Slingshot prioritizing speedtests + Peak time international congestion

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Slingshot prioritizing speedtests + Peak time international congestion

jords12

144 posts

Master Geek

#140898 24-Feb-2014 00:06

Anyone else suspect that SS is prioritizing speedtests during peak times so they don't look so bad?

A little background - I've got an issue right now where I can't stream Netflix on my PS3 (using unblock-us) from 5pm or so to 12pm or so. Works perfectly with 1080p Super HD if I stream during the day. Using the bandwidth monitor on my router, I can see that when I stream during the day, it consistently gets around 800-900 KB/s transferring (which is close to line speed for me, fairly long way from the exchange) - and I get the highest quality. When I stream during the peak periods, it transfers at 500KB/s for a few seconds, then drops down to nothing or close to it.

Thing is, even at the peak times when I do a speedtest.net check to San Francisco I get line speed (8-9 Mb/s), but if I do speedtests to less well known servers in the same place, I get around 1Mb/s. Which suggests that slingshot has put the main speedtest.net servers on a priority list somewhere.

It also seems that slingshot's prioritization might be per-connection - my usenet client (which is also connecting to servers in the bay area) always manages to pull line speed, even at peak times - it's just using 20 connections to do it. Shame that netflix doesn't use the same trick!

PeterReader

6019 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#993073 24-Feb-2014 00:06

Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post, so here is an automated reply with some important things to note regarding broadband speeds.

If you are posting regarding DSL speeds please check that

- you have reset your modem and router

- your PC (or other PCs in your LAN) is not downloading large files when you are testing

- you are not being throttled by your ISP due to going over the monthly cap

- your tests are always done on an ethernet connection to the router - do not use wireless for testing

- you read this topic and follow the instructions there.

Make sure you provide information for other users to help you. If you have not already done it, please EDIT your post and add this now:

- Your ISP and plan

- Type of connection (ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL)

- Your modem DSL stats (do not worry about posting Speedtest, we need sync rate, attenuation and noise margin)

- Your general location (or street)

- If you are rural or urban

- If you know your connection is to an exchange, cabinet or conklin

- If your connection is to a ULL or wholesale service

- If you have done an isolation test as per the link above

Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

I recommend you read these two blog posts:

- Is your premises phone wiring impacting your broadband performance? (very technical)

- Are you receiving a substandard ULL ADSL2+ connection from your ISP?

I am the Geekzone Robot and I am here to help. I am from the Internet. I do not interact. Do not expect other replies from me.

Salad

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#993377 24-Feb-2014 15:21

I like how their website says "network status OK" all the time, even in the middle of nationwide outages. Surely it can't be that hard to organize some low level IT grunt to change that on the website when there's an outage. It'd save more man hours in phone calls than it would take to update it.

When my internet is going slow one of the first things I do is to try speedtest.net to see if it's the line or the website or what. Even when it's so bad that I'm getting actual dialup speeds, Speedtest is always like 10mb/s. The max speed my line + wiring will allow. Does the same for local and California servers.

A while back there was problems where half the internet wasn't working for a heap of slingshot customers. I was one of them. It would take about 4 minutes to load the home page of trademe. Full speed from speedtest again. Friend of mine down the road had the same issue, too slow to load the youtube homepage, but he got more than I did from speedtest. Speedtest was the only website working reliably, and without other websites to distract us it just drew even more attention to it.

These few instances don't concretely prove anything I know. But it's something I've suspected for a while.

jords12

144 posts

Master Geek

#993401 24-Feb-2014 15:52

Interesting that I'm not alone with this. I really hate dealing with the ISPs here - spent the last year in SF, I had 100mbit up&down, no data cap, for $50 a month. Never had any downtime or slowness other than that caused by the server I was downloading from, and transferred 500gb a month or so with no issues.

Although, we are planning to bring in a 200mbit or so business fiber connection and share it with the apartments here, cut out the middleman.

Xeon

302 posts

Ultimate Geek

#993468 24-Feb-2014 17:26

I watch twitch.tv a lot during the evenings. Speedtests show a slowdown during the evening for me but the thing is if I was able to reach even half of those speedtest speeds I would be able to watch streams properly instead they buffer unless on mobile resolution. I do appear to get more jitter on the line during that period as well which I presume is somewhat related to the streams stopping to buffer.

RunningMan

8961 posts

Uber Geek

#993473 24-Feb-2014 17:35

Had a quick search but can't find the thread - I'm reasonably sure there was one or more others reporting similar slowdowns using the PS3/netflix/unblock-us combo with other ISPs.

Not sure what the actual issue was, but doubt it was the ISP prioritising speedtests conspiracy theory ;-)