Is this possible?

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Is this possible?

matthewmw64

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#23117 18-Jun-2008 20:21

Hi all,

I'm currently on a capped 256kb/s Slingshot plan, and I;m hoping to maybe get it uncapped. Is there some sort fo test where they can test our phone lines (which are apparently kind if old) to see what kind of speeds we could potentially get?

Thanks,
Matthew

tonyhughes

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#139052 18-Jun-2008 20:30

No test that I know of - you just need to "suck it and see" as they say...

xpd

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#139067 18-Jun-2008 21:21

Some routers (Dynalinks I think) do show an "Attainable line rate" as well as the actual connection/data rate - how accurate this is though, I have no idea.

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tonyhughes

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#139077 18-Jun-2008 22:22

xpd: Some routers (Dynalinks I think) do show an "Attainable line rate" as well as the actual connection/data rate - how accurate this is though, I have no idea.

Not accurate at all.

I can get some impressive connect speeds that have almost no relation to my throughput.

matthewmw64

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#139087 18-Jun-2008 23:00

Are you 100% sure of that though? I jsut checked my router and it said I could get up to 4mb/s.

mushion22

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#139099 19-Jun-2008 05:41

It depends what you mean by "speed."

Your modem should tell you your ADSL sync rate (or Slingshot may be able to make an estimate based on the distance to exchange), which is the maximum attainable rate between your modem and your exchange.

However, many factors such as congestion, PC speed, contention at the exchange or for international bandwidth, and so on, will affect the actual throughput you will get from any particular website at any particular point in time.

You should at least be able to get average speeds much higher than 256k if your sync rate is 4mbps.

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#139271 19-Jun-2008 23:07

Go to http://speedtest.slingshot.co.nz

I cant remember if your modem's connection speed is capped at 256k or if you are throttled to 256 at their office, but i do know i still have full speed access to this speedtest even when i am throttled to 64k.

If your modem isnt capped because of your plan, this will test your line speed between you and slingshot.
I am on a FS/FS plan and its reporting 5,505/645k.

Again I say this may not work as slingshot may have you on a 256k profile which has a speed limit that telecom may be imposing rather than slingshot so the speed test may not give a full speed result.

Your modem may also give you an estimated speed - check its instruction manual on getting into its configuration website. Look for something like http://10.1.1.1 or http://10.0.0.1 or http://192.168.0.1 or similar addresses in the instruction manual. It will also give you the default password to enter. Somewhere in there will be an estimated speed. If it is 256k downstream or close to 256, then we can be fairly certain that the limt is imposed by telecom and speedtest.slingshot.co.nz will not be accurate.

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#139276 19-Jun-2008 23:59

The RTA1025W (wireless modem that Slingshot offers) defaults to http://admin:admin@192.168.1.1/

rm *

matthewmw64

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#139285 20-Jun-2008 07:11

Well, the speedtest gave me:

Download Speed: 263 kbps (32.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 107 kbps (13.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 104 ms

But thats because its 7:10am, so it's a little biased.

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#139299 20-Jun-2008 08:27

matthewmw64: Well, the speedtest gave me:

Download Speed: 263 kbps (32.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 107 kbps (13.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 104 ms

But thats because its 7:10am, so it's a little biased.

That looks capped to me (slightly generous speed cap by a few kbps), either that, or there is a possum chewing your phone line.

mushion22

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#139323 20-Jun-2008 10:19

You can always just change back to the 256k plan if FS doesnt perform well enough for you. Althought you'll have to settle for one of the new plans if you are changing from one of the old ones.

matthewmw64

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#139416 20-Jun-2008 16:26

I just tested it again now:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 306 kbps (38.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 131 kbps (16.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 112 ms

Wtf?

I;m definitely on the 256/182 capped plan, so how am I getting such a high speed?

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#139424 20-Jun-2008 16:55

Because 256/128 actually syncs at 320/160. The reason these margins are put in is because of overheads in the ATM transfer mode.
If you're getting more than 256k its probably because your port isn't configured properly.

And yes there is a tool that will give a reasonable estimate, it's called SPM and Slingshot's Level 2 support should have access to it.

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