Slow internet after 6pm - 12pm

garyh

garyh

garyh

Associate
Joined
16 Mar 2005
Posts
845
I've recently got Telewest broadband installed; however I'm facing a little problem. I signed up to the 10mbit service, and it works great during the day constantly reaching 1.1mb/sec downloads as it should do... However! after the above times (6-12pm) my internet crawls to 2mbit or lower.. I personally find this unacceptable considering I'm paying for a 10mbit service..

Is there anything Telewest can do to speed my internet up at the above times?

(p.s I understand about contention ratios etc; but this takes the michael tbh)
 
This has been happening with NTL's 10mb connection. It is due to them throttling the speeds during peak times.

So, the companies won't do anything and we have to suffer because they can't provide a service they offer because they have too many customers, so they have to limit it during peak times.

I will be leaving NTL as soon as I have the money to buy an ADSL router and find another ISP.

I know leaving Telewest might not be an option to you but its either put up with the throttling from them (which you shouldn't have to) or change ISP's.
 
It's not taking the michael at all, the majority of ADSL MAX users never get 8mbit that from your pov they pay for.... You aren't paying for a 10mbit connection you are paying for a connection capable of supporting up to 10mbit, if you were paying for 10mbit you would know about it as it's not £35 a month.

That said most TW 10mbit users consistantly get pretty close to the maximum theoretical speed - in your case 10mbit, sometimes it takes a little work (ie multiple downloads). If you are baseing your speed on Torrents they vary depending on the swarm, number of seeds etc so are not exactly reliable indications.

Check the modem log, the profile should be 10240-384, try multiple downloads, run a (decent) speed test http://www.broadbandspeedtest.net/ try downloads from well known high bandwidth sites such as apple.com or microsoft (SP2 etc).
 
Avalon said:
It's not taking the michael at all, the majority of ADSL MAX users never get 8mbit that from your pov they pay for....
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You can't really compare cable to adsl services, being that cable is not based on distance from the exchange etc..

Like I said, it's absolutely fine during the day; it's got nothing to do with my cable modem config etc (correct config is downloaded) and it's nothing to do with the site I'm attempting my speedtest from (http://gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk) I've tried multiple connections; it just slows my original one by x amount of new ones I open (ie I can have 1 220K, or 2 110K)

It's a problem with Telewest itself (or more to the point the UBR I'm on)

I know full well about contention etc, and I can't expect 100% uptime, full bandwidth etc etc.. but the point is.. it's slowing down to 2mbit! that's an 80% decrease in the time I use the service the most..
 
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garyh said:
You can't really compare cable to adsl services, being that cable is not based on distance from the exchange etc..
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You can, they are both broadband packages in the marketplace today offering similar speeds but using a different technology the point being both also state 'up to' speeds etc so a comparison based on attainable speed is valid.

In fact distance is probably more important with cable than with DSL based on the distance from the cab/DP to the bomb in the pit and the number of drops taken from that bomb and the number of appliances on that drop does impact signal strength and speed/service not to mention noise ingression onto the network. Poor signal levels present issues such as corruption to certain transponder streams usually noted by a disruption to a small number of chans or significant loss of speed (more likley loss of connection all together. I could go on about the length of drops to each property, the lottery that splitters can be and the problems in accurate measurement of signals with the mobile testers but I won't.

A quick look at the BY newsgroups shows a small number of users reporting similar issues but no specific ubr pattern that I can spot and the number of users isn't significantly increased from last month or the month before or the month before that yet considering the number of heavy BY users who dropped off the network 2 months ago (student disconections from late July - August are the highest BBI disconnection figures all year every year) i'd have expected if a ubr was under heavy load and not offering full bandwidth it would have got better until now and not worse.

If you dont mind me asking what area/ubr are you on ?
 
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Getting the same thing with aol. Full 8megs except 730-1130pm mon-thur! At that time it drops like a rock to 76K and its just a flat line. They are denying they are limiting my speed and say its a problem with the line.

I know aol are frowned upon but they are the only ones that dont cap in my area as we dont get cable. Dont use their software of course. They said at first that the drop in speed is because its busy but then why the flat line at 76K all the time? threatening to cancel seems to get their attention though!!!
 
This has been a major problem for both telewest and NTL customers for the past month or so and the company deny theres anything wrong with their networks and also deny that they are traffic shaping.

Ive read lots of posts on other forums. Ive got a 10mb NTL connection and have exactly the same problem, full speeds at all times apart from between 6pm - midnight when my connection drops to 2mb speeds.

Insiders who work at NTL have said that although NTL wont say that traffic shaping is happening, it IS. Its not turned on in all parts of the country but they have been testing it and have left it turned on in certain areas and it looks like your area is one of these, as is mine.
Im afraid at the moment theres nothing that we can do about it. Just make sure that if you want to do some seriously downloading then its done outside these hours.
 
ScoobyDoo - NTL insiders can bite my non metalic rather dull looking - certainly not sparkling or indeed shiny ass... If you had actually seen the process' and the process to change a process for NTL you'd understand that the majority of people you speak to in NTL have a hard enough job just dealing with the day to day questions let alone being able to comment officially or otherwise on a technical issue such as FUP, throttling or abuse.

As I said in the last thread on the subject I can't comment with 100% authority on NTL as i'm not privvy to pre/post merger projects for BBI but I can say TW have not put bandwidth throttling in place for users, individual node (UBR) capacity may be an issue for some users in certain area's atm but i'd suspect that would be greatly reduced over the last 2 months for the rerasons i've stated before.

I'd theorise that at least in some cases (and please understand this isn't directed at anyone specifically) due to ADSL providers making this an issue and creating greater awareness of traffic managment users who have had issues perhaps unrelated to an ISP's FUP policy now rightly or wrongly assume that they must be being throttled at peak times because they are getting slow speeds and have heard that XYZISP does this, again greater awareness causes greater reporting of the issue and so the cycle continues.

Postmanfw - As far as AOL go that's concerning, i've now got ADSL Max 8mbit from AOL in three different exchange area's and all of our heavy users - strangely enough they were the ones begging to be migrated first - haven't reported anything but fast downloads, low pings and no problems appart from one who decided they knew better and installed the AOL CD... perhaps it's early days though as I only migrated them in the last 7 days so it's possible they haven't registered on a high usage report yet.
 
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My 10mb NTL connection has reached an all time low today. Its downloading at 60k/sec to 120k/sec.

Its pathetic! Im getting no more than a tenth of what im paying for :mad:

I won't be paying them the full amount when my bill comes :p
 
Other friends nearby in next street not having the same problems as me though they use quite a lots still but not as much as me. Going to threaten to cncell soo and see if they give me anything for free!!! not tied in by contract now
 
This is pretty bad, Esspecially with cable, i could understand if it were ADSL as they are known to give a lot slower speeds than you would expect, i read somewhere that they were actually going to stop all the ADSL ISP's advertising the upto 8mbps as most people only get just over 2mbps, This is one reason why i like NTL because if you are on the 10meg line then you should still get faster downloads and uploads than on the "upto" 8mb line which more than likely you would only get 2mbps unless you were within something like 3.5km from the bt exchange.
 
According to blueyonder tech it would seem my UBR is over capacity around the times mentioned and there should be a 'fix' sooner or later...
 
Colbaker said:
if it were ADSL as they are known to give a lot slower speeds than you would expect, i read somewhere that they were actually going to stop all the ADSL ISP's advertising the upto 8mbps as most people only get just over 2mbps
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Drivel.
 
You are paying for UP to 10mb. Internet speeds can only be as fast as the slowest link, you are paying for a link which can go to 10mb when the conditions are right (which they are for most of the time) At peak times ie 6pm-12pm you can't expect full speed or anything close as the contention will be higher and servers will be more busy. It's nothing to do with throttling. Once blueyonder have upgraded the ubr you should get better speeds but probably still not as good as you get during the day.
 
Zap: I think Telewest are taking the p*** when they are telling you that. I know that with NTL it IS throttling and it only happens during peak times. It just comes down to them not being able to provide a service they offer because they have too many customers. That should be NTL's problem and not the customers but the customer always has to suffer because there are always people listening to their crap.

Im sorry for being so harsh about it but I am really fed up with it and £37.99 is a lot of money to be paying when the speeds are terrible.
 
jake000 said:
I think Telewest are taking the p*** when they are telling you that. I know that with NTL it IS throttling and it only happens during peak times.
Postmanfw try doing a tracert on your friends PC, are they on the same UBR as you ? If they are it sounds like a localised issue to your connection (Read from the Cab in the street to your PC be it the cables themselves or your PC/Modem/Router etc). Tech support can shadow the modem for you if a tech visit doesn't find a fault but you are best off getting it logged. You may also be better off asking them to switch your channel (depending on what is/isn't available in your area).

Jake ... (*edit*in a homer simpson esque voice*edit*) You want the truth ? You want the truth ?! YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! It was JFK on the grassy knoll, he used a Motorola SB5100, this explains the magical bullet path, the head shot was the modem hitting and the psu/cat5 cable did the rest (Lister convinced him to use one rather than a magic bullet). So If you want to point to the shooter on the grassy knoll then feel free but ....

a) i've seen the red dwarf episode so you can't lie to me ...
b) I've seen the Simpson's episode and it was Maggie so someone isn't telling me the whole truth ?!
c) Just because NTL are *edit* accused *edit* of doing something doesn't dictate that TW are doing it, as i've said in the past they don't have that level of integration yet and won't for some time. It's perfectly logical that a maxed out UBR will hit it's capacity during peak times, sadly untill it's upgraded that will remain the case, sadly it's not a quick fix. As I said I don't know what NTL are saying/doing this week (I do everything I can to avoid them in general) but TW are not limiting connections, trust me if and when that changes i'll be the first one shouting very loudly about it!
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Ok Avalon, I really didn't want to annoy anyone, so I am sorry about that.

Its fair enough about Telewest then but for me with NTL, its been like this for about 2 months. Im just really fed up with it.
 
Not annoyed at all mate, just thought it was about time I injected a little humour into the situation. Perhaps quoting from Homer Simpson may not have come across as I intended :D
 
Originally Posted by Colbaker
if it were ADSL as they are known to give a lot slower speeds than you would expect, i read somewhere that they were actually going to stop all the ADSL ISP's advertising the upto 8mbps as most people only get just over 2mbps

tolien said:
Drivel.
Click to expand...

most people get between 4 and 8mb
 
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