My speeds are great about 3000 down and 160 up....BUT my downloads are sloww at only about 12 Kb/S MAX!!! Please HELP

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › My speeds are great about 3000 down and 160 up....BUT my downloads are sloww at only about 12 Kb/S MAX!!! Please HELP

designwebsite

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#15681 3-Sep-2007 10:47

MY connection speeds are pretty decent at about 3000 DOWN I am on TELECOM golarge. My p2p downloads only ever go at 7Kb/s and Htpp downloads at about 18 Kb/s. This is really annoying and my speed test results constantly return high results

Can someone please help me with this, because when i ask my friends they always say they get their downloads at like 200Kb/s, let alone me not even getting 20kb/s on a normal http download.!!!!

[EDIT (RC): We call companys be their name here.]

freitasm

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#85051 3-Sep-2007 11:02

There were lots of discussions about this around here... And lots of suggestions. Perhaps you could go through some old threads, but if IIRC there was something about correctly forwarding port, checking firewall, etc. If none of this works, then perhaps change ISPs, since GoLarge is a plan with some limitations (are they still in place)?

Also, how well seeded are the files you want? How many downloads are availables?

Upload speeds also influence in downloads. Are you making your files available too (there's a download/upload ration in some programs)?

Oblivian

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#85144 3-Sep-2007 19:41

Correct. Go large is crippled :)

Ask them to do something and you will be pointed in the direction of their 10gb plans I'm afraid.

Get 'WinMTR' and do some tests between national and international. I get 60% loss on international links. There's no real way around it I'm afraid.

However I'm on go large and manage 20-70K normal, 120K on a good day.

nexttothemoon

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#85406 5-Sep-2007 09:25

Having only had a broadband connection for basically just over a week I'm not a "pro" at this yet... but I do see a LOT of variability in download speeds. I've downloaded files at 300+kBps and also at the other end of the spectrum at dial up speeds as well (<2 kBps). There is huge variability depending on what settings you use in whatever program you use. I assume you've followed all the tips such as port forwarding, turning encryption settings on and playing around with upload /download speed limits as they all do make a difference in speeds you can obtain. When "torrenting"... upload speeds are crucial as you need to be able to "give to get back" so play around with the upload and download speed settings and see if that makes any difference. Also you may want to try downloading off Usenet as an alternative as that's generally more consistent and reliable than BT.

I don't think I'd believe everyone who says they always download at 200+ kBps especially using BT. Those are ideal speeds and I guarantee there are many,many files that would download much slower for them... especially files in BT that have a very low seed/leech ratio.

Here are a couple links that might be useful if you haven't tried "everything" yet to try and increase your speeds. I'm sure you've tried a lot by now but there still may be something that you can tweak to get things moving faster:

http://torrentfreak.com/20-bittorrent-tips-and-tricks-070903/
http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=15992#p258234

Good luck to you and just know that you aren't the only one with slow download speeds.. it's a very common complaint all across the net in NZ, Aussie, USA etc. Plain old web surfing is fast but downloading files using various P2P services has hugely random results for many users.

freitasm

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#85407 5-Sep-2007 09:29

nexttothemoon: Having only had a broadband connection for basically just over a week I'm not a "pro" at this yet... but I do see a LOT of variability in download speeds. I've downloaded files at 300+kBps and also at the other end of the spectrum at dial up speeds as well (<2 kBps). There is huge variability depending on what settings you use in whatever program you use.

This is partially true, and only for P2P applications. Remember the Internet is not only P2P - and you might see different speeds not only because of your own configuration but based in other factors.

For example an Australian news site might be slow to respond because of the number of people reading about the Croc Hunter death. Or Microsoft's servers may be slow to respond because of the number of people downloading a 2 GB new version of Windows Vista. Or a submarie cable is broken and all your traffic is coming through a slower pipe somewhere else.

It's really hard to anyone to get consistent speeds. People tend to (wrongly) think they would always get the maximum speed, every day. It simply doesn't work like that.

nexttothemoon

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#85999 9-Sep-2007 20:29

I've noticed enormous differences in speeds depending on time of day as well... sometimes in the 12 pm-7pm period I get almost non-existent speeds downloading BT's and then while leaving the connection downloading overnight I get good to excellent speeds. I wake up in the morning and GB's of data have been downloaded overnight. I'm pretty certain shaping/throttling of BT traffic is used on my connection (even though it's not stated that there is) but I guess as long as the overnight traffic is unthrottled that's something we have to live with and just accept. We just basically download more data and P2P in the unthrottled time periods and surf and do normal http stuff in the "data-shaped" time periods.

I'm not sure how common data shaping is on overseas ADSL/Cable connections such as in USA or Australia etc but I'm sure we get the short end of the stick here in NZ as usual.

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#86000 9-Sep-2007 20:35

nexttothemoon:
I'm not sure how common data shaping is on overseas ADSL/Cable connections such as in USA or Australia etc but I'm sure we get the short end of the stick here in NZ as usual.

I suggest you read up about American ISP's, specifically comcast (others are just as guilty too) and their practices on dropping customers, data shaping and net neutrally.

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nexttothemoon

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#86003 9-Sep-2007 20:53

Fair enough then... as long as we aren't the only ones getting our connections neutered then I guess we are almost all in the same boat so to speak.

Are there any ISP's in NZ that generally are known to have unshaped P2P traffic day and night?

Saying all that though... I'm finding it quite easy to burn through 20 GB of data in a couple weeks even with a throttled connection so I must be getting "good enough" speeds to get my data allowance so I can't really complain a lot. :)

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#86005 9-Sep-2007 21:02

Non Go large type plans tend to get better performance.

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kaiwai

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#86033 10-Sep-2007 05:20

designwebsite: MY connection speeds are pretty decent at about 3000 DOWN I am on TELECOM golarge. My p2p downloads only ever go at 7Kb/s and Htpp downloads at about 18 Kb/s. This is really annoying and my speed test results constantly return high results

Can someone please help me with this, because when i ask my friends they always say they get their downloads at like 200Kb/s, let alone me not even getting 20kb/s on a normal http download.!!!!

[EDIT (RC): We call companys be their name here.]

The party line I received last night from Telecom is that there are still bugs in the 'traffic shaping software. Having been in the situation as the person on the help desk, I bit my tongue (although there was much frustration).

If it keeps up, I'll be looking for a new ISP; I'm personally sick and tired of seeing Telecom use software to make up for the lack of re-investment into their infrastructure. Its getting almost as bad as Ihug 6 years ago with their transparent proxy which caused more problems than it solved.

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#86040 10-Sep-2007 08:57

Remember that Go Large type plans are offered by multiple providers, all of which are suffering in terms of performance. Xtra Go Large is discussed here.

They gave upto 3 months credit for the internet access on Go Large, and also gave you the option of disconnecting free of charge (even if under a contract). You can still change plans free of charge too, however given that the Go Large plan is no longer offered - you'd have a hard time switching back if you wanted to.

I would give a plan change a go, and see how it goes - its probably going to give you a big boost in performance.

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zimbokiwi

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#86045 10-Sep-2007 10:09

One thing which has already been discussed here is the number of users sharing vs the speeds you receive...

I like to think of it as surfing the torrent wave......

If for example, your favourite "royalty free documentary on prisons" is played in some where like the states on a Tuesday, and made available on the Wednesday, it will come down at great speeds based on the fact that 35000 people are keen to get their hands on it too, and also have to make it available(share) at the same time - retype in that same docco request a week later - and 34850 of those people have watched the file and deleted it/moved it to storage.

Your best bet is always do the Port forwarding etc as mentioned in the threads above - and ride that wave!!

kaiwai

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Master Geek

#86078 10-Sep-2007 13:50

cokemaster: Remember that Go Large type plans are offered by multiple providers, all of which are suffering in terms of performance. Xtra Go Large is discussed here.

They gave upto 3 months credit for the internet access on Go Large, and also gave you the option of disconnecting free of charge (even if under a contract). You can still change plans free of charge too, however given that the Go Large plan is no longer offered - you'd have a hard time switching back if you wanted to.

I would give a plan change a go, and see how it goes - its probably going to give you a big boost in performance.

I assumed that the refund was a 'hey, we've stuffed up, this is to say sorry and now everything is better' - that they had actually corrected the issues with their 'traffic shaping software'.

I'm going to look into Orcom today and see what the situation is for a transfer; I'm going to tighten the screws on Telecom; if this was a small mum and dad ISP with 3 staff members, and struggling, I'd cut them some slack - but it isn't the case.

Edit: I did an interesting experiment. I removed all my extensions so that there is just one line that goes out of the house; and my connection speed went up to 5700kbps; and the downloads improved; its quite strange - oh well, it has improved things a bit.

MikeGayner

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#86543 13-Sep-2007 12:58

So after complaining about how bad your ISP is, you decided to do the most basic of test, and found the issue is at your end? I can see why helpdesk staff get so disillusioned....