Absolutely godawful speeds

[Dazza115]

I'm really at my wits end now, sky unlimited has been great to me, but the past 3 or 4 weeks it has taken a MASSIVE nosedive.

It ain't my stats, it ain't anything i've changed, it ain't just me (my friend in the same street has the same issues).

First thing i noticed was my latency spiking upto 200-400 in Rift from a normal of about 62. Then I noticed this affected my general speeds while downloading. Tonight though is new levels of awfulness, just did several speedtests on speedtest.net and tried to download something through giganews. I have a throughput, at this second, of 50K when my connection is saturated, speedtest put me at 0.25mbps.

This only happens after about 6pm till about 12pm, peak time, and unfortunately hits me every single night I raid in Rift to the point where it is almost unplayable. I was damn close to going for fibre, but if this is my reward for being a loyal customer I think I'd rather go elsewhere.

Line stats, after a fresh reconnect are:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 14144 kbps 764 kbps
Line Attenuation 25 db 13 db
Noise Margin 7 db 11 db

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

Are you using WiFi? If so, try Ethernet. Might also be worth using a decent speed tester

[Isitme]

To rule out software problems, start in Safe Mode with Networking and do a speed test here - Sky User - Broadband Speed Tester

[Dazza115]

It ain't anything on my end as i said, i ain't using wi-fi, i ain't got anything hidden on the machine. Right now, i'm downloading through giganews at a solid 1.45MB/s which is what my connection should be doing.

Last night, after I posted my speed started to rise, from 50K/s up slowly to 1M/s about an hour later then back to full speed when I came back home. It HAS to be something at Sky's end, either at the exhange or saturation of my local loop at peak times.

As I said it ONLY happens between 6pm and 12pm, and it is a gradual decrease and increase again, the problem is it decreases to a point whereby the connection is nigh on impossible to use, it took me about 20 seconds to load this site last night, took several attempts to load the speedtester.net site aswell.

[Isitme]

You may be on one of the exchanges which are experiencing difficulties, have a look here and put in your post code. -
Sky Help and Support | Service Status

[Dazza115]

Isn't listed on there, and it's happening again tonight.
Speed test here gave me 3.15Mbps, speedtest.net gave me http://www.speedtest.net/result/2014185435.png
Ping to bbc fluctuates between 76 and 450ms.

I dunno what to do, should I contact Sky? Cause it makes my connection unusable and gaming totally random.

Line stats atm:
Connection Speed 14144 kbps 764 kbps
Line Attenuation 25 db 13 db
Noise Margin 7 db 11 db

[Isitme]

You should contact Sky. It is possible your exchange is having problems and has not been reported. Sky will not know about a fault until someone reports it. There is a chance that the card in your exchange is faulty, it does not happen often but it can.

If Sky follow their usual script for low throughput with a good sync they will ask you to do a netstat to see how many connections you have. If you have over 10 they will tell you that is too many and that is your problem. With modern PCs and broadband this is nonsense but you have to humour them. Open a Command Prompt and type netstat -b, this will show what exe is using the connection, make sure you recognise them all. You will need to Run as Administrator to do this in Win7/Vista. It goes without saying that the fewer tabs or clients you have open when you do this the better.

[Dazza115]

Thats kinda why I held off contacting Sky, hate this jumping through hoops when I know 100% it isn't something on my end. I'm pretty damn literate with computers, I know them inside out, I know how my connection should be behaving and this is massively outside the norm when nothing has changed on my end. The only PC connected to my routed atm is this one, there are only 3 or 4 processes using the connection and most of those are idle (firefox, messenger and a logitech driver).

I will contact them tomorrow, see whats up. Would it be better (cheaper / less annoying ) to ring then or can I email them without them fobbing me off. Less hoops I have to jump through the better, just wanna talk to somebody who gets it without asking me to "turn it off, then turn it back on".

[Isitme]

Getting them to realise the difference between throughput and sync speed is always difficult. You could try using the Contact Us form, but even then it depends on who gets it. The first reply usually refers you to the Sky online help, which is useless for something like this, so it could take a lot of messages to get your problem across. Using the phone there is a good chance they will pass you to the Customer Solutions Team who are generally more clued up than the first line support. If you have Sky Talk the call is free, is not have a look at Saynoto08 for a landline number. This one was working but I don't know if it still is - 0207 1267020, go through the menu and select Broadband faults.

[Dazza115]

Cheers for the info, just back home, did another speed test: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2014411692.png and http://www.speedtest.net/result/2014409500.png

Giganews back to full speed aswell, 1.45MB/s. Just somebody saturating the exchange in some way at peak times. Had tried raiding earlier but latency jumped up to 10000 at times, was utterly unplayable.