The State of UK Broadband — Not So Fast

Barence writes "The deplorable speed of British broadband connections has been revealed in the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec. More worryingly, the ONS statistics are based on the connection's headline speed, not actual throughput, which means that many more British broadband connections are effectively below the 2Mb/sec barrier. Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway."

Comments

Before or after throttling?

[AlterRNow]

Because during my download of Fedora 10, Virgin Media will throttle my connection from 8 to 2 ( mb/s ) and put my ping time ( to Google ) into the 2 second range.

Re:Before or after throttling?

[David Gerard]

But Virgin offers a new sixteen megabit DSL service! That's sixteen megabits total, of course.

I'm just picturing Virgin's 'thinking.' "We've heard that you can use things called 'computers' to send messages and even pictures. That'd be a good service to offer! We have this bloke in facilities who knows a bit about computers, we could get him to run it between refilling the coffee machines. If we tried, we could probably make it as reliable as our telly. Nobody really minds when the football drops out ten minutes before the end, do they."

Virgin: "We've Never Done It Before, And We Don't Really Know How To."

Re:Before or after throttling?

[leenks]

But it is all fibre optic! The advert says it is, so it must be quick!

Quite how Virgin can get away with saying their broadband is fibre optic when the last loop is copper is beyond me. It's about time the ASA did what they are supposed to do - BT broadband is fibre optic by their interpretation of things!

Re:Before or after throttling?

[_xeno_]

Beats me, but Comcast is doing that here in the US too in response to Verizon building actual fiber to the home. They have this weird graphic of various colored lines springing up all across the US which I guess "proves" they have "the largest fiber optic network."

It's actually kind of pathetic. Granted I think Comcast's point is supposed to be that they do TV better than Verizon - thereby saving themselves from "truth in advertising" laws. Still, that has nothing to do with using a fiber optic network. And they certainly don't offer comparable Internet speeds.

I find it kind of funny that two companies are pulling the "but we use fiber optics somewhere in our network!" card.

In Comcast's case it may be more pathetic, since the ads are sort of like the Mac vs PC ads: you've got the "fiber optic" guy who's hopped up on "light" (he's glowing and flickering), and then you have the "down-to-earth" Comcast guy. After making fun of the fiber optic guy, Comcast then announces that they, too, use fiber optics. At best, I would think that makes them equal. But what do I know, I'm not the charismatic down-to-earth guy.

Tell it to the people who cannot get broadband

[tagishsimon]

Concerned as I am with slow speeds, I'm more concerned that I cannot at home get broadband at all because there's insufficient regulation of the monopoly landline supplier. BT is not interested in fixing the twisted pair arriving at my house such that ADSL will work. The UK government is not interested in extending the Universal Service Obligation - the thing that forces the monopoly to connect you to the phone system for voice calls - to broadband.

HMG's insistence that broadband is of economic and social importance is just so much humbug and cant if they will not bother themselves to lift a regulatory finger to ensure that the whole population can access at least a basic service.

Perish the thought that the vast additional profit arising out of millions of DSL connections should be put towards improving the basic infrastructure.

But I can get 2kbps downstream (yup, that's right) through my 2.5 or 3G connection. Yay. I think I was getting better than that on dialup in about 1995.

I've tried wrangling with BT over this

[OneSmartFellow]

I'm supposed to have a 8MB connection. I've checked the distance to my DSLAM, and I'm well within the distance that 8M should be possible.

I've got a good modem/router - Alcatel Speedtouch - which lets me run diagnostics on the line. The diagnostics report that my signal to noise ratio is just within the limits to establish an aDSL session (from memory it's 9dB), and certainly nowhere close to being able to run at max speed (which would need a S/N of something like 50+dB).

I've contacted BT about the poor state of my line, and they basically ignore me. Actually, it's worse than that, they lied to me claiming that they have tried to contact me by phone, but I provided only my cell phone number and my e-mail, and there is no record of any missed calls from BT, just an e-mail claiming they tried to call. (not to mention that I always have it switched on and within easy ear-shot during working hours).

I guess they just suck !

Re:I've tried wrangling with BT over this

[iangoldby]

The 9 dB figure quoted is the signal to noise margin. With adaptive rate ADSL (maxDSL) the DSLAM and modem negotiate a target noise margin, and sync at whatever speed is necessary to achieve this.

The target noise margin starts off at 6 dB. If this results in an unstable connection then the target gets increased, first to 9 dB, and then to 12 dB, and finally to 15 dB.

So 9 dB is really not that bad. It means that the quality of your line varies a bit, but not too much. The more your line quality varies, the higher the target noise margin that is automatically set.

The point of having a higher target noise margin is that when the line quality deteriorates after the modems have synced and the noise margin drops, it wont drop as far - that is - it starts from a higher value.

As the noise margin drops, first of all error correction kicks in. That can correct a certain amount of data corruption. As the noise margin drops further the error correction becomes inadequate and some packets get dropped because they contain uncorrectable errors.

Once the line starts dropping packets then the data transfer speed plummets because those packets have to be requested again. Soon you reach the point where even a simple text-only web page takes several minutes to load, or just times out.

Eventually as the noise margin approaches zero, the modem loses sync. At this point it will probably resync automatically, but this time at a much lower rate in order to re-establish the original target noise margin. If this happens regularly then BT's systems will automatically increase your target noise margin to try to prevent this happening as often.

The final insult is that when the modem resyncs at a slower speed, BT's systems reset your 'IP Profile' to match your new sync speed. The IP Profile is effectively a cap on the data rate (not the sync speed).

Note that this adjustment to your IP Profile happens immediately when your modem resyncs slower, but not when your modem resyncs faster. In the latter case your line has to remain stable at the higher speed for five days before BT will put your IP Profile back up.

With fixed-rate ADSL it is a little different. There is no target noise margin - the modem just connects at the fixed speed and the noise margin you get is just whatever it happens to be. Fixed rate doesn't do error connection so it generally needs a higher noise margin than adaptive rate to avoid retransmissions. But the good news is that there is no IP profile rate cap, so when a period of poor line performance ends your download speeds will recover immediately.

Now, what was the question?...

Maybe

[Roland Piquepaille]

I've contacted [any telco anywhere in the world] about the poor state of my line, and they basically ignore me.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Maybe

[Numen]

I live on a small Spanish island off the West coast of Africa. I have a 10Mb/s line, and I can hit the full throughput of this on a good torrent... I did so downloading Ubuntu... This was after contacting Telefonica shortly after the line was installed to express concern about the poor throughput and them saying yes the line wasn't set up properly but should work fine within 48 hours which it did.

At a previous apartment I lost my line after somebody basically cut through it while doing DIY somewhere in the block. It was rewired I think 3 days later.

Yes there are many bad storied about Telefonica that could be told, but my point is that I'm quite confident that I have better bandwidth here than I would have if I returned to the UK. One more reason not to go back to the UK I guess.

Re:Fast enough...

[MrNaz]

Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway.

Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit.

Unless you are a habitual downloader (a group statistically overrepresented here on Slashdot), you won't notice any difference to your web and email by moving above 1mbit. Hell, with the intelligent buffering that most video sites have, it's likely that you wouldn't even notice the difference on those sites unless you're really paying attention.

So cut it with the "we need faster broadband" BS. What we need before a 100mbit pipe is a legislative framework that ensures that consumers can actually use that 100mbit pipe without getting shagged six ways from Sunday by their ISP.

I'm looking at you, Telstra.

and in my Aussie accent, all I can say is...

[Anonymous Coward]

bloody pommie whingers

(that's a term of endearment)

How ?

[daveime]

How in God's name is the UK Government supposed to keep a record of everything you do online, if you are using these unholy fast speed internet connections ?

Re:Fast enough...

[Linker3000]

True - but then us corporate users who transfer sales & backup data between offices overnight *do* notice the problem.

Our new HQ is quite a long way from the exchange so we struggle to get above 4Mbit/sec anyway - but that's a side issue.

We have 30 satellite offices each running 1-8Mbit connections and we can get the data in overnight but if we wanted anything more 'real-time' we'd have to go fibre - and then we're talking something daft like a 10KGBP+ install to 'upgrade' to a whopping 10Mbit connection *PER SITE* - or get the connections cheaper in return for a long-term contract. Then, you'd need to factor in the monthly rental charges.

Overall, ADSL does what we need - slowly - but the price differential to the next possible speed solution is out of all proportion to the benefits.

Re:Fast enough...

[blueZ3]

Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway.

My bet is that these are closely related. If consumers knew about their comparatively low speed connection (i.e., knew enough to know they should care and how to figure it out) then they'd be pushing for faster speeds. They'd leave providers who are providing "slow broadband" and move to better ones, and the screwups would have to get right or get out of the broadband business.

But your average Peter Pint doesn't know enough to know better. (Hey, I'm not putting down you folks over the pond--the average Joe Sixpack thinks broadband is a woman's belt)

Just my two cents