Full Fibre 500 speed is very low

[JohnAtSky]

Hi I had full fibre 500 connected 5 days ago. I was told that over the next 2 weeks, the speed would be monitored and wound up gradually.  The speed had been just about the same over the 5 days at about 91mbps down and 68mbps up.  I used various online speed checkers and get roughly the same values all the time.  I check with cat 6 cable to an M4 Mac mini (1Gbps network card) plugged directly into the router.  I tried with no other cables plugged into the router and even tried direct to the OpenReach ONT box where the speed was maybe 1Mbps higher.

Is it normal to stay so low after 5 days?  I tried to find a phone number on the Sky website but gave up.  I'm nervous of googling for a Sky number because I was kind of scammed once by a company acting an an intermediate to Sky and charging crazy prices for calls.  

Thanks, John.

[Chrisee]

@JohnAtSky in practice the full 500Mb/s should be there from roughly an hour after activation there is no "winding up" apart perhaps of the customer! While theoretically possible for full fibre to run slowly it is actually extremly common for home networkss to be unable to deliver the full 500Mb/s let alone the 900Mb/s highest tier.

I am suspicious that your ethernet test was performed over a gigabit link as 91Mb/s is exactly the result you would expect of a test run over a 100Mb/s link after allowing for network over heads. Remember the port on the computer, the cable,, any switches in the connection and the port on the hub have to support. giabit speeds, By default the hub will and most cables should if they have all 8 strands connected (Car5e or above) but switches often dont and operating system settings can limit Ethernet throughput even if the hardware supports gigabit speeds.

You are right to be careful about sesrching for numbers but all Sky support numbers statr 03 which every phone company treats as standard calls and cannot carry premium charges. Sky have loads of 03 numbers which they use to presort calls. They want you to follow through their online help journies and use the number you find at the end. Unfortunately you still go through the same annoying IVR system if you do. As a short cut dial 150 for a free call to Sky on the Sky Talk line you get free via your Sky hub just plug a standard phone into the socket on the back.

[JohnAtSky]

Thank you for the reply but I did say I have tried with a cat 6 cable plugged directly into the ONT box into a new Mac mini M4 computer that supports 1Gbps.

I will attempt to call sky. Thank you for the confirmation that I should have expected a higher speed from day 1.

[Chrisee]

@JohnAtSky testing the WAN connection is not likely to be inndicative as the mac mini cannot authenticate the connection unless know how to configure that. As I said 91 Mb/s is almost spot on the speed a 100Mb/s link would report which would be quite a coincidence. What speeds do you see overWiFi if they are over 100Mb/s then your ethernet  link is definitely not gigabit.

[JohnAtSky]

Thank you for the responses. I also tried connecting directly to the router with nothing else plugged in. I'm not sure what you mean by the Mac not being able to authenticate the connection. I was able to browse to speed test sites when connected directly to the ONT.

Anyway, I used the Sky online assistant to find the phone number and got through quite quickly. Sky did a line test and could see it was around 91Mbps, so they connected OpenReach, who will check if the line is capped and look into the problem if it is not a simple capping.

I appreciate your help.

[JohnAtSky]

I think I now get what you mean by authenticate.  I assume it worked because I unplugged the ONT to router cable at the router end and plugged that directly into the Mac so I guess it was still using the router authentication.