Sunday, August 22, 2010

Broadband speeds

Has anyone else had problems with their broadband speeds over the last week? Several people I have spoken to have had major issues with very slow speeds when sending files or downloading.



Posted by swanage resident to swanageview at 9:05 PM

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

very noticeable reducton in down/upload speeds since last wednesday.
isp provider looking into problem with bt lines - nothing new !

Anonymous said...

Yes especially in the morning, noticeably Sundays and Mondays. Pages load like at dial up pace. But when I try a speed test it says I am getting close to 6000 Kbps. BT and ISP not particularly concerned even though I pay for priority routing and 5:1 contention rate. Problem the same on different machines too.

Anonymous said...

Is it worth extra 9.53?

Anonymous said...

posting here is taking about a minute and a half to upload

Charlie The Bikemonger said...

IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS, CONTACT BT. THEY CLAIM NO REPORTED ISSUES. YOU HAVE TO REPORT IT TO THEM.
Yes, very slow here too. Both at home and in the shop. Our bike shop is 90% web/mailorder and we have been almost unable to trade since Thursday. Massive issue for us. Seriously looking at leaving swanage for good, as I am unable to work here.
BT say they are sending 8 mbps to me, but speedtest.net (a free speed test site, try it) tells me I am getting between 0.13 and 1.81. BT sending engineer on Monday.
I will also be contacting purbeck district council. You cant expect employment/trade/jobs etc when the area has dial up internet!

Virtual Swanage said...

ours has been very slow for 6 days now and we havent been able to send emails with attachments or upload any files all week. Its the same on mac and pc (windows) and ive replaced the router so its not a malware issue. Posting this via my O2 mobile which is far faster than the broadband

Anonymous said...

I have spoken to about 30 of my friends and they all have unuseable broadband service in Swanage. The last 3 days have been beyond a joke, yet B.T. claim there are "NO" reported faults. This is despite us all complaining.

Anonymous said...

I suspect this is not confined to Swanage as someone in Cardiff told me their connection was slow.

Anonymous said...

me too goddamm it!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

We have had loads of probs over the last week or so. Why bother with BT waste of time.

swanage resident said...

its not just bt broadband users, plusnet and aol have the same issue. The problems seems to be the exchange which is owned by bt

Anonymous said...

I have just got over 6000 Kbps on speed test but it still takes like 3 seconds to navigate between pages on this blog and it takes minutes for the word verification to show up

Anonymous said...

one line of plain text e-mail 20 seconds in my outbox!

Anonymous said...

although my speed is OK too my ping was terrible whatever that signifies

Anonymous said...

It seems to be worse during the day and some sites are worse than others. Wikipedia was OK last night but Radiotimes.com was useless. That suggests it is not a parochial issue at the Swanage exchange. Could be some huge d.o.s. escapade eating up bandwidth.

Anonymous said...

yes my PING was very poor grade F

Anonymous said...

Now it is grade A,
any ideas anyone

Anonymous said...

ps and internet is fast again

Anonymous said...

Since Fri pm I've been having problems, but largely with Google related things.

As Youtube has just had an attack I wonder if this might be related?

Anonymous said...

I think the man who winds up the clockwork motor that works the internet got back from his holiday today. You didn't think it was electric did you?

Anonymous said...

The problem certainly seems to be BT based, everyone i've spoken to in town that's having problems is on BT line. I'm on talktalk and subscribed to 'upto 8MB' broadband and am currently recording download speeds of 15MB and .85 upload :-) Suspect when the main problem is sorted mine will go back to the usual slow sh#t!

Anonymous said...

My connection (Durlston Road, Swanage) has been terrible since Friday pm, but seems to be back up to reasonable speed on Sunday evening.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like BT has the gremlins again.

When I am in Swanage I rely on my dongle which works very well. How are others finding their mobile broadband?

IMHO, the economic future of Swanage depends more upon a secure, reliable and fast broadband infrastructure than on new railways, hospitals or schools (though these are fine things, too.) The only viable economic future for Swanage beyind tourism and care for the elderly is to attract hi-tech and telecommuting jobs, which absolutely count on fast, reliable broadband.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't the forthcoming re-signalling of the railway be a good time to drag a fibre optic cable down the railway line, so that Swanage can have super-fast broadband? Cheaper than digging up the roads...

Anonymous said...

my broadband is perfect this morning, a far cry from last Monday!

Richard Jeffery said...

Much the same - last week had me tearing my hair out, this morning back to usual speeds. tried everything from swapping out router to re-installing browsers and clearing cache, etc. Same mismatch between test speed and actual experience.
But sorted now. Anyone been working on the exchange?

Anonymous said...

Useless connection - from Friday night (20th) to Sunday afternoon (22nd).

It was taking either 5 or 10 minutes to change a page on some sites or I could not get an internet connection at all for more than a few seconds. No apparent match between test speed and experience.

I assumed I had a major problem with my computer and was going to take it to be fixed today, but things seem normal again.

Anonymous said...

Everything back to normal on Monday, but no information as to why. It was most certainly a logjamb at Locano Road but we will never have that confirmed !!
Good idea to run in fibre optics down the track to give a more viable business access but difficult to see where support would come from.

Anonymous said...

I had similar problems last week and over the weekend - first only with uploading and then browsing too. BT refused to look at upload speeds and said there was no problem. All they suggested was I get a new router from them in return for signing up for another 18 months.

Working from home, broadband is the only thing that makes Swanage viable for us, but couldn't do my job last week.

I'd support any plans to bring superfast broadband here.

Anonymous said...

I seem to recall that there is something about bringing fibre here as part of the preparations for the Olympics. There is something on www.dorsetforyou.com where you can register support. It is aimed at businesses if memory serves. Its part of showing the long term benefits of throwing money at the running jumping and standing still race nonsense.

Anonymous said...

survey closed

Anonymous said...

I cannot imagine how Swanage will feature in anything to do with the Olympics, except some B&B bookings for those attending the Olympics. What justification would there be to spend to upgrade the broadband to Swanage, unless it is part of the general upgrade to Weymouth?

Fast, reliable and consistent broadband is the future for Swanage. As more and more small companies and home based entrepreneurs work via telecommuting, attractive places like Swanage will be sought out as people flee London and other expensive areas for a quiet, yet close to amenities, location. If one or two anchor businesses relocate their broadband-centred business here, the word will soon go out that Swanage is the place to be. But this cannot happen if broadband is unreliable, and business stops during slowdowns, such as 12.20 am experienced.

Anonymous said...

"hat justification would there be to spend to upgrade the broadband to Swanage, unless it is part of the general upgrade to Weymouth?"

That was the idea. I am sorry, it seemed such an obvious thing that I did not mention it.

Anonymous said...

This is interesting. What businesses need download speeds of more than "up to 20mb" or about 6 to 8 in practice? Upload speeds are a different matter. ADSL is always going to be mediocre as it is asymmetrical. For the same both ways you need sdsl and that is a lot dearer. If you rely on receiving orders through the web its reliability that matters rather than speed surely. Interesting that TalkTalk customers did not seem to have had the problems the rest of us had. I always thought they were a cheap and cheerful service prone to problems. Maybe not.

Anonymous said...

You're right, reliable broadband is more important than superfast speed, but we seem to be at the mercy of BT. A new company offering a fibre-optic connection seems a better alternative. Or how about free wi-fi covering the town? Could caravan park money go on that?

Anonymous said...

but the wifi still has to be plugged into the BT line whether offered by talk talk or whoever

Anonymous said...

And me, the IT experts (my children) have deleted what they can off the hard-drive to try to speed things up. I haven't been able to get into Google or emails and then the computer seems to doze off to sleep and then even when online wont send messages or find websites !!!!

Thankfully I only called the kids and have not paid a fortune to sort it out, it seems to be a general problem, and not necessarily something wrong with my computer. I'll take heart that I am not alone.

What attack has YouTube had ??

Anonymous said...

Cable = Virgin for most people. ISP review lists four others but there is little or no user feedback on them. Virgin gets very average ratings. Does anyone reading this in the outside world have any thoughts on their reliability?

It is very interesting to see that the only adsl isp to be in both the top ten of user ratings and the largest ten for subscribers is Zen. The firms, like BT, whose strategy is to use their customers money to pay for adverts to get more customers (what they call a ponzi scheme in finance) are not well rated.

Anonymous said...

Some towns have set up free wifi on a grid using units on lampposts connected to a fast server in one location. The whole centre of Norwich became a wifi zone and it cost about a million. Covering Swindon is costing about the same. Swanage could do it for less? The town could pay for it outright and have free access for residents and local businesses

Anonymous said...

Apparently there are some real issues with some new legislation that make town-wide free wifi almost impossible or unaffordable. All ISPs, businesses or public places with wifi, and internet cafes, have to retain all transmitted data for a number of years. This is to allow police to track down criminals and fraudsters who use those providers. Swindon will have to maintain banks and banks of servers just to retain this data (if you think anything you do on the internet disappears in the ether when you log off, you are grossly mistaken). The cost of retaining data makes it impractical for some town to afford to offer 'free' wifi.

I must correct a point someone made - the money raised by STC from the sale of SBV cannot be spent in this way, but has to be invested to provide an ongoing income to the town in perpetuity.

Anonymous said...

Why wifi? What would be the advantage? If every family expects to sit down and watch video on demand the bandwidth would have to be enormous. Most people have copper into their houses and you can broadcast basic internet access throughout your house for for a few pounds a week. Similarly lots of people now pay less than £10 a month for all the mobile use they need. Blanket wifi would only be an advantage to mobile device users?

swabage resident said...

Broadband is down again in southern swanage! At this rate we should start digging our own trench for a fiber connection to bournemouth !

Anonymous said...

perhaps its half term and more people are online using the internet? should be okay again when they go back to school