Broadband Speed Improves on hub reset, then next day, very slow again?

[DrWazzock]

Why does my broadband speed drop to 0.2 mbs but when reset hub it "improves" to 5 mbs then after about a day its back down to 0.2 mbs. Its done this several times. Service provider is adamant there is no fault on the line and says its within my property.

What's going on?

 

[Dry Rot]

I have recently gone through three weeks of hell. Intermittent broadband and land line telephone. I changed from Plusnet to EE who promised fibre broadband. It took them nearly three weeks to discover that BT lied and fibre broadband is not possible at my address due to old copper wires.

The speed did go up and down. Sometimes this was due to heavy traffic on the line and at other times due to BT's incompetence. I had four engineers working on my line at various times.

I suggest you check your agreement and Oftcom's conditions of service. They have to provide what they say they will -- within reason. My threatening lawyers seems to have done the trick. EE tried to pass the blame onto BT, but I pointed out that I'd be suing EE as my contract is with them, then they should in turn sue BT. Still a slow speed, but at least it works now (well, sort of!)!

 

[DrWazzock]

An EE 4G hub beckons. I have just about lost patience with rural landlines and the disinterest of Openreach and my service provider.
Back down to 0.2 MB/s.
Could be a hub problem though. Its fairly new. Sent out to me by my service provider.
Do hubs revert to low speed in the event of an intermittent line fault??

 

[upnortheast]

Do hubs revert to low speed in the event of an intermittent line fault??

Think so.

 

[trevorrix]

Are you measuring your speed over wifi in your premises, or via a cable from a computer to your main router? If via wifi, try an ethernet cable. Use speedtest.net.

 

[bobk]

An EE 4G hub beckons. I have just about lost patience with rural landlines and the disinterest of Openreach and my service provider.
Back down to 0.2 MB/s.
Could be a hub problem though. Its fairly new. Sent out to me by my service provider.
Do hubs revert to low speed in the event of an intermittent line fault??

I'm sitting in rural france with my ee dongle performing well , listening to local radio ( uk local radio ) whilst watching the goings on at tff

 

[DrWazzock]

Well finally gave up on the landline broadband which kept switching down from 4 mb to 0.1 mb. Reset the hub, try your connections, change the filter, all a fudging waste of time.

Now on ee 4g hub. 20 Mb/s download speed. 100 GB data limit, and cheaper than the landline, so BT Openreach, I don't need your crappy poles and line any more. They are as dead as corduroy.

 

[farmerm]

Last time I was having that problem talktalk sent me a new router, don't know if they did anything else but things did improve for a year or so. The last few weeks mine is being a bit sh!tty again. Started with Wifi connections to the phones dropping out and not reconnecting without manual intervention. Internet connection (via wifi and Lan) also grinds to a crawl or drops out for some minutes several times a day. Think BT did some work on the neighbors connection a few weeks ago and in doing so have fudged up ours. Its at the level which is rather irritating but not quite bad enough that I can face going though the hoops of calling talktalk customer services and being told if they send an engineer and they cant diagnose a fault it will cost me £70.

 

[DrWazzock]

Last time I was having that problem talktalk sent me a new router, don't know if they did anything else but things did improve for a year or so. The last few weeks mine is being a bit sh!tty again. Started with Wifi connections to the phones dropping out and not reconnecting without manual intervention. Internet connection (via wifi and Lan) also grinds to a crawl or drops out for some minutes several times a day. Think BT did some work on the neighbors connection a few weeks ago and in doing so have fudged up ours. Its at the level which is rather irritating but not quite bad enough that I can face going though the hoops of calling talktalk customer services and being told if they send an engineer and they cant diagnose a fault it will cost me £70.

I have been round that loop so many times. I am not sure it the line as much as overload of the local exchange which hit slow lines more noticeably than fast ones.

So far so good with the ee 4g hub. Lowesf speed 10mb, highest 30 Mb, no dropouts. Landline mostly 0.2 mb , highest 4 mb and sometimes unavailable. Strangely the voice service on the landline is fine. Might keep the landline for phone only, delete the broadband and half the bill. Or maybe just cancel it. They are putting a new pole up today. Seems a bit pointless.

 

[farmerm]

I have been round that loop so many times. I am not sure it the line as much as overload of the local exchange which hit slow lines more noticeably than fast ones.

So far so good with the ee 4g hub. Lowesf speed 10mb, highest 30 Mb, no dropouts. Landline mostly 0.2 mb , highest 4 mb and sometimes unavailable. Strangely the voice service on the landline is fine. Might keep the landline for phone only, delete the broadband and half the bill. Or maybe just cancel it. They are putting a new pole up today. Seems a bit pointless.

4G Covers about 5% of this farm and that is only about 5% of the time and very rarely at the house. 3G covers about 30% of this farm but the house seems to act like a 3G killer where most of the time no 3G can be picked up within 50m of it! When the landline is behaving it will do about 4mb and even at that will it will happily stream iplayer. I do find it funny that folk are desperate for 30MB+ internet but then connect to it using a 3mb wifi connection . If the kids use is throttling my connection, which is rare, it is a good excuse to make them go do something else... and it they are uncooperative I simply unplug the wifi extender in my office

 

[Spear]

Should always remove the front plate from main bt socket and plug router into socket behind the plate and test line speeds if having drop outs. This disconnects rest of house phone wiring. If speeds still drop it’s either router or more likely BT’s problem.

 

[DrWazzock]

Should always remove the front plate from main bt socket and plug router into socket behind the plate and test line speeds if having drop outs. This disconnects rest of house phone wiring. If speeds still drop it’s either router or more likely BT’s problem.

If the speed was permanently low then I could understand it might be a hardware failure as you suggest. But hardware doesn't usually heal itself up so why would speed recover again on its own?
No, its either weather conditions affecting the line or traffic overload somewhere knocking me down to a very slow speed. In any case I have changed filters maybe 10 times, front plate changed by BT openreach recently and a new hub a few months ago all to no avail and usual bullsh!t from the call centre who do everything possible to avoid getting openreach to actually improve the infrastructure. Anyway done with all that and now on an excellent EE 4G hub and getting fast broadband with no hassle whatsoever despite wind and rain which would have crippled the landline by now. I am lucky enough to be in area covered by 4G as my neighbour managed to get a mast before the local luddites started objecting to everything.

This means I can now do my VAT return at this time on friday night without losing the connection and some of the records every few minutes.

In the words of Professor Stanley Unwin, "Deep Joy", well not quite but nearly.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Well finally gave up on the landline broadband which kept switching down from 4 mb to 0.1 mb. Reset the hub, try your connections, change the filter, all a fudging waste of time.

Now on ee 4g hub. 20 Mb/s download speed. 100 GB data limit, and cheaper than the landline, so BT Openreach, I don't need your crappy poles and line any more. They are as dead as corduroy.

I came to that conclusion about six years ago and did the same thing. Have only just recently gone back to a “landline” but this one is made of glass and skips merrily along.

Still keep the 4G connection live into the router, as a backup, and swapped from EE to Virgin after my last contract ended, coz they’re bit cheaper, just a bit slower.

 

[Kidds]

Crap internet is the thing that makes me most miserable.
I am grateful that’s all I have to complain about but it is just so miserable. Cloud based work stuff is going to end in an awful catastrophe one of these days.

 

[DrWazzock]

In my view there needs to be a push to at least make 4G available in all rural areas. The communications companies should be obliged to make this investment.

With the government wanting things done digitally and stored on the cloud, then every home ought to have access to 10mb/s communications as a minimum.

They foisted digital tax upon us so they should do their bit on their side of the system.

 

[Weare Cham]

In my view there needs to be a push to at least make 4G available in all rural areas. The communications companies should be obliged to make this investment.

With the government wanting things done digitally and stored on the cloud, then every home ought to have access to 10mb/s communications as a minimum.

They foisted digital tax upon us so they should do their bit on their side of the system.

I've signed up with airband. Seems good so far. 40Mbps is usual. Way better than the 2Mbps I was getting.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

I agree with both the last posts, it would be way cheaper and much faster to use a mixture of 4G and/or fixed wireless broadband to get universal service in rural areas.

Fibre is very nice, but boy it would cost a small fortune to get universal fibre to premises access in rural areas. It’s no small feat, despite the populist “pork-barrelling” from the incumbent PM.

 

[f0ster]

as mentioned previously for intermittently slow speeds you must disconnect the rest of the property first, they can cause interference and slow connections.

 

[Mfrost]

Not sure if still relevant - but back when i was rural my ISP allowed access to request SNR resets on the line - usually bumped our speed for a while before the line 'thought' it was unstable and automatically lowered its speed until getting similar speeds of 0.2mbps - Not really sure SNR resets are still a thing but might be worth requesting one! im sure things have changed a lot since i last did it.