Talk Talk and local exchange upgrade

After some initial setting-up problems with a 2.2mb service from Talk
Talk, everything settled down and I was getting a reasonably healthy
download speed of around 220-225kbps (albeit with a download
accelerator). Last week, the local exchange (Crowthorne, Berkshire)
was upgraded, I now get a message saying I'm connecting at 6.2mb on
logging on, but from the same download site I use, my speed has
dropped to around 110-130kbps. Pages hang, You Tube won't even
stream. All the usual stuff. I'm loathed to speak to Talk Talk as
frankly my experience of their customer service is that it sucks.

I'm using a Speedtouch USB model (the blue one that looks like a
stingray). Doesn't look as though there's any new drivers for this.
PC is a Dell, about a year old.

Anyone any suggestions on how to speed things up (and no, I don't
really want to change my ISP). I understand I can tweak my modem to
run at faster speeds, but how?

Any help appreciated!
P

"bixx" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> After some initial setting-up problems with a 2.2mb service from Talk
> Talk, everything settled down and I was getting a reasonably healthy
> download speed of around 220-225kbps (albeit with a download
> accelerator). Last week, the local exchange (Crowthorne, Berkshire)
> was upgraded, I now get a message saying I'm connecting at 6.2mb on
> logging on, but from the same download site I use, my speed has
> dropped to around 110-130kbps. Pages hang, You Tube won't even
> stream. All the usual stuff. I'm loathed to speak to Talk Talk as
> frankly my experience of their customer service is that it sucks.
>
> I'm using a Speedtouch USB model (the blue one that looks like a
> stingray). Doesn't look as though there's any new drivers for this.
> PC is a Dell, about a year old.
>
> Anyone any suggestions on how to speed things up (and no, I don't
> really want to change my ISP). I understand I can tweak my modem to
> run at faster speeds, but how?
>
> Any help appreciated!
> P
>
Get shut of the download accelerator programs as they will slow you down !
it seems daft but they only used to work on 33k and 56k dial-up by
compressing data. Now it will take longer to decompress and make it show
up.
It depends on how much RAM (memory) is in your computer, if running Windows
XP you will need a minimum as recommended by Microsoft of 512MB. Dell
computers are often low spec and the low price shows corners being cut by
fitting just 256MB RAM and having a large swap file on the hard drive. So
it slows the system right down. The USB connection will be slowing things
down on anything under a 3GHz processor and 512MB RAM.
You would be better buying a cheap PCI ADSL modem as that will not suffer
from the large overheads demanded by USB.
I have the same modem and used it with another ISP with no problems but it
does slow the computer down using USB!
The other alternative is a wireless router and connecting that way, or an
ADSL wired router.
Now you have a faster connection you will see how slow some web sites are!
A lot of them can not cope with demand, so at different times your
throughput will be down. For the past few nights around 10pm I have had the
same trouble with YouTube on an 8Mbps connection and I am next door to the
exchange.

"john" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "bixx" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message

> Get shut of the download accelerator programs as they will slow you down !


Most download managers like downthemall in Firefox start multiple download
sessions.
e.g. If the server on the other end is only giving you a maximum of 55k/sec
it starts five sessions at 55k/sec so the actual achieved download speed is
higher.
Its often the case when you are downloading big files that there may be a
bottleneck or throtteling somewhere and these programs do help.
They may also help you to resume the download if there is some sort of
failure (e.g. if you are on a wireless connection and the spin dryer comes
on).

Gordon Hudson wrote:

> Most download managers like downthemall in Firefox start multiple download
> sessions.
> e.g. If the server on the other end is only giving you a maximum of 55k/sec
> it starts five sessions at 55k/sec so the actual achieved download speed is
> higher.

If a server is only offering sessions at 55k/sec there is usually a
reason why.....

I went home yesterday lunchtime and even using the DAP accelerator I
was barely hitting 60kbps on multiple streams. I ran my connection
through one of the Broadband tweaking sites I had bookmarked and the
primary suggestion was to change my MTU from 1492 to 1500, OR, reset
everything - I chose the latter (which presumably lets XP choose the
settings) - and shut down as I had to get back to work.

Last night was a different thing entirely. I got the logon popup
saying I was getting 6.3mb and was able to pull down a 250mb file at
325-335kbps...around 100kbps faster than a couple of days ago. I was
pretty amazed to see the speed just keep ramping up. I haven't a clue
what the issue was, but I'm happy.

I moved to Talk Talk about a year ago and like I said, there were
teething problems. For me, two thumbs up (well until such a time as
it goes two tits up!).

John/Gordon, thank for your input.
P


On Jan 31, 8:29 am, "Gordon Hudson" <hostro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "john" <n...@fe.co.uk> wrote in message
>
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>
>
> > "bixx" <rubb...@nancyjohnson.co.uk> wrote in message
> > Get shut of the download accelerator programs as they will slow you down !
>
> Most download managers like downthemall in Firefox start multiple download
> sessions.
> e.g. If the server on the other end is only giving you a maximum of 55k/sec
> it starts five sessions at 55k/sec so the actual achieved download speed is
> higher.
> Its often the case when you are downloading big files that there may be a
> bottleneck or throtteling somewhere and these programs do help.
> They may also help you to resume the download if there is some sort of
> failure (e.g. if you are on a wireless connection and the spin dryer comes
> on).

"bixx" wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> After some initial setting-up problems with a 2.2mb ....... download speed
> of around 220-225kbps > dropped to around 110-130kbps.

Hi bixx, I may be wrong /waits to get shot down\ but it's sounds like you've
been maxed and are in the "10day training" period. If I was you I would give
it another week and report back.

Cheers