After years of happily subscribing to BT Total Broadband and, due to living within sight of the exchange, getting a steady download speed of between 6.8-7.4 Mbps, I've been a bit disgruntled to find that in the last week this performance has dropped to around 1.2-1.4 Mbps. This morning, it's down to 234 Kbps
....slower than the dial-up line I had 10 years ago.
So, after using speedtest.net to a few servers I logged on to BT's own speedtest site and ran a test. Got a bunch of figures about best efort and stuff, and wasn't quite sure what they were banging on about, so I clicked on the link to visit the FAQ to explain what this all meant.
This is what I got:
- Download Speed is 450 Kbps. This is the actual rate achieved during the Performance Test. This rate will never reach the IP profile rate and this is normal.
- Acceptable range of speeds is 288-500 Kbps. If your download speed lies in this range, then there is no fault on your line and your Broadband service is deemed to be working fine.
- DSL Upstream connection rate is 500 Kbps. This is the upstream DSL line rate, and is the same rate that will be shown on the EU CPE or its associated software.
- DSL connection rate - Downstream is 1000 Kbps. This is the End User downstream DSL line rate, and is the same rate as shown on the EU CPE. This is the maximum raw data that can be transported across your line. Your actual throughput will always be less than this rate and this is due to overheads taken up by the higher layer protocols, retransmissions etc. and this is normal.
- The EU IP profile rate is 500 Kbps - This is the IP rate set on the BT Wholesale BRAS that the End User is connected to. The EU IP profile rate will be less than the DSL downstream connection rate due to the overheads of the IP service and this is normal.
- Assured Rate IP Profile* is 500 Kbps - This is the IP rate for the QoS session, set on the BT Wholesale BRAS that the End User is connected to.
- Assured Rate - download speed* is 450 Kbps - This is the actual assured rate achieved during the Performance Test. This rate will never reach the Assured Rate IP profile rate and this is normal.
- The throughput of Best Effort (BE) classes* achieved during the test is - 5:20:75 (SBE:NBE:PBE)- These figures represent the percentage ratio while sententiously passing Sub BE, Normal BE, and Priority BE marked traffic through the network. Total download speed achieved during the Best Effort test is sum of these three types of Best Effort traffic that were passed through the network for your broadband connection.
Al right, hands up....who knows what the phrase
"These figures represent the percentage ratio while sententiously passing Sub BE, Normal BE, and Priority BE marked traffic through the network" actually means!!!