Eh, just thought I'd pass this on ... had a spot of bovver, like, with my internet connection, in as much as my download speed had dropped to below 2 Mbps for some strange reason.
My first thoughts were to ditch Plusnet and go with someone arf decent, like say ICUK.
Anyway, I switched orf and on the router to reset that (no change) then I disconnected my looooooooooong Ethernet cable that I use for the iPlayer on the telly.
That did the trick! - it musta bin faulty (I hardly use it) and my download speed is now a whopping (for here) 8Mbps.
So I'm now looking for a cheap dangle.
:)
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An Ethernet cable can be up to 100m so why not just get another cable if you were happy with that before?
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How long is " looooooooooong " Doug?
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>>An Ethernet cable can be up to 100m so why not just get another cable if you were happy with that before?
Yep! - could well do, I bought the last from from ebay 2 years ago, is it worth paying a little extra for something better?
>>How long is " looooooooooong " Doug?
Bout 10m Mart.
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In the scheme of ethernet cables, 10m isn't that long.
Like all leads the most expensive and the cheapest examples are a waste of money in the real world. Mid-range is good. £10 - £15 seems to be a good price from a quick search albeit they seem to be £3.00 on Ebay or £25 at PC World.
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>> I disconnected my looooooooooong Ethernet cable that I use for the iPlayer on the telly.
>>
>> That did the trick! - it musta bin faulty
Or your catchup box was downloading stuff that was unbeknown to you.
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>>Or your catchup box was downloading stuff that was unbeknown to you
What's a ketchup box?
TBH, the missus was trying to watch some Henry V111 thingy the other week and the whirly whirly thing kept going round and round so she had to give up on it eventually.
I did phone Plusnet this morning who are always very very good (and in England!) they checked my usage and he said whatever you did at 10.00am caused your download speed to increase but I wouldn't notice a difference until the thingamabob at the exchange had readjusted its undergarments.
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Ok well its nuffink to do wiv your cable, it woz rebooting your roota wot dun it.
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I'm wiv 'im ^ , save yer dosh.
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s'easy.
Plug it back in and see if stuff slows down again.
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>>Ok well its nuffink to do wiv your cable, it woz rebooting your roota wot dun it.
Howl amazing! - it's settled down now to about 7Mb, considering I live out in the sticks one mile from the cabinet AND the copper (or aluminium) cable is overhead via telegraph poles, I mustn't grumble at that.
>>Plug it back in and see if stuff slows down again.
Will do.
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Why don't you get a power point adapter for the TV ?
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We don't really use the iPlayer much Rob, and being we've bought a Humax PVR, well, there's no stopping us now.
Nice little film I recorded in the week called en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edge_of_the_World
I enjoy old films like that, even (or more so) in B&W, plus of course it was based on the true story.
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>> What's a ketchup box?
The box your ethernet cable was plugged into. Presumably for you to download stuff from the net onto.
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Presumably for you to download stuff from the net onto.
It's plugged into my TV for using the BBC iPlayer.
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Like I said - catchup TV. Or as you call it Ketchup ;)
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Yeah well, my bb download speed has settled down to around 4Mb which is still okay for what I want.
I've plugged the ethernet cable back in and watched 10 mins of Rick Stein's India in HD on the TV, it's more-than worth watching and I'll get back to that later:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02znjhj/Rick_Steins_India_Episode_1/
And ... with the ethernet cable reconnected to router/TV, I'm still a'getting 4Mb, and I watched Zed's choo choo again (in HD) without any whirly whirlies, so it seems that giving the ole router a clear out with a dose of senna pods (reboot) now and again is a goer.
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My download speed is 4.58 Mb/s and my upload speed is 0.436 Mb/s. What significance do those figures have. What do they mean in practical terms?
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Your download speed says how much data can be downloaded per second. 4.58 Mbit/s translates to roughly 500 Kbyte/s making some assumptions for overheads. So about half a megabyte/s. If you wanted to watch something like streaming video I'd say that is borderline too low.
Upload is how fast you can send data. For web browsing and general use not such a problem. Unless you need to send lots of data. Sending large emails for example would be slow.
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Roll on the arrival of superfast broadband in Lincolnshire. www.onlincolnshire.org/
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Upload is how fast you can send data. For web browsing and general use not such a problem. Unless you need to send lots of data. Sending large emails for example would be slow.
Also, if you do, update websites. I look after three, the local scout group one, a shop one and my own. Irks me sometimes the speed of updating although most decent FTP (file transfer protocol) programs allow you do multiple transfers with one command.
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>> My download speed is 4.58 Mb/s and my upload speed is 0.436 Mb/s. What significance
>> do those figures have. What do they mean in practical terms?
In practical terms, has stuff failed to happen as you expected it or wanted it because your internet is too slow?
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>> My download speed is 4.58 Mb/s and my upload speed is 0.436 Mb/s. What significance
>> do those figures have. What do they mean in practical terms?
The slower upload speed is the "assymmetric" part of ADSL.
My download is about 1.8mbps, upload about 0.65mbps. Annoying as I got 3.6mbps at the pub 200 yards away this week and about 2.5mbps is typical in the village. I can't usually watch Zero's videos in HD.
My aunt, four miles from Lockerbie, on the Boreland exchange, has about 6mbps download and 0.045mbps upload - now that is a problem, she has to turn her Skype camera off. Openreach say the line is OK.
It's a lottery with the copper pairs. Some are good, some aren't. I also think I have some RF interference going on here but I can't pin it down. Radios don't work properly in one corner of the house.
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I have just checked my speed iv been with virgin years so im on there 60mb but pay for 30 as part of my VIP package with tv and phone. my laptop a toshiba satellite 750L which is 18 months old has 750gb memory and a 2.4 ghz processor is only making 23mb/s on wifi or 26mb/s on a ethernet cable.
Now the sons laptop my old one is a 5yr old compaq presario c700 and isnt half a powerful as the toshiba and that is making 53mb/s on wifi not tried ethernet cable.
Any ideas anyone?
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Do try rebooting the Virgin router thingy, often seems to have a beneficial impact and easy to try.
Also how are you measuring it?
And try at different times of day - my speeds with Virgin often drop alarmingly in peak periods... yet they deny contention. But that doesn't bother me too much as they are the times I use it least :-)
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Iv tried different sites uswitch seems the best. Iv just tested both laptops together at the same time and the toshiba is still slower just got 15mb/s, the compaq was 33mb/s.
Always find this time of evening slower than the day but like you it doesn't bother me
im just confused how a newer and better laptop can be slower than a older one.
Toshiba is windows 7, compaq is vista would that make a differenc or does the tosh need a clear out or a factory reset never been done since new been very reliable.
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Maybe the newer laptop has a poorer design/position for the inbuilt wifi. But you also say it's slower via an Ethernet connection which is odd. Have you tried a speed test website like Speedtest.net?
If it was slower on wifi but okay on Ethernet then there might be an explanation but something isn't right if it's slow on a 100Mbit/s Ethernet connection. Have you tried different cables?
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Slow broadband speeds - rtj70
