PJCNET

Introduction:

QUESTION: Why is it that most Internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK tell you that you can’t trust the most popular and top on-line Internet speed testers available the Internet today including speedtest.net and many others?

ANSWER: Most Internet service providers in the UK want to hide the true speed of the Internet service they’re providing, while customer’s are being lied to about the actual speed they’re supposed to be getting.

I used Sky Broadband for over 6 months and during this time my speed was a constant 14.5Mb/S 24 hours a day, 7 days a week every single time I tested my speed using speedtest.net and this was what my BT phone line was truly capable of. These conclusive results surely prove that the speed test results are pretty accurate, but unlike other ISPs, Sky broadband don’t go on about why you shouldn’t trust such speed testers because unlike most ISPs they actually provide the service they advertise. BT in fact try to deceive the customer one stage further in my opinion by repeatedly insisting that only their speed tester at http://speedtester.bt.com gives an accurate Internet speed test result, the problem is their speed tester only tests the speed of the line from your PC to the local BT telephone exchange and it doesn’t take into account various other factors that usually slow down your connection because they’re providing a poor quality of service (please read the paragraphs below for more details), yet BT still usually continue to insist that this is a true Internet speed test, especially when customers complain about slow speeds, but this is a wicked lie! I’ve noticed that this official BT speed tester has now been renamed to a “broadband performance tester”, probably so that they’re covered legally if the sh*t did hit the fan.

Why Is My Real Internet Speed Slower Than The Speed My Phone Line Is Capable Of?

Internet service providers keep their costs down in various ways, but unfortunately this often means customers receive a much poorer Internet service than they expect or is advertised, especially when purchasing the top package which is supposed to give customers the fastest Internet speed your line is capable of. Even though customer’s Internet connections are often regularly slowed down, sometimes dramatically, most customers remain oblivious to the issue as they’ve never known any better. I will now explain why and what the Internet Service Providers do to reduce your speed.

The most common reason why your Internet connection is slowed down dramatically below what your phone line is capable of is due to the contention ratio of your connection. The contention ratio is the number of people that are sharing each direct connection to the Internet. Many home orientated ISPs have around 50 people sharing one direct connection which is a contention ratio of 50:1, but some ISPs have better contention ratios than others, yet this extremely important speed factor is often hidden from the customer. If too many people are using the Internet at once on a contention ratio, you will notice a slow down. I’ve known people for-instance purchase up to a 20Mb/S connection and their line may connect at say 14.5Mb/S, but during peak usage times when more people are using the Internet, speeds can slow down to less than 2Mb/S intermittently which in my opinion is dire and yet the ISP will continue to advertise super fast speeds! To test if your ISP performs well, try running a speed test at various times of the day and week, if you get much faster speeds at quieter times (E.g. at 2am in the morning), then your connection is being slowed down due to too many people overloading the system who are sharing your direct connection to the Internet. Sky Broadband have such a good contention ratio that it never slows down no matter what, but they’re the only ISP I’ve ever used that doesn’t. When I was a customer with BT Total Broadband, my direct connection was particularly overloaded due to the contention ratio for a good few months and during peak times I was slowed down to a terrible 0.5Mb/S or less while my speed was always perfectly fine during the early hours of the morning, yet BT wrongfully continued to insist that there was absolutely nothing wrong by always insisting that I used their official line test stating that it was an Internet speed test (please see the paragraph above for more details). When I kept complaining advising them of their error, BT even tried to insist that my PC was at fault when I’m a PC expert and in fact I’ve even tried 2 different PCs, then they advised me to pay through the nose for a BT engineer to personally home visit my PC when I know for a fact it wasn’t my PC at fault, it was because BT were heavily overloaded with too many customers sharing too few direct connections to the Internet! During this time, I even noticed that BT slyly tried to quick fix the problem by throttling (slowing down) peer2peer traffic more than ever and also the throttling times were extended, yet they still refused to admit there was a problem in the first place (please see the paragraph below for more details about throttling). Anyone without lots of PC knowledge in this situation would have been scammed out of a lot of money from BT and still would have been left with the same slow and overloaded connection until BT finally decided under lots of pressure from complaints to spend some money by increasing the direct connections to the Internet. It took months of fighting and complaining to get the problem finally at least improved, yet there was no apology from BT and they never admitted the real problem.

The other common reason for your Internet connection to be slowed down below what your phone line is capable of is throttling, also known as traffic shaping, this is basically slowing down certain traffic or even certain customers traffic at certain times, mainly peak usage times. Usually ISPs that have problems due to high contention ratios are the same ISPs that enforce nasty throttling policies to help prevent the lines becoming too overloaded during peak times. Many ISPs in the UK used to hide the fact that they slowed down people’s connections in this way, but more recently each ISP’s individual policy is usually found in their Fair Usage Policy (FUP) which is normally part of their Terms and Conditions. Most throttling occurs during peak times, but poorer ISPs may even start crossing the threshold to throttling outside these times too. Sometimes ISPs will throttle certain traffic that’s heavy on resources, mainly peer2peer file sharing (E.g. torrent downloading) and they sometimes use the excuse that this traffic isn’t high priority traffic. Many ISPs will advertise that their service is “unlimited”, yet they punish heavy users by dramatically slowing down their connection which will obviously restrict their downloading or in some worst cases they even ban customers altogether, they usually use the excuse that they need to do this so that the heaviest of users don’t adversely affect the many. Sky Broadband however promise that their top package (up to 20Mb/S) is “truly unlimited” and they also promise never to throttle or slow anyone for downloading too much no matter what time of the day it is. I downloaded masses of data 24/7 for 6 months and my connection was never ever compromised and neither was my friend’s as Sky always ensure that their network is able to cope with the high demands! If Sky Broadband manage to achieve this while still charging a very competitive rate for truly unlimited broadband, why can’t more ISPs do it?

Another slightly less obvious way of slowing down your Internet connection is by knocking a few notches off the top speed your line is really capable of. For instance, I’ve known different ISPs have slightly different connection speeds on the same line. When I was with BT Total Broadband, they seemed to cut 1Mb/S off my connection speed compared to when I was with other ISPs using the same line and the same can be said of a friend’s connection.

How The Distance From the Local Telephone Exchange Effects Your Speed (not cabled services):

Excluding Virgin Media who advertise up to a 50Mb/S service using fibre optic cable, most UK ISPs top package is now advertised as up to 24Mb/S (using ADSL2+) at the time of writing which has been increased from up to 8Mb/S (on ADSL Max), yet in reality barely anyone’s phone line can genuinely achieve speeds greater than 20Mb/S while most don’t get anywhere near this. To get a 20Mb/S connection speed you’d have to literally be in a tiny minority of people who live approx less than half a mile from their local telephone exchange with an excellent quality connection, but quite often this only includes a few local businesses. Unfortunately to take full advantage of the extra speed available in the increase from up to 8Mb/S to 24Mb/S, you need to live close to the local telephone exchange as the further you live away, the less improvement you’ll notice from upgrading. In other words, people who already had slow connections won’t see much or any improvement from the newer so called faster technology. A fast connection on an up to 24Mb/S service would be a connection of 15Mb/S (just under 1 mile from the local telephone exchange), but many customers get much less as the maximum connection speed dramatically drops much quicker as the distance from the exchange becomes further away, for example, a friend of mine can’t get speeds greater than 4Mb/S no matter which ISP he chooses and Virgin Media cable isn’t available in his area either. My friend is unlucky to live just over 2 miles away from his local telephone exchange and unfortunately masses of people have to suffer slow speeds such as this or even slower still, while their ISP still charges them the same for an up to 24Mb/S connection. Sky Broadband provide the same service as most other ISPs who advertise up to 24Mb/S speeds, but they only advertise up to 20Mb/S as they see this as much fairer when barely anyone can really connect faster than this. Please remember that even if you manage to get a fast connection, it doesn’t mean this is the speed you’re really getting and only Sky Broadband has proved to me that they can achieve what genuinely advertised (excluding the Sky Connect service as this isn’t really using the Sky network). Virgin Media customers incidentally do usually manage to connect to the Internet at closer to the advertised maximum speeds as they have more modern fibre optic cabling and they currently offer the fastest up to 50Mb/S connection which will be increased to 100Mb/S over the next 2 years at the time of writing, but their service certainly slows down considerably at peak times so this isn’t usually what you’re actually getting, although they’re still considered reasonable compared to most.

Ways To Improve and Troubleshoot The Speed Of Your Existing Internet Connection:

Many PC’s aren’t configured to allow for the fastest connection to the Internet possible, mainly if you’re using Windows XP or 2000 and this can be optimised and often improved, so before complaining to your ISP about slow speeds, please check this out first. Virgin Media (cabled service) have their own utility for optimising your connection at http://www.virginmedia.com/speedbooster/ for Windows XP or Windows 2000 users only, but Virgin state that if you’re using Windows Vista or Windows 7, that Windows optimises your connection automatically. If you’re using Windows 2000 or XP or even Windows Vista on any other ISP other than Virgin Media (cabled service), please download the Ashampoo® Internet Accelerator 2 totally free, when you install and run this utility, it’s use is fairly self explanatory. The utility really is totally free, but you need to register it for free after using it for up to 10 days. Windows 7 optimises your connection efficiently enough without the need for this utility. At worst this utility won’t increase your speed at all, but it shouldn’t make it any worse. Another very similar totally free speed optimisation utility that some people might prefer for Windows Vista or below is the Speed Guide TCP Optimizer, there are also various other tools on this website that should only be used by PC experts (use at your own risk).

There are various other ways to attempt to squeeze a bit more speed out of your existing Internet connection (excluding Virgin cabled services in some cases), although they’re not guaranteed to help:

Firstly ensure you have the smallest amount of cable as possible and try to plug your Router into the master socket (Virgin cable is installed by an engineer and it doesn’t apply). If you’re not using extra telephone extensions, disconnect them if possible as they can slow down your connection. If you must have to use an extension wire, ensure it’s of good quality and try to avoid running it around places where it could possibly pick-up interference as much as possible, E.g. near electrical cables. It’s better to plug your broadband filter and router as close to the master socket as possible and if necessary run a long network cable (RJ45 cable) from the router to your PC(s) instead of having an extension cable running to the router away from the master socket. Often ISPs will tell you to unscrew and remove the plate on the wall of your master phone socket so you can plug your router directly into the test socket directly behind it, this bypasses all internal telephone extensions.

Another method that can increase your Internet speed is to disconnect the bell wire from your telephone socket (not Virgin cabled services) using a BT I plate as I will explain later, BUT PLEASE DON’T TAMPER WITH YOUR PHONE SOCKET! This wire was used to make old fashioned telephones ring, but is now obsolete. It can however cause interference and by disconnecting it some people can connect as much as 1Mb/S faster, while others don’t notice any difference. You’re not allowed to tamper with the phone socket yourself except by removing and unscrewing the front plate as beyond this the equipment and line is legally owned by BT wholesale and you could end up paying a fine for breaking this rule. Instead you will need to buy a BT I plate (also known as the BT Broadband Accelerator although in my opinion it’s not appropriately named as it doesn’t always make a difference). The BT I plate disconnects the bell wire by simply replacing the front plate over the master phone socket and can be installed very easily in just a few minutes at the cost of just under £10 or less if you shop around. Please ensure you have a compatible phone socket as pictured and on BT’s official website.

Please remember that if you improve the quality of your phone connection to the telephone exchange, it can take a few days (around 4) for the system to notice and increase your connection speed appropriately (not including Virgin cabled services).

Advanced PC tweaks For PC experts only, please use at your own risk:

Another lesser known PC tweak to increase your Internet speed is to turn of QOS (Quality of Service) on Windows XP. QOS gives a guaranteed percentage of your Internet bandwidth (defaulted to 20%) to high priority traffic that requests it, like Internet streaming videos, but sometimes too much bandwidth is allowed that can be inefficient use of your broadband connection. With high speed broadband Internet connections, QOS isn’t usually required and many applications no longer even support it. Some people however wrongfully claim that this tweak will increase your Internet speed by 20%, but this isn’t the case as it’s not regularly used. For help implementing the QOS tweak and also for details of even more advanced tweaks, please see http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=158, but use at your own risk. These advanced tweaks can be used in theory with Virgin cabled services, also at your own risk.

Conclusion:

When an ISP tells you not to trust the top speed testers on the Internet today, don’t listen to them and if you’re using BT, don’t listen to them when they tell you your connection is much faster than it really is by using their line tester at http://speedtester.bt.com! It’s surely time to introduce more measures to force ISPs to be upfront about their true Internet speeds so customers can make more informed choices about which ISP to choose, also “unlimited” should certainly mean unlimited, otherwise the ISP should be forced to print the real limits without using the word “unlimited”.

Legal Disclaimer:

This article includes my personal opinion and shouldn’t be taken as definite fact, we also cannot be held responsible for any misinformation or mistakes in the article. This article and any comments are without prejudice to Sky Broadband, BT, BT Total Broadband, Virgin, Virgin Media or any other ISP or organisation. It is the object of this article to do no harm. If any organisation or persons would like to respond to this article in a reasonable manner, I will be happy to publish it. The 3rd party software mentioned or any other techniques the might increase your Internet speeds in the article are only to be used entirely at your own risk, PJCNET cannot be held liable for any problems that arise from following this advise, if you’re unsure, I leave it or seek help from a reputable PC expert. We cannot guarantee that following these instructions will increase your Internet speed. This article, any comments and all other articles on this website are covered by our full legal disclaimer.

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