shortly afterwards.
 
An update from last night.

Well last night around 9-10pm I was trying to watch something over BBC iplayer, It was a joke. Took ages for the first image to load and was faced with the spinning circles. I ran speed test which reported 0.48mb

I tried again at around 1am and it worked without a problem. I ran speed test which went up to 1.4mb.

Is this just sky throttling? If I change providers will this still happen?!
 
markyb said:
An update from last night.

Well last night around 9-10pm I was trying to watch something over BBC iplayer, It was a joke. Took ages for the first image to load and was faced with the spinning circles. I ran speed test which reported 0.48mb

I tried again at around 1am and it worked without a problem. I ran speed test which went up to 1.4mb.

Is this just sky throttling? If I change providers will this still happen?!
Click to expand...

no its not throttling. just sounds like to me the later you try it the less congestion and it settles down.

changing provider may help yes because it sounds like skys line testing system cant determine the best sync for your line hence it keeps dropping.

without phoning sky and getting them to sort out your profile your not going to get anywhere.
 
markyb said:
Must be Essex ;)
Click to expand...

This is interesting, my parents moved from Bulldog to Sky recently to save a few quid on their BB as they were already Sky customers.

When the service first when live, they were achieving 6Mbit or there abouts which was about 0.5mbit faster than what they got for 3+ years with Bulldog however I went around last night and from Microsofts website, I couldn't get more than 240KB/s.

I wonder if there is capacity issues in Essex?
 
axer said:
This is interesting, my parents moved from Bulldog to Sky recently to save a few quid on their BB as they were already Sky customers.

When the service first when live, they were achieving 6Mbit or there abouts which was about 0.5mbit faster than what they got for 3+ years with Bulldog however I went around last night and from Microsofts website, I couldn't get more than 240KB/s.

I wonder if there is capacity issues in Essex?
Click to expand...

After an hour of tier 1 and tier 2 calling, They've managed to sort the problem, when I first moved into this house there was a fault in the line, so to stabilse it, they put this "DLM" program on it to monitor the line. Turns out that this program was insisting that 300/40kbs dl rate was a "stable connection" they simply switched it off and I'm good to go now.
If your using Vista Wireless connection, try Vista-anti lag. Can't game without it!
 
enigma27 said:
what he said.

the 5.7db level in your stats is too low and sky's inbuilt line testing system is rebooting your line as its ubstable. be persistent with tier 1 and make sure they do the test asked of you.... it'll be frustrating but once you get through to tier 2 support they should be able to sort it in minutes.
Click to expand...

Just come off the phone from Sky.... Not happy. After 45 minutes I got through to some bloke. I explained the Noise Margin Value and he asked what that was... This is teir 3 apparently.

He put me through to some girl who asked me to do 3 speed tests on http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ One in the morning, afternoon and evening. I explained the Noise Margin to her... and she said we have done tests on your line and nothings wrong, you need to do these speed tests.

:mad:
 
ffs..

Just watching Iplayer, seemed to be streaming OK (I did a speed test before, 1.2mb, still low but ok) then all of a sudden it stopped and kept on buffering. As of 7:30 im now getting 0.50mb.

Before 19:30 - 1.2mb (~120kbps)
19:31 - 0.5mb (....Slow)
 
I had same thing, was with pipex but left for sky bb, top package at the time, think it was about £10. Service started out fine, but as weeks went on my 4mb line started to feel more like a 128kb ISDN line connection. Funnily enough though the speed seem to pickup around 1am and would be okay early morning

Several calls to their support and all checks out fine from their side. I eventually just gave up, I couldn't game anymore at peak times, getting pings on uk servers of over 100.
Switched to BE, still only on 4mb due to distance from exchange, but I'm getting 1.2 upload and their service has been top notch now for over a year, wouldn't go anywhere else.
Now whether Sky was deliberately throttling, or everybody in my street took up sky and I had to compete with them, I don't know, but happy that I ditched Sky
 
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