Broadband speeds - getting slower

dak

I have a 1Mbp BT connection (North Co Dublin) which used to download at about 80% of this speed. In the last few days it dropped out all together for a day , came back at about 50% and last night was down to 172mbps.

I checked speeds at various times and it was still at 172 at 2am last night- could this be pure contention or has anyone had the same problems in the last few days ?

I'm with Esat 3MB, having major speed issues here in Dundalk. Boards.ie & all other web pages taking forever to load up, videos spend more time buffering than playing and only getting download speeds of between 50 - 70KB/s.

CrowdedHouse

Crawling in Oranmore today,on 2Mb eircom and only seem to be getting 300-400 kbs at best.

dak

Solved all my bt slow problems with www.opendns.com . Back up to full speed!

dak

dak wrote:

Solved all my bt slow problems with www.opendns.com . Back up to full speed!

*sigh*
OpenDNS does nothing for your connection speed.

I can't stress this enough.

dak

ronoc wrote:

*sigh*
OpenDNS does nothing for your connection speed.

I can't stress this enough.

Can you explain then how it works - if I revert back to the old setting I get dial up speed!! Whats it doing then ?

dak

ronoc wrote:

*sigh*
OpenDNS does nothing for your connection speed.

From the www.opendns.com site!

I can't stress this enough.

OpenDNS makes the Internet experience safer, faster and smarter for you and everyone using your network.

1. OpenDNS is safer
OpenDNS can identify and stop sites trying to phish (steal) your personal information or money. The OpenDNS phishing protection works with all operating systems and browsers, and complements any other security measures already in use, such as a firewall and anti-virus software.

Here's what a blocked phishing site looks like for OpenDNS customers:





2. OpenDNS is faster
Most DNS servers on the Internet are slow. Your computer uses DNS every time you visit a website or send an email, so you want DNS to be blazing fast. Two things make DNS really fast: a big cache and a good network. We have both.

Not to brag, but OpenDNS caches are really big.
The bigger and better the cache, the fewer steps in the process, and the faster the Internet experience. Making the OpenDNS caches really big is part of how OpenDNS makes the Internet faster.

Chad ghostal

dak, ronoc is right, the time it takes to resolve dns may affect your browsing web sites, but it would not effect the download speed from that site.. the speed increase would be imperceptible in most cases.

On Esatbt 3mb myself in cork and since just before christmas download speeds have been appalling, apart from the middle of the night... download at roughly 50-80kBs. I used to get 300kbs+ at all times of the day, i just assumed they put me onto a higher usage contention group or something...

dak

I can't debate from a technical angle on this issue but please tell me why BT got so slow that I had to use Dial up to read up on opendns , log off , reboot my router and change the DNS on my computer amd hey presto - 856kbps. And forgeting about numbers I could actually browse .

I'd appreciate it if anyone could explain this clearly . My understanding is that a high speed internet cache provider like opendns is effectively the same result as having extra ram in your PC
While BT is still the ISP I use , I am bypassing their current slow DNS servers and using opendns instead.

As a customer I only want the connection speed I pay for - I'm not overly worried about how the engine works!

I loved to know whats going on, can't get through to tech support. I've been running various speed tests the past few days and all seem to be coming back the same with my download speed round 0.80 - 1.02Mbps :mad: .
Before this slow down I was getting 2.56 - 2.85Mbps.

Trevord

hellboy99 wrote:

Boards.ie & all other web pages taking forever to load up, .

Just in case anyone jumps to the conclusion that they have a speed problem cos Boards.ie is slow to load, you should note that there is a general problem with the speed that pages are being created on Boards.ie at the moment. (although right now its now too bad)

Issue is discussed in detail elsewhere on board.

Trevord

Trevord wrote:

Just in case anyone jumps to the conclusion that they have a speed problem cos Boards.ie is slow to load, you should note that there is a general problem with the speed that pages are being created on Boards.ie at the moment. (although right now its now too bad)

Issue is discussed in detail elsewhere on board.

I'm having speed problems with all web pages, from Microsoft - Yahoo - Boards.ie.

zt-OctaviaN

Out of curiosity are you all using the latest version of browsers such as IE7 (brutal) and Opera 9.5? (accessing takes a few clicks it just sits there) on the later CPU usage hits the roof also!

So what browsers...anyone?
Are you all running addaware and spybot (these are good)

zt-OctaviaN

zt-OctaviaN wrote:

Out of curiosity are you all using the latest version of browsers such as IE7 (brutal) and Opera 9.5? (accessing takes a few clicks it just sits there) on the later CPU usage hits the roof also!

So what browsers...anyone?
Are you all running addaware and spybot (these are good)

I was running IE7, so I uninstalled it and tried IE6 and still just the same, I've been trying to get Esat tech support on the phone all day, no luck with that.

dak

dak wrote:

OpenDNS makes the Internet experience safer, faster and smarter for you and everyone using your network.

1. OpenDNS is safer
OpenDNS can identify and stop sites trying to phish (steal) your personal information or money. The OpenDNS phishing protection works with all operating systems and browsers, and complements any other security measures already in use, such as a firewall and anti-virus software.

Here's what a blocked phishing site looks like for OpenDNS customers:

The latest version of internet explorer does this too, and is much better. This tool by open dns is pretty useless unless they put alot of effort into finding those phishing sites.

dak wrote:

2. OpenDNS is faster
Most DNS servers on the Internet are slow. Your computer uses DNS every time you visit a website or send an email, so you want DNS to be blazing fast. Two things make DNS really fast: a big cache and a good network. We have both.

Not to brag, but OpenDNS caches are really big.
The bigger and better the cache, the fewer steps in the process, and the faster the Internet experience. Making the OpenDNS caches really big is part of how OpenDNS makes the Internet faster.

OpenDNS makes the internet faster.... Not really. In most cases in Ireland its actually slower using OpenDNS.
The nearest OpenDNS server is in london so staright away add 10ms-15ms to the response time over your ISPs DNS server. Granted you probably won't notice that, but what is the advantage in using it for?

There is alot more to this, it can get as complicated as you want!

But suffice it to say:
OpenDNS despite their free/open source sounding name are a company.
They are trying to make money from something that has been free and has worked well since the beginning of the internet.

dak

ronoc wrote:

The latest version of internet explorer does this too, and is much better. This tool by open dns is pretty useless unless they put alot of effort into finding those phishing sites.





OpenDNS makes the internet faster.... Not really. In most cases in Ireland its actually slower using OpenDNS.
The nearest OpenDNS server is in london so staright away add 10ms-15ms to the response time over your ISPs DNS server. Granted you probably won't notice that, but what is the advantage in using it for?

There is alot more to this, it can get as complicated as you want!

But suffice it to say:
OpenDNS despite their free/open source sounding name are a company.
They are trying to make money from something that has been free and has worked well since the beginning of the internet.

I'm running the latest version of internet explorer - how can you say its useless when it at least speeded up what has been a poor service from BT since before X-mas

I am an accountant so I understand the making money bit. I undersatnd that ordinary DNS has more redundancy because it is decentralised. Are BT expanding too fast and don't have sufficent DNS servers, By the way where are BT servers hosted ?

dak

dak wrote:

I'm running the latest version of internet explorer - how can you say its useless when it at least speeded up what has been a poor service from BT since before X-mas

I am an accountant so I understand the making money bit. I undersatnd that ordinary DNS has more redundancy because it is decentralised. Are BT expanding too fast and don't have sufficent DNS servers, By the way where are BT servers hosted ?

I was talking about their phishing site blocker.

But unless BTs DNS servers are very slow, which they are at the moment, using OpenDNS has no effect on your connection.
Even then only the initial "whats the IP for company.com" will be faster. Once your computer has that it doesn't need to consult DNS again.

As for BT servers Im not sure..

dak

ronoc wrote:

I was talking about their phishing site blocker.

But unless BTs DNS servers are very slow, which they are at the moment, using OpenDNS has no effect on your connection.
Even then only the initial "whats the IP for company.com" will be faster. Once your computer has that it doesn't need to consult DNS again.

As for BT servers Im not sure..

Phishing point noted!

So you do agree that openDNS has effected my connection BECAUSE BTs DNS servers are slow. Thats what I have been trying to explain to you ? I don't underdatnd your point about "whats the IP for company.com" comment. Are you talking about authorative Root DNS Server lists or cached information held ? Please explain

h57xiucj2z946q

dak wrote:

I can't debate from a technical angle on this issue but please tell me why BT got so slow that I had to use Dial up to read up on opendns , log off , reboot my router and change the DNS on my computer amd hey presto - 856kbps. And forgeting about numbers I could actually browse .

I'd appreciate it if anyone could explain this clearly . My understanding is that a high speed internet cache provider like opendns is effectively the same result as having extra ram in your PC
While BT is still the ISP I use , I am bypassing their current slow DNS servers and using opendns instead.

As a customer I only want the connection speed I pay for - I'm not overly worried about how the engine works!

A DNS server (domain name service) is used to lookup the ip of a hostname only (or vice versa in some cases), so it will have no impact on your bandwidth speed. The only thing it should speed up (or slow down) is hostname resolves. After which you directly connect to the IP, your DNS server is not used thereafter until you pass another hostname to it.

So if you browse to www.yahoo.ie, you contact the dns server to give you the ip of www.yahoo.ie and it throws you back 217.12.3.11 or whatever and your are infact now connecing directly to that IP. Your DNS server does no more.

The reason why i'd say you are noticing a bandwidth speed increase when using opendns is because probably your pc is riddled with spyware/adware which hammers bandwidth pushing out ads/emails etc.. to others. So when you have set up opendns server, opendns prob have some spam/spyware protection, so any spyware crap on your pc that tries to connect to what ever it connects to, your dns server will resolve any spyware/spam hostname as 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 (local loop) so it wont connect, saving your bandwidth? Make sence? just my thoughts!

dak wrote:

I'm running the latest version of internet explorer - how can you say its useless when it at least speeded up what has been a poor service from BT since before X-mas

Again Internet Explorer version will hold no bearing on your bandwidth speed. Spyware may influencer this. If you read above?? was it not OpenDNS you say that speeded up things or now Internet Explorer?

nesf

Evan Alive Pacemaker wrote:

The reason why i'd say you are noticing a bandwidth speed increase when using opendns is because probably your pc is riddled with spyware/adware which hammers bandwidth pushing out ads/emails etc.. to others. So when you have set up opendns server, opendns prob have some spam/spyware protection, so any spyware crap on your pc that tries to connect to what ever it connects to, your dns server will resolve any spyware/spam hostname as 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 (local loop) so it wont connect, saving your bandwidth? Make sence? just my thoughts!

At the moment opendns could speed up someone's connection, but it'd be down to the BT's dns servers acting up rather than anything else. Don't auto blame spyware/adware.

That said my connection has been brutal even with IPs, so it mightn't be a DNS problem with BT atm.

dak

Evan Alive Pacemaker wrote:

A DNS server (domain name service) is used to lookup the ip of a hostname only (or vice versa in some cases), so it will have no impact on your bandwidth speed. The only thing it should speed up (or slow down) is hostname resolves. After which you directly connect to the IP, your DNS server is not used thereafter until you pass another hostname to it.

So if you browse to www.yahoo.ie, you contact the dns server to give you the ip of www.yahoo.ie and it throws you back 217.12.3.11 or whatever and your are infact now connecing directly to that IP. Your DNS server does no more.

The reason why i'd say you are noticing a bandwidth speed increase when using opendns is because probably your pc is riddled with spyware/adware which hammers bandwidth pushing out ads/emails etc.. to others. So when you have set up opendns server, opendns prob have some spam/spyware protection, so any spyware crap on your pc that tries to connect to what ever it connects to, your dns server will resolve any spyware/spam hostname as 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 (local loop) so it wont connect, saving your bandwidth? Make sence? just my thoughts!



Again Internet Explorer version will hold no bearing on your bandwidth speed. Spyware may influencer this. If you read above?? was it not OpenDNS you say that speeded up things or now Internet Explorer?

Sorry ! but your spyware logic is flawed as my PC is not riddled with Spyware as you suggest. All my anti virus and anti spyware is right up to date . I undersatnd the basics of DNS but what you appear to ignore is that obviously BT servers are running slow at the moment maybe due to being overloaded. I've only had a problem wiith them in the last few weeks. OpenDNS appears to be a high speed cached DNS server which solves hostname resolves far quicker than BT at the moment.

I am well aware IE 7 has no bearing on bandwith speed . If you read the replies it was a mis-read reply to an answer regardinrg technology on Opendns to block Phishing sites .

Conar

If you can download at your full speed (300kb/s approx for a 3mb line, 200kb/s for a 2mb line, and yes you guessed it 100kb/s for a imb line) but find that you are experiencing delays when browsing then you may well have an issue with slow DNS servers.
However if you are having browsing issues AND are only getting about a quarter/half of your normal download speed then the issue is not a DNS issue.

You need to contact a DNS server to resolve a web address once only so it may take a few seconds before your download starts when you have a DNS issue, but once that download has started it no longer needs to use DNS at all.

Sorry if I'm rehashing what other people have said but there seems to be a little confusion here.

dak

Conar wrote:

If you can download at your full speed (300kb/s approx for a 3mb line, 200kb/s for a 2mb line, and yes you guessed it 100kb/s for a imb line) but find that you are experiencing delays when browsing then you may well have an issue with slow DNS servers.
However if you are having browsing issues AND are only getting about a quarter/half of your normal download speed then the issue is not a DNS issue.

You need to contact a DNS server to resolve a web address once only so it may take a few seconds before your download starts when you have a DNS issue, but once that download has started it no longer needs to use DNS at all.

Sorry if I'm rehashing what other people have said but there seems to be a little confusion here.

I didn't think it was possible to download at full speed - it is realistically more like 85 or 90% of quoted Mbps. The problem I had was with delays in browsing which to my mind means slow DNS servers. Getting slower download speeds is more often or not caused by contention issues or problems with the line.

parsi

Better off choosing an eircom dns server - these are very robust and you're saved the annoying search pages that opendns provides when you mis-spell an address (I had it as dns for about 10 minutes before irt annoyed me).

Conar

dak wrote:

I didn't think it was possible to download at full speed - it is realistically more like 85 or 90% of quoted Mbps. The problem I had was with delays in browsing which to my mind means slow DNS servers. Getting slower download speeds is more often or not caused by contention issues or problems with the line.

What I mean by full speed is the full speed you can get.
A 3megabit line is actually a 3072kilobit line. This then is a 384 Kilobyte line (8 bits in a byte).
You will never get near 384KB/s though with a 3mb line as you need to take TCP/IP overheads etc in to account so generally the following rough guidelines are what you can expect:
1mb line --> 100-110KB/s
2mb line --> 200-220KB/s
3mb line --> 300-330KB/s

I probably confused matters earlier as I was using kb instead of KB etc.
kb= kilobit
KB= Kilobyte (8kb per KB)
mb= megabit
MB= Megabyte (8mb per MB)

Can someone please post the eircom DNS servers they are using because I'd love to test them against the BT ones.

h57xiucj2z946q

dak wrote:

Sorry ! but your spyware logic is flawed as my PC is not riddled with Spyware as you suggest. All my anti virus and anti spyware is right up to date.

That don't always mean you dont got spyware, you ever hear of rootkits? alot of antivirus/antispyware cannot see the nasty files if a rootkit is in the way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

dak

Evan Alive Pacemaker wrote:

That don't always mean you dont got spyware, you ever hear of rootkits? alot of antivirus/antispyware cannot see the nasty files if a rootkit is in the way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

I use Super-anti spyware professional which detects rootkits- I also occasionally double check with F-secure Blacklight beta. My computer runs fine so I doubt this is a problem .

anyone know if the speed problem is going to be fixed cause i'm really getting pissed with having to €63 a month for a so called 3MB service that won't even connect at 1MB :mad:

billybob97

I Have been having problems with the speed of my BT Broadband and sometimes like last friday Jan 19th it was down for a number of hours.

I called BT today and was told that on thgeir system I have been online 24/7 for the past week. This is impossible.

Has anyone broken their contract with BT as a result of this kind of thing as it seems I am locked into a contract for 12 months and according to them it is impossible for me to move till my contract is up/

dak

billybob97 wrote:

I Have been having problems with the speed of my BT Broadband and sometimes like last friday Jan 19th it was down for a number of hours.

I called BT today and was told that on thgeir system I have been online 24/7 for the past week. This is impossible.

Has anyone broken their contract with BT as a result of this kind of thing as it seems I am locked into a contract for 12 months and according to them it is impossible for me to move till my contract is up/

Seems a common problem- I've had intermittent faults. Last Sunday DNS was down for half the day. Had to use dial up to connect. Even when connected got terrible speed until used opendns settings. Before X-mas there were no problems.

aaronm13

I have a 3mb BT connection and it's so slooooow the last few weeks and I'm really on the brink of getting rid of it.Sites like Google can take up to 60-70 seconds to load up.When I run a speed test I get about 2.5mb which is ok but websites take as long as dial up to open.I'm using the latest Firefox.Does anyone have any idea as to what might be causing this problem,I'd rather pull my toe nails out with a pliers than get onto BT support,wait for about 2 hours then finally get through to a total moron,no thanks!

I was onto BT tech support yesterday for near an hour, started off with the guy wanting me to check my router connection speed in its settings, so I said whats the point as it always says 3MB, what reply do I get, it seems fine then and you've no problem :rolleyes:
So I go to him that I've been running various speed tests and tried downloading the BT test file and was only getting download speeds of between 50 - 70KB/s. Ended up having to do that all again, then onto connecting up another router, to my surprise I get the same result :rolleyes: .
Then he comes up with an answer to the problem, "we'll downgrade you to 1MB as your line doesn't seem to support 3MB very well and that will solve the problem". I'm like how does this solve it, I have and pay for a 3MB service and expect to get what you advertise and I pay for, besides even if I opt to downgrade I'm still not even going to get 1MB as my speeds are below that. Then he goes to me "well what do you want me to do", I replied "fix the problem, what else" :mad: . Conversation ends up with the usual, we'll ask for a test to be carried out on the exchange.

JNive

if your modem syncs at 3mb with adequate SNR Margin ( above 10db ) and attenuation ( <50db ) then 'your line doesnt support it well = bull****. since whether its supported is obvious from the SNR/Attenuation figures combined with any CRC error detections

If the line here doesn't support 3MB "very well" then why has it been working fine up until a few weeks ago. I'm beginning to think no one has a clue at BT support, he didn't even know that you could get into a settings screen on my router, hence the reason why I had to connect up another one. Maybe I should apply for a job there, then again maybe not, I'd just tell people to go to another provider.

Conar

My BT line seems to have been working ok.

My parents UTV line has been terrible since the New Year though and dropped offline for a day last week.
Maybe its Eircom doing the messing with the exchanges/lines?

zilog_jones

I've been experiencing slowness recently on BT as well the past few days. Just reset my connection and it seems OK again, however irishisptest.com is only reporting about 1Mb/s download speeds (I'm connected at 2Mb/s).

anyones speed get back to normal ? mine has got worse, been getting an average download speed of 7 - 30KB/s over the past few days now, I'd be better off using dialup :mad:

check speed here : http://www.btyahoo.com/speedtest

Conar

My BT speed has gone to crap too.
I thought that your link to test the speed may not have been a great indication so I tried downloading XP SP2 (used this in the past and always got full speed) but I'm only getting 30-40KB/s there too.
I tried calling BT support today but managed to cut myself off after holding for 50 minutes :mad:
I'll try again tomorrow and see what they say.

Got a call back from BT TS just before 9pm and was told that there is a fault with the exchange here and that the status of the repair with Eircom is still pending and should be fixed in the next day or so.

Esat TS gave me a call the other day to say that Eircom had fixed the problem and asked me to download their test file, speeds were still just as slow, so he went to log the fault again with Eircom. Now today I got a call from an Eircom engineer saying that there was no fault and that he would come round with his own modem and if it came up saying it was connected at 3MB then there was no problem with the line, oh yeah, and he'd charged me €57 to do this. I went onto say that no way I'd pay him and that it was a complete waste of time doing this as it will say and always says it's connected at 3MB anyway and that is not the way to check download speeds. What reply did I get, that I knew nothing ! :mad: So looks like I'll be cancelling my BB then and staying well away from any provider that uses "Eircons" line.

lucernarian

@hellboy99: There's no way in hell I'd let them away with that. While you're a customer of theirs you should let them know you are still paying them.

I presume your modem shows you connected at 3072/384? What is the attenuation and signal to noise ratio like? That data will rule out a lot of possible issues.

If, as I suspect, the line stats are reasonable, then I'd point the finger at contention. Assuming your location is right, I'd say it's contention as Drogheda is having pretty bad problems with speeds/contention and Dundalk is suffering from "evening contention" from what I've heard. The smaller towns are not having contention issues though.

Find out from anyone living in the same town or area with phoneline broadband and see what company they are with. That might show if it's an eircom or BT issue.

There are a lot of complaint mechanisms. Don't let a snotty engineer dictate to you when he doesn't even know his own job properly. Hope it works out for you.

Thanks To_be_confirmed, I'm in Dundalk and I know a few mates of mine that are both with Esat and Eircom that are having the same problems and all started round the same time, a few weeks before Christmas. I guess I'm just gonna have to get back on to Esat, more than likely before the end of the week if I'm still having problems I'll just cancel service and go elsewhere.
It's a joke :mad:

Got another call from Esat TS earlier, "we'll send you another router (that will be the third one I'll have from them now :rolleyes:, four including my own, so I don't think it's a router problem ), if that doesn't work then we'll take it to the next level". What part of it's not my router do they not understand :mad:

Conar

Hey Hellboy.
Just so you know, Enfield is just as bad.
It didn't start till after Christmas but its getting worse and worse.



Thats my 3Mb BT line this evening, and thats actually quite high compared to some tests lately.

Another call back from Esat TS today (fair dues to them for keeping tabs on it and me informed), Eircon again have said they've fixed the line (this is the third time now in 2 weeks :rolleyes: ). I'm asked to download the BT test file and what speed do I get, 9.89KB/s :mad: ,at this stage I'd be better off getting a carrier pigeon. Not only am I fed up at this stage but by the sounds of the TS guy he is too.

And Eircom want to put line rental up :rolleyes:

dak

BT - 9pm last night ASDL dropped out for the night (Portmarnock) .Anyone else have the same problem. Anyone know if eircom are working on lines in this area ? Really annoying!

Sponge Bob

dropping DSL out for the night , or for an hour or two usually at night after 9pm , is an eircom specialty

they are constantly twiddling with firmwares on their DSL kit in the exchanges and rumour has it that they rejumper to create 'special' bundles of cable of mixed distances.

all very hush hush but long term its better for us that they learn and adapt rather than their usual customer service total crap of prentending your line works perfectly while you are looking at the cable lying in the middle of the road .

Got another callback from Esat TS and I'm being downgraded to 2MB to see if that works any better, "Thanks Eircon !!" :mad:
It's about time something was done with the monopoly that is Eircom.

Sponge Bob

thats OK, it means that you will pay less and maybe get a more stable connection, stable 2mb better than unstable 3mb anyday.

thumbs up to BT TS for being on the ball.

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote:

thats OK, it means that you will pay less and maybe get a more stable connection, stable 2mb better than unstable 3mb anyday.

thumbs up to BT TS for being on the ball.

Hopefully that does the trick, have to give the BT TS guys credit for keeping me informed and trying to get the problem fixed

lucernarian

Hopefully it will work out fine. If your attenuation was below 50 dB then I would be querying BT's idea but if above then it was probably the best thing to do.

SB, what is this rejumpering thing about? Do they join pairs together in the exchange/cabinet?