I recently switched ISPs.  The one I came from was nice and fast and I had no problems with download speeds.  Both ISPs offer the same product (resellers) promising "full speed".  I was assured that I would not notice any difference in speed when switching.

My speed now is just weird.  It seems to flick between good and really bad every few seconds.  Literally. It's like my downloads climb to the speed I'd expect (500-700K) for a few seconds, can't maintain this and drops to almost nothing.  Then repeats every few seconds.  Have a look at these graphs to see what I mean:








Every download is like this.  Climb, drop, climb, drop, climb, drop.  This tells me that there is something wrong, perhaps with the line.  I'm confident it wasn't like this prior to changing ISPs. I know that download speeds fluctuating a little is completely normal, but this is something else, no?   So not only are my average speeds well below what's expected from these fast servers in general,  they follow this weird pattern.  My guess is the speed that it climbs is what others download at for the duration of the download, but for some reason by line can't handle it.

I've had lots of communication with my ISP about the issue over the past month or so and we've done lots of things:  isolation tests, swapping out router, switching interleaving on and off, ping tests, traceroutes etc.   I accept it may not necessarily be the fault of the ISP.  My phone exchange was upgraded around the same time that I switched, but I'd hope they would have taken that into account, too.

For me the crap hit the fan when showing my ISP the above graph and speeds and receiving this response:

"I called up our wholesaler and explained the results to them etc. They're saying this is exactly how TCP/IP traffic will always run. An example they've given me is a thing called 'the hub' which is run at the Christchurch university. They run bandwidth monitors and traffic people download locally and domestically always ranges from low to high throughput. There's honestly nothing they can do.

Sending a chorus tech they check the physical line and card/port in phone exchange; which are running fine (from their line analyzers, dsl sync speeds and the line is stable with no transmission errors). They've also checked the in depth analyzer tests and they also show no transmission or line errors. Our wholesaler can only reset ports, do analyzers etc remotely to resolve the different faults that can arise. Other than that > data just gets sent through their equipment/ down their lines. We've run tests from our end and there is no given throughput issues.

Furthermore, I have discussed this with 3 other colleagues of mine and they also mention this traffic behaviour being common. Given in all these details, there is nothing else that I personally will be able to do / our wholesaler would be able to do re: faults."

Now I'm a bit flabberghasted by this.  Slower download speeds and they can't seem to maintain any decent speed is now "common" and expected.  But it wasn't like this with my previous ISP, and I've heard no one else complain about experiencing the same.  Am I just supposed to accept this now?  I'm now in a 12 month contract and have to put up with slower download speeds and difficulty streaming because I switched ISPs?

I intentionally haven't named the ISP here (though you could find it by viewing my previous posts) because this post isn't about smearing the ISP.  Apparently they rate well usually.  I'm just really confused about where to go from here.  Is what I'm experiencing "common" and expected?  Am I making a fuss about nothing?  Would you accept this situation?