Ultrafast Slow Real World Download Speeds

Quinny199 — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 19:19:42 GMT

I've had Sky FTTC for years and upgraded to UltraFast 1 when it became available- the install was completed on 19th December.

Since going live, I've noticed most downloads have been much slower than I would expect - in some cases probably slower than they were on FTTC. Today I upgraded to Ultrafast Plus (500Mbps) to see if it made any difference. Peak speeds have increased as expected, but the slow sources have remained slow for download, but upload has increased to line speed.

Using Ookla Speetest.net, I get wildly different results depending on server and location.

Vodafone London - 462Mbps Down/72Mbps Up

Vodafone Manchester - 25Mbps Down/72Mbps Up

Hyperoptic Manchester - 39Mbps Down/72Mbps Up

Zen London - 48Mbps Down/72Mbps Up

TNP Manchester - 21Mbps Down/72Mbps Up

Fast.com - 130Mbps Down/70Mbps Up

These results are pretty consistent - a few Mbps variance here and there as you would expect, and thats across a wired PC, wireless Windows laptop, Android Phone and an iPad.

The bigger concern is the actual download speeds I see. Downloading the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft I can only get just over 1MB/sec. Microsoft servers are notoriously quick - on my connection at work I can get 95MB/sec and a colleague on Sky Gigafast who lives nearby can get a pretty consistent 70-80Mbps, so it doesn't appear to be contention or that the source is the issue. I was downloading an 25Gb file from Ford to update my sat nav, on my Sky BB I can't get 1MB/sec, at work I got 45MB/sec and my colleague gets 16MB/sec on his Sky Gigafast - so again, not the source.

I don't believe there is anything faulty with my equipment, the router or the FTTP link - otherwise the Vodafone test wouldn't work at 400Mbps+. This has got to something within Sky's network that is restricting the connection speed. The connection either seems to start quite slow and ramp up, or start fast and slow down - it looks like there's a CIR or some other sort of traffic shaping being applied. I really don't fancy trying to communicate this to first line support!

I'm a Network Architect and work for a specialist ISP, so I know enough to be dangerous and I've had a look at this very experienced colleagues and we all agree it's not right. The only other thing I can think of to try is I don't think my public IP address has changed for ages. I'll leave the ONT off overnight tonight to see if I can force a change following the DHCP timeout.

Any other ideas would be gratefully received!

Re: Ultrafast Slow Real World Download Speeds

mae-3 — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 10:58:06 GMT

@Quinny199

It would help if you identified the time of day and the weekday for each throughput speed test, and whether it is over a wireless or a wired connection. Generally, Sky states they don't traffic manage but that doesn't account for the fact that once you go off the Sky network that network doesn't traffic manage.

topic Ultrafast Slow Real World Download Speeds in Broadband

Ultrafast Slow Real World Download Speeds

Re: Ultrafast Slow Real World Download Speeds