Pipex 1Mb line

I have a 1Mb line with Pipex. According to my router, it's actually 2Mb
throttled back to 1Mb. However running tests on adslguide.com, it's only on
the rare occasions that it measures 800Kb+ speeds. I've ran it twice tonight
already (with over an hour between tests) and I'm getting a true speed
reading of 463Kb and 372Kb respectively. I've had it go down as low as
187Kb.

I was consistently getting 480Kb+ when I had the 512Kb service. Just tried
downloading a 15.6MB file. It took 3m 40sec with an average transfer rate of
72.8KB/S.

Is this normal ?

?uzzled wrote:
> I have a 1Mb line with Pipex. According to my router, it's actually 2Mb
> throttled back to 1Mb. However running tests on adslguide.com, it's only on
> the rare occasions that it measures 800Kb+ speeds. I've ran it twice tonight
> already (with over an hour between tests) and I'm getting a true speed
> reading of 463Kb and 372Kb respectively. I've had it go down as low as
> 187Kb.
>
> I was consistently getting 480Kb+ when I had the 512Kb service. Just tried
> downloading a 15.6MB file. It took 3m 40sec with an average transfer rate of
> 72.8KB/S.
>
> Is this normal ?

It seems to be when Pipex throttle a connection in this way.

My in-laws were on the Pipex Solo 256k service, but their router was synced at
2 Megs. Download speeds were all over the place, but never above 170k, and
typically around 110k. I tried MTU/RWIN tweaks but could not improve things,
and Pipex support were no help at all. Recently they moved to Pipex's 'Start'
PAYG tariff that is provided at the max speed your line can support. Download
speeds were a consistent 1.6 Mb/s, and after more MTU tweaking are now at 2.0
(inc overheads).

The moral of the story seems to be to be connected at your line's 'native'
speed ?



--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005 22:37:59 -0000, "?uzzled" <(E-Mail Removed)> opined,
with wit and/or wisdom,:

>I have a 1Mb line with Pipex. According to my router, it's actually 2Mb
>throttled back to 1Mb. However running tests on adslguide.com, it's only on
>the rare occasions that it measures 800Kb+ speeds. I've ran it twice tonight
>already (with over an hour between tests) and I'm getting a true speed
>reading of 463Kb and 372Kb respectively. I've had it go down as low as
>187Kb.
>
>I was consistently getting 480Kb+ when I had the 512Kb service. Just tried
>downloading a 15.6MB file. It took 3m 40sec with an average transfer rate of
>72.8KB/S.
>
>Is this normal ?

I've been on a throttled 2Mb>1Mb connection with Pipex since February
- after the initial unthrottled period I had 6 months or so of a
rock-steady 1Mb (actually 1.1Mb) connection until one day it started
fluctuating, since when I have never sen it go over about 925Kb.

Having said that, it does still average about 875Kb, nowhere near as
bad as your connection by the sound of it.
--
Dreams are like water
Colourless
And Dangerous

?uzzled wrote:
> I have a 1Mb line with Pipex. According to my router, it's actually 2Mb
> throttled back to 1Mb. However running tests on adslguide.com, it's only on
> the rare occasions that it measures 800Kb+ speeds. I've ran it twice tonight
> already (with over an hour between tests) and I'm getting a true speed
> reading of 463Kb and 372Kb respectively. I've had it go down as low as
> 187Kb.
>
> I was consistently getting 480Kb+ when I had the 512Kb service. Just tried
> downloading a 15.6MB file. It took 3m 40sec with an average transfer rate of
> 72.8KB/S.
>
> Is this normal ?

No I get my 1mbit OK from pipex - maybe there are contention issues at
your exchange have a look on www.samknows.com .

FWIW pipex police you down to 1mbit whereas if you were actually synced
at 1mbit bt would shape you to 1 mbit. The difference is that no
buffering happens with policing - this is nice for latency on shared
lines, but does mean that the rwin tweaks that people do to get good
speed test results won't help. Also speed tests tend to be short and
with policing will show lower rates than you will really get long term.

Andy.

Thanks for the replies guys. My connection was fine at 512K and was really
good at 2Mb. However they wanted £34/month for the 2Mb connection. Never had
any issues though.

It has been since this throttling that I've seen 'pauses' in connection.
This is very annoying for online gaming. Can I ask Pipex to be put onto a
proper 1Mb line instead of a throttled one ? My experience with their
customer service hasn't been so bad (as they kept messing up my billing)
except they don't get back to you when they say they will.

I've looked into migrating to another ISP but I can't seem to find one that
offers newsgroups in their package. Is usenet access so common now that they
don't mention it as a service anymore ?

?uzzled wrote:
> Thanks for the replies guys. My connection was fine at 512K and was really
> good at 2Mb. However they wanted £34/month for the 2Mb connection. Never had
> any issues though.

If 2meg was OK then maybe there is something about the policing that's
messing things up for you. You can now get 2meg off peak and 1meg 6-12
for the same price - you don't get free ng access anymore, though and
possibly get locked in for another year - I was thinking of moving to
Metronet (not going to now plusnet have them) so I haven't looked at the
detail, but you would get to compare every day if you changed. I think
you have to pay by Debit rather than CC to get it at £23.99.

>
> It has been since this throttling that I've seen 'pauses' in connection.
> This is very annoying for online gaming. Can I ask Pipex to be put onto a
> proper 1Mb line instead of a throttled one ?

Yes - but I read once that they needed several resyncs per hour to do
it. If you are a profitable customer and ask for your MAC then they may
be more flexible.

I would try to get some line/error/resync stats from your modem to see
how bad things are. As you were allright before on 2meg (you still
download at 2meg anyway - sortof) I would also try checking your own
wiring/location of modem etc if anything has changed.

Andy.

My experience with their
> customer service hasn't been so bad (as they kept messing up my billing)
> except they don't get back to you when they say they will.
>
> I've looked into migrating to another ISP but I can't seem to find one that
> offers newsgroups in their package. Is usenet access so common now that they
> don't mention it as a service anymore ?
>
>