Plusnet and downloads - driving me mad

Plusnet and downloads - driving me mad

Author
Discussion

RRH

Original Poster:

562 posts

246 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
I stupidly moved from BT Infinity to PlusNet last August... to save a couple of quid frown

Anyway, can someone cleverer than me explain this..

Line can support c80 meg.

Speedtest usually reports about 70 downstream, 20 upstream, ping around 30m/s.

That said, downloads are VERY slow. Doesn't seem to matter what time of day, whenever I try and download from megashares / rapidgator etc, I'm doing well to get 300k/sec with frequent stalls. The BT infinity connection was always 2mb+ and v v stable.

Any thoughts? Not sure what could be up with it as I don't understand anything beyond the speedtest results.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

blueST

4,378 posts

215 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
Traffic shaping. Plus net control download speed depending on what you are up to. If you google it you can find their policy, and see what category whatever you are doing falls into.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
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The free downloads are rate limited, this is to force you spend some money to get it faster.

The speedtest programs use a server which isn't rate limited hence the much faster speeds.

Pay your money to get your files (pron) faster.

RRH

Original Poster:

562 posts

246 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
I subscribe to both the file sharing sites referred to- only having probs since I moved to Plusnet.

daydotz

1,741 posts

160 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
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Where are you getting your speeds from ?

Have you looked in you account at you connection speed the forum Is worth a look



Edited by daydotz on Thursday 22 January 21:25

Doctor Volt

336 posts

124 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
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This may help

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/...

My Bandwidth is being throttled but I am not with plusnet

Alucidnation

16,810 posts

169 months

Friday 23rd January 2015
quotequote all
Doctor Volt said:
This may help

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/...

My Bandwidth is being throttled but I am not with plusnet
How can you tell?

We have just moved to Plusnet and seems ok, and thats with a fair bit of streaming.

schmunk

4,399 posts

124 months

Friday 23rd January 2015
quotequote all
I've been with Plusnet FTTC for about a year and have (to my knowledge) never experienced traffic shaping when downloading torrents of, erm, Linux distros.

RRH

Original Poster:

562 posts

246 months

Friday 23rd January 2015
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Downloading at 5.3 mb/s this morning so must be 'traffic shaping'

robsdesk

187 posts

131 months

Friday 23rd January 2015
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I've been with them since last summer, we're also very heavy users, no sign of throttling at all, I take it you're using a wired not wireless connection?

mikef

4,826 posts

250 months

RRH

Original Poster:

562 posts

246 months

Friday 23rd January 2015
quotequote all
I'll sport a fiver and let you know!
Thanks for your help.

andy-xr

13,204 posts

203 months

Friday 23rd January 2015
quotequote all
RRH said:
I subscribe to both the file sharing sites referred to- only having probs since I moved to Plusnet.
Plusnet (ironically, owned by BT so you've just moved to the other side of the room) run traffic shaping on anything other than web browsing, sometimes thats good (voice gets priority) and sometimes that's bad - they know at a global level what wonky download sites traffic looks like, and give it like a 10 (1 being good) in it's weighting of how quickly to give it to you. They might not necessarily know that RRH is downloading Taken 3 from Megalolzsharing.nz, they could probably find out if they were that bothered though.

If you want an ISP that doesnt run rate limiting there are some out there, whether they'll be OK with you doing shares is another thing

Doctor Volt

336 posts

124 months

Saturday 24th January 2015
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Alucidnation said:
How can you tell?

We have just moved to Plusnet and seems ok, and thats with a fair bit of streaming.
Do a bandwidth speed test at different times of the day is one way, obviously there is more throttling going on at weekends, school holidays and public holidays when things get busier

I can tell by the way one of the lights flickers on my router

Its important to read the small print about fair usage, the crazy thing about it is that if you had say 2Mb broadband and then you upgraded to 24Mb broadband you are going to hit the fair usage limits much quicker

Things are not what they seem

Alucidnation

16,810 posts

169 months

Saturday 24th January 2015
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I guess by bandwidth test you mean using speedtest.net?

Doctor Volt

336 posts

124 months

Sunday 25th January 2015
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Alucidnation said:
I guess by bandwidth test you mean using speedtest.net?
Yes or another

Alucidnation

16,810 posts

169 months

Sunday 25th January 2015
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ok thanks.

Since we have only been with them for a couple of weeks, i have been doing fairly regular checks on the speedtest site (for comparison and continuity) and so far, we haven't noticed any slowing down at any particular time.

I guess it could be down to locality and amount of subscribers etc.

Doctor Volt

336 posts

124 months

Sunday 25th January 2015
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Alucidnation said:
ok thanks.

Since we have only been with them for a couple of weeks, i have been doing fairly regular checks on the speedtest site (for comparison and continuity) and so far, we haven't noticed any slowing down at any particular time.

I guess it could be down to locality and amount of subscribers etc.
Yes I agree, the number of users must play a big part

Otispunkmeyer

12,557 posts

154 months

Sunday 25th January 2015
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never had any problems with plus net, including downloading during torrential rain. 80 meg down, 20 up all day long. The issue I did have was that the supplied router is garbage and won't feed you much beyond 50mbits on wifi. If you want the full 80, you have to go wired or get a proper router.

Doctor Volt

336 posts

124 months

Sunday 25th January 2015
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I wish I had 80 Down and 20 Up, then again I bet you soon fill a hard drive with stuff you dont really need