TalkTalk Speed Issues During Evenings (clarification)

Pho

Pho

Pho

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Joined
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Derbyshire
Hi,

I used to be with Nildram who after being bought out by several people are now TalkTalk on one of their business packages. I'm 99% sure this is TalkTalk's problem but wanted to double-check.

Our connection is synced at 8128/448 and the line stats are:

Code: 
		Down		Up
SNR (dB):	11.3		23.0
Attn(dB):	4.0		3.5
Pwr(dBm):	9.8		12.3
Rate (Kbps):	8128		448

My PC is connected to a gigabit switch then into a DG834GT router running DGTeam firmware.


What is happening is that during non-peak times it's fine; I can download at full speed (~840Kb/s or so) however during peak hours - usually 19:30-00:00 - it grinds to a halt fluctuating between around 30Kb/s to 150Kb/s - very poor and makes YouTube/iPlayer unusable.

Having had a support ticket open with TalkTalk for weeks they now want to send a BT engineer out to investigate.

Clearly if it's a problem with my wiring I am liable to be charged - so I'm really just looking to gather whether this is something which others have experienced and if the BT engineer comes out during the middle of the day where I can download at full speed, am I going to be told everythings fine and be charged whilst TalkTalk get away with it?


Thanks.
 
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It's probably TalkTalk. They aren't Regarded as very good. Could just be that TT over subscribe the bandwidth to save money.
 
I'm with Pipex which is basically TalkTalk now. Been with them for roughly 2 years and it's been up and down all the way. Any major downloading I do now is done during the night to avoid problems. I can do some during the day and evening but I run the risk of a connection drop or severe speed reduction if I push it too far with traffic shaping.

The main problem I have is online gaming during the day. Latency is acceptable and doesn't really fluctuate unless someone else is doing something but connection disconnects are notorious. It happens so often I think it's deliberate. Playing late in the night is fine.

If your connection was fine before then it will be their network. The first ISP I had was always the best but now that networks are overloaded to capacity you'll have to pay a bit more for a better service which isn't TalkTalk sadly. :p
 
Tealc said:
It's probably TalkTalk. They aren't Regarded as very good. Could just be that TT over subscribe the bandwidth to save money.
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Yeah that's what I thought. I should probably switch but it's always one of those things "I'll do next week" :p.

Rozzy85 said:
I'm with Pipex which is basically TalkTalk now. Been with them for roughly 2 years and it's been up and down all the way. Any major downloading I do now is done during the night to avoid problems. I can do some during the day and evening but I run the risk of a connection drop or severe speed reduction if I push it too far with traffic shaping.

The main problem I have is online gaming during the day. Latency is acceptable and doesn't really fluctuate unless someone else is doing something but connection disconnects are notorious. It happens so often I think it's deliberate. Playing late in the night is fine.

If your connection was fine before then it will be their network. The first ISP I had was always the best but now that networks are overloaded to capacity you'll have to pay a bit more for a better service which isn't TalkTalk sadly. :p
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I used to be on Pipex too, then moved to Nildram, which Pipex bought not long after :o.

I very rarely get disconnects though so maybe you do genuinely have a line issue somewhere.

I think TalkTalk actually ends up costing me more than some of the other ISPs out there as it happens as I'm still paying the same price as I was paying to Nildram I think.
 
If the line is dropping sync to the exchange then it's more a line stability issue rather than a throttling issue. If the connection is dropping you could try posting your stats at different times of the day and especially when disconnected.

If the line is fine but works poorly at peak times then it's usually just the ISP or BT Wholesale trying to cram too many users on the bandwidth. ISPs pay for bandwidth and then cram as many users as they can into that bandwidth. Good ISPs charge more because they don't cram so many people into their bandwidth.

I was on Pipex for a while. When I heard they were changing hands I skipped over to Sky LLU. We'd had TT years ago and it was poor and spoiled gaming for a while.
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure it's either them or BT. I know other people on this exchange who have TalkTalk say it's bad, but a neighbour says his is fine (non-TalkTalk).

I basically just need to know that if the engineer comes out and they test it and everything's fine as it's during the day (rather than at night when I have issues), am I then liable to charges? If so I'll tell them that's not good enough and it's a massively underhand move by TalkTalk.
 
Remember now that the Olympics is on and probably lots using Iplayer to do so. If it's a lot worse in the next two weeks then it's probably exchange/isp congestion.

Your line looks very good, snr is low for your attenuation but as you are on adsl1 then not worth bothering about at the moment.
 
Gigabit said:
TalkTalk non-LLU (which you are on) is throttled to absolute poo and is a poor product. If I was you, I would move to an ISP like Zen - no throttling, low congestion, etc.
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Outside of peak hours it's very speedy, but I'd still never choose them given the choice. Zen were always very expensive, they don't look so bad nowadays though. Would be nice to get 1MB upload without paying through the roof mind.

Shame I can't get LLU on this exchange :(.

yashiro said:
Congestion at 'peak' residential hours using a business line? Sounds like you're getting the shaft.
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I imagine business/residential are exactly the same except the difference in name :p.


hominid said:
Remember now that the Olympics is on and probably lots using Iplayer to do so. If it's a lot worse in the next two weeks then it's probably exchange/isp congestion.

Your line looks very good, snr is low for your attenuation but as you are on adsl1 then not worth bothering about at the moment.
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Ah good idea, I'll have to keep an eye on it. I'm fairly positive it is TalkTalk anyway :p.

I thought we used to get a higher SNR. I've tried the test socket before and it was pretty much exactly the same stats from what I remember.. who knows. We're about 300m from the exchange anyway.
 
If your connection speed stays the same and you don't get a disconnect then you're being throttled at peak times, probably because of usage. This is most definitely TT's issue to resolve and I find it highly unlikely the Openreach Engineer will find anything wrong.
 
Orcvader said:
It probably is TalkTalk, I was on Tiscali (now owned by TalkTalk) and every peak time I would lose sync a lot, sometimes with no conenction at all until off-peak times. Moved to O2 and the connection was rock solid for 3 or so years.

There are other BT resellers like Zen and TitanADSL which are apprently really good as well: http://titan-adsl.co.uk /home-broadband/home-unlimited/
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Cheers, I'll have a look into them as well. Nildram were always brilliant, even up until Opal it was fine then as soon as it was rebranded to TalkTalk it went downhill fast.

According to SamKnows there's only 500 odd people on my exchange which isn't exactly massive so you'd have thought congestion wouldn't be too much of a deal.

MissChief said:
If your connection speed stays the same and you don't get a disconnect then you're being throttled at peak times, probably because of usage. This is most definitely TT's issue to resolve and I find it highly unlikely the Openreach Engineer will find anything wrong.
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As I thought. I've told them that I'm not willing to accept an engineer visit unless they confirm to writing they'll front the cost if I get charged.. let's see what they say to that ;).

If I were cynical (I am) I think they want to send an engineer out knowing they're probably not going to find any problem and then just quote that back at me thus waiving themselves of any blame.
 
Ouch.

Is it possible to get access to how much bandwidth is available at the exchange? I'm sure it's fairly confidential but there must be someone with access to it.
 
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