What is the minimum speed of broadband?

[King Herald]

Sorry to raise this old cherry again, but in my week long dealings with BT I have got them to improve my download speed from average 130kbps to 280kbps, tested on speedtester.bt.com. I've told them it is still not good enough, and they have asked me exactly how fast do I actually want it to be.

I'm no bit/byte guru, so realistically, what should I tell them? 500kbps minimum? 1000 minimum? It is supposed to be the old 'up to 8 meg' deal, but I'd be happy to just get anything over one meg.

[robdickinson]

Depends on your line & distance from the exchange, BT are under no obligation to provide a minimum quality for home data lines, only that they be of sufficient quality for voice calls.

Broadband does not mean high bandwidth I'm afraid, it refers to the broad frequency of the signals (i.e. low for voice, high for data) over the same line.

I'd keep on at them, they can do things to improve it but you may have got the max for your line.

[King Herald]

robdickinson said:

Depends on your line & distance from the exchange, BT are under no obligation to provide a minimum quality for home data lines, only that they be of sufficient quality for voice calls.

Broadband does not mean high bandwidth I'm afraid, it refers to the broad frequency of the signals (i.e. low for voice, high for data) over the same line.

I'd keep on at them, they can do things to improve it but you may have got the max for your line.

When I was with NTL they advertised, and supplied, 250kb broadband, but were told it had to be 500kb to legally qualify as 'broadband' per se, so they bumped it up for free. Then they gave free upgrades to 1meg, which is faster than anything I have got from BT so far.

As far as I am concerned signing up for broadband entitles me to a reasonably fast connection, regardless of the 'no minimum quality' blurb I've read about in several places. Getting something that is barely double the speed of the old dial-up system is of no use to me, and is basically not what I expect for my money.

[Zad]

King Herald said:

Sorry to raise this old cherry again, but in my week long dealings with BT I have got them to improve my download speed from average 130kbps to 280kbps, tested on speedtester.bt.com. I've told them it is still not good enough, and they have asked me exactly how fast do I actually want it to be.

I'm no bit/byte guru, so realistically, what should I tell them? 500kbps minimum? 1000 minimum? It is supposed to be the old 'up to 8 meg' deal, but I'd be happy to just get anything over one meg.

I believe it was defined as "Over 128kbit/s" by Ofcom. There was talk about increasing that but I don't know if it ever happened.

Just to check, you are getting 280 kilo *bits* and not 280 kilo *bytes* ? If so, 280KB isn't bad.

[bez_uk]

240Kbps is what I get... that's with 2Mbit 'broadband'. Whatever speed they quote divide be eight... download something big from a fast server and the speed of the download should match the speed you just worked out. Then all is good

[King Herald]

Zad said:

King Herald said:

Sorry to raise this old cherry again, but in my week long dealings with BT I have got them to improve my download speed from average 130kbps to 280kbps, tested on speedtester.bt.com. I've told them it is still not good enough, and they have asked me exactly how fast do I actually want it to be.

I'm no bit/byte guru, so realistically, what should I tell them? 500kbps minimum? 1000 minimum? It is supposed to be the old 'up to 8 meg' deal, but I'd be happy to just get anything over one meg.

I believe it was defined as "Over 128kbit/s" by Ofcom. There was talk about increasing that but I don't know if it ever happened.

Just to check, you are getting 280 kilo *bits* and not 280 kilo *bytes* ? If so, 280KB isn't bad.

It actually says 'kbps' on the sppedtester. Non capitalised, as opposed to KB/ps or KB which I've seen quoted elsewhere. Are kbps the smallest ones?
The Indian guy in BT broadband tech assistance agreed that the original 140kbps was below acceptable levels.

Funnily enough I got a call at 9:30 last night, Sunday, from India for a guess, asking if it was any quicker, and also asking me to make sure any mobile phones or microwave devices were turned off, which might hinder its speed, and to ensure my router is plugged directly into the main BT socket. I told the girl I don't expect to have to shut down my entire household operation and run my computer by the front door, just to make their broadband system work.

[percy flage]

A bloke I work with can't get broadband yet. He's "at the end of the line" for dial up too and although during work hours the dial up connection speed is "adequate", once the local schools are out his connection speed drops to 4 kbps.

He likens it to a tap dripping. Very slowly.

[bez_uk]

seeing as 6 is max for a dail-up, 4 isnt bad... they should be happy

[King Herald]

bez_uk said:

seeing as 6 is max for a dail-up, 4 isnt bad... they should be happy

So Kpbs is different to kbps. I missed the capitalisation of the first K on mine. Here is what the speedtester tells me:


The speed test has completed on test server speedtester1.nat.bt.com for user 01785****** and you have downloaded a 1.7Mb file at a speed of 240 kilo bits per second (Kbps), your service bandwidth will have been quoted to you in kilo bits per second.

Your IP address is 86.132.128.19, your browser is reported as being Mozilla 5.0 and is running on Windows XP.

Whatever it is, it is slower than NTL 1 meg was when we had that a few months ago.

[percy flage]

bez_uk said:

seeing as 6 is max for a dail-up, 4 isnt bad... they should be happy

Eh? When I use dial up (for work) I consistently get "48 kbps" as a connection speed, he's only geting 4. Where does your 6 come from?

TIA

Non techie person Flage.

[GreenV8S]

King Herald said:

Funnily enough I got a call at 9:30 last night, Sunday, from India for a guess, asking if it was any quicker, and also asking me to make sure any mobile phones or microwave devices were turned off, which might hinder its speed, and to ensure my router is plugged directly into the main BT socket. I told the girl I don't expect to have to shut down my entire household operation and run my computer by the front door, just to make their broadband system work.

If I was you, I'd do absolutely everything possible to improve the line speed and then see if an acceptable level can be achieved in optimal conditions. Then you can decide how much disruption you're willing to tolerate to achieve that. But until you know for sure whether the poor line speed is caused by conditions in your house, or a poor external line, you're unlikely to get any further. Connecting the splitter directly into the master socket with absolutely everything else disconnected from the phone line would be a good first step.

[malman]

percy flage said:

bez_uk said:

seeing as 6 is max for a dail-up, 4 isnt bad... they should be happy

Eh? When I use dial up (for work) I consistently get "48 kbps" as a connection speed, he's only geting 4. Where does your 6 come from?

TIA

Non techie person Flage.

I think you are talking K bits and K bytes here. On a modem these days you generally get between 33.6 kbits and 52 kibits(nobody I know ever got 56k) 48kbits gives you a theoretical download rate of 6kbytes per second. If your mate downloads a 4Kbytes per second (tap dripping rate) then his modem is connecting just above 33.6

[King Herald]

GreenV8S said:

....... Connecting the splitter directly into the master socket with absolutely everything else disconnected from the phone line would be a good first step.

I actually did that a few days ago, just to see whether there was anything silly going on. The Indian call centre guys are a big fan of blaming extension cords, and maybe for a good reason. Anyway, I humped my PC and monitor and all down into the hall and reconnected the necessaries. I bypassed the house telephone loop entirely, plugging straight into the BT socket, and the performance was just the same.

[TVRWhoa]

Hi guys -I work for a major manufacturer in the design & support for the equipment which supplies most of the DSL service in the U.K. and this query is one of the most common which is received.

To give you a heads up,

When you connect your broadband modem to your telephone line, it negotiates with the exchange or access node to train up to the maximum line speed available on your specific telepone line.
The modem uses specific frequencies to qualify the line itself and will try to reach the maximum line speed that can be achieved, dependent on a number of factors, such as the distance of the line from the node to your house, i.e. the longer the physical length of wire the more attenuation is presented to any signals sent down that line.
So if you lived say within half a mile of the access node, you would get a faster line speed than say someone who lives three to four miles away - put simply the longer the wire the slower the speed that can be attained.

So this explains why there are varying line speeds available when you compare your line speed to say someone else's.

Now the line speed is measured in how many bits of information can be sent down that line, generally measured in million bits per second of Mbps.

So say you have a line speed of 5Mbps, this equates to 5 million bits per second that can be sent down your line at any one time.

When you run a speed test on your line, what you actually do is download a test file to your PC, the size of the test file is known and so when your PC signals that the test file has been downloaded and the time that it has taken a simple formula is applied which gives you a download rate.

Now the downloaded file or test file is measured in size of KBps which equates to 1000 bytes per second (or to be absolutely precise 1024 bytes per second). A byte is the common term for a collection of 8 bits.

So in your case your current average download speed is 130KBps or 130 x 1024 x 8 = 1.064 Million bits per second.

So based on this calculation I would assume that your line rate is somewhere in the order of 1 Meg.

To achieve a download speed of 280 KBps would require 280 x 1024 x 8 = 2.29 Million bits per second or a line rate of 2.3 Meg.

So at least this gives you a definition of how line rate affects download speeds, most people think that if they have a line rate of 2Meg then it should download at 2 MBps in their average speed, because download is shown as KBps the common mistake is made.

So you can see in this case you were getting over 1 Meg in the first place, and now are achieving just over 2.3Meg.

If you wanted 500KBps then you will need a line rate of 500 x 1024 x 8 = 4 Meg and 1000KBps = 8 Meg.

So although the equipment connected to your phone line is capable of 8 meg DSL, due to line length and other factors, it may not be physcially possible to achieve that line rate.

A new service ADSL2/2+ is being rolled out now (Pipex & Bulldog, not sure about BT) amongst others which allows users to attain 24 Meg (possible) which will translate to lower line speeds in practice, if you require ultra high speed downloads.

The other point to make, is that a speed test is a dedicated server with a high bandwidth connection so high speeds of download are possible.
When you connect to the net, it would need a server with similar capability to download to you at such a high rate, so even though your line may be capable of receiving high speeds it doesn't mean that the server to which you are connected is capable of delivering it, speeds and the internet really is a minefield !! (microsoft windows update is a high speed server - by the way and can be a good test of download speed)

To answer your direct question, the minimum DSL line rate is 64Kbps, however, it would be extremely unusual to see this in practice.

It's a long explanation, and hopefully this will make it a lot clearer, your question to BT needs to be what is my line rate, and is this the maximum that can be achieved ?

[King Herald]

TVRWhoa said:

Loads of interesting technical stuff

So it looks like my test download speed is not far off what the sales guy told me: 3meg. however, when downloading por..., er, video clips, it shows as little as 35Kbps, which, as you say, is probably from/through another server which is far busier.

[GreenV8S]

King Herald said:

I actually did that a few days ago, just to see whether there was anything silly going on. The Indian call centre guys are a big fan of blaming extension cords, and maybe for a good reason. Anyway, I humped my PC and monitor and all down into the hall and reconnected the necessaries. I bypassed the house telephone loop entirely, plugging straight into the BT socket, and the performance was just the same.

I think that would improve the line test results immediately, but the line speed is something that is negotiated over a long period and may not change immediately. You may need to set the phone line up to get the best possible line i.e. unplug everything except the splitter into the master socket and ask them to do another line test and give you the results. There are various sites that explain how to interpret the results and relate them to the maximum line speed that you can expect, with any luck this will show whether the problem is a fundamental problem with your line or something caused by the setup at your end.

[agent006]

TVRWhoa said:

So in your case your current average download speed is 130KBps or 130 x 1024 x 8 = 1.064 Million bits per second.

But it's not though. The text from the BT test says it's achieving 130 thousand bits per second, 0.13mbps. Technically it's braodband, but only just.

[TVRWhoa]

King harold states his download speed is 130kbps, another words 130 x 1024 (i.e 1k) then mutiplied by 8 to give bits per second, if it was 130000 bits per second, then his download speed measured in kilobytes i.e. KB would be 16.25K which is way below the minimum threshold for broadband service.

Green V8S makes a valid point here too, if you connect directly to the master socket with your modem and the line speed improves so it increases dramatically then you could suspect poor extension wiring etc. With respect to improvement in line rates, each time the modem is restarted it will strive to attain the highest rate, so the affect should be almost instantaneous if there is a wiring problem. I have seen issues with micro-filters as well so it may be worth checking or substituting one of these.

Edited by TVRWhoa on Monday 11th September 19:55

[King Herald]

TVRWhoa said:

King harold states his download speed is 130kbps, another words 130 x 1024 (i.e 1k) then mutiplied by 8 to give bits per second, if it was 130000 bits per second, then his download speed measured in kilobytes i.e. KB would be 16.25K which is way below the minimum threshold for broadband service.

Green V8S makes a valid point here too, if you connect directly to the master socket with your modem and the line speed improves so it increases dramatically then you could suspect poor extension wiring etc. With respect to improvement in line rates, each time the modem is restarted it will strive to attain the highest rate, so the affect should be almost instantaneous if there is a wiring problem. I have seen issues with micro-filters as well so it may be worth checking or substituting one of these.

I have two filters and tried them both, with the same results. This was done when I had the 'puter sat in the hallway. I've had yet another call today from BT 'wholesale' telling me they will contact my provider BT 'retail'(two entirely different operations apparently) to tell them there is nothing wrong with the actual exchange system, and that it must be in the cable to my house. They will then arrange for an engineer to come round and look at the wiring connection from my end.

I wonder if BT actually 'starve' certain customers to see how low a bit flow they can get them to live with, whilst sending the big flow to complaining customers? If such a thing is possible....

[dave_s13]

Bit off topic but a link to a right good speed testing applet

www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/