Low Broadband speed

[ChipGuild]

We are a small adult education centre.

In February 2007, when our BT broadband connection was new, the reported downstream rate was 6112 Kbps and the upstream rate 448 Kbps, with noise margins of 16 db down and 19 db up. The service was excellent.

It has now deteriorated badly.

We now have an indicated downstream speed of only 2864 Kbps, but the same upstream speed 448 Kbps.  The noise margins are 13 db down and 22 db up.

The BT speedchecker suggests that that our line should afford 11 Mbps.

My own home broadband is on the same exchange, but perhaps a little further away, and reports 11440, so it can be achieved.

The actual download speed from known good servers, like Apple, is very very slow, so much so we often have to abandon updates to Windows 7 because the download simply stalls, with no progress.

I'd appreciate any help or advice.

[JohnE]

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[MHC · Accepted solution]

Spped has dropped and so has your noise margin - tends to suggest that there is an increase in te ambient noise and BT cannot do much to sort that out - the noise is everywhere.

With a 13 dB margin, I would suggest that there could be something causing high levels of noise for a period of time and then disappearing,  returning later, and so on.

Have you had any new electrical equipment installed?   Fridge?  Phone system?  UPS?    has a neignbouring building had anything similar?   

You need to track your SNR and Sync speed figures for a few days.

Get a copy of Router Stats Lite from:   http://www.vwlowen.co.uk/internet/files.htm

It is free and safe to use.      Set it running with 1 minutes updates and 1440 samples per page  (1 day) and leave it running until Monday ...  each day it will have stored a new graph - or you can grab the latest,   use Photobucket or similar to host teh images and put a link here - add each day as it progresses.   Those graphs will help to understand what is happening.

This is what my connection SNR was like back in Dec '10. 

The Green is upstream SNR and Blue the Downstream SNR - notice how that varies continually and during a day there is a normal variation cycle.