[pyro-manic]

This is a question for all you web-savvy peeps out there.

http://www.freewebs.com/pyro-manic/connection-speed.jpg

Link goes to a screencap of me downloading from fileplanet. Now, the transfer rates there are pretty good. In fact, they're the best I've ever had, by a factor of about ten!

My question is this - why, given that I have a 512/256 ADSL connection, do I usually average about 10kb/s downloading, and slightly more uploading? It's most annoying, considering it costs nearly £30 a month for this connection, and I'm getting the same speeds I had with 56k!

Any ideas or ways to improve this would be greatly appreciated.

[kasperl]

1) Write to the ISP/threaten to sue. (I wouldn't do the latter at first, though.)
2) It might be the other side of the line, not always the case though.
3) Your ISP is squeezing your bandwidth, good luck.

[Taristin]

Yes, do a bandwidth test... see how fast you're conn really is. If it's less than it is advertised as, you have grounds for a real complaint/action.

[Arc]

Also, don't forget that BT's ADSL is done at a 50:1 contention ratio. You might be losing some of your bandwidth if you're in an area saturated with high bandwidth users. (Although, I've never really heard of this actually happening)

You can do a speed test and (possibly) find out what speeds other people are getting on your ISP at http://www.adslguide.org.uk/

[pyro-manic]

Ah...... bugger. I have 2 places with T1 lines within 500m of my house. That might be it.

Direction        Actual Speed                  True Speed (estimated)
Downstream  279 Kbps (34.9 KB/sec) 301 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream       252 Kbps (31.5 KB/sec) 272 Kbps (inc. overheads)
 
NOTE: Your downstream speed result is very low for the type of connection specified (ADSL/RADSL, 512Kbps). We strongly recommend that you check your Internet connection is not being used elsewhere during the test and/or contact your ISP to resolve speed issues you may be experiencing.

That's what I got in the test Arc posted. I'll have to look into this further. Cheers for the link and advice!

[Stealth]

go to DSL reports .com and see what they say.

[Arc]

Originally posted by pyro-manic
Ah...... bugger. I have 2 places with T1 lines within 500m of my house. That might be it.

AFAIK that contention is only for ADSL, T1 lines shouldn't impact. I'd check to see if you've got anything else running in the background on your machine, or any others if your connection is shared in your house. Speed tests won't be accurate if something else is using the connection at the same time.

If there's nothing else using bandwidth, I'd call the ISP and get them to look into it.
If you wanted to dig around a bit yourself and you can get DSL connection info from your modem/router you could try seeing the noise margin, attenuation, ouput power (that's what they're called on my Solwise router at least) for the line and number of transmission errors, high numbers might indicate a problem (except for noise margin where high is good) with noise on the line. Check the cable from the router to the main phone point, anything past that is BT's problem.

Out of interest, who is your ISP? I'm thinking of switching from Demon soon and I'm trying to get a feel for the good/bad ones again.