Internet Congestion

Hi,

I was wondering if there is anything I can do to my computer or my modem to help with congestion problems that the ISP is having.

My ISP has been having "congestion" problems for three months now. They say they're fixing it but there doesn't seem to be any improvements. My internet is supposed to be 7 MB/s and it's currently 1 MB/s. They've told me that this is because there are too many people on and not enough space. They're attempt to help with this has been to prioritise iplayer activity at the expense of browsing as they believe iplayer to be the most popular activity...

The slow internet is very frustrating, making websites very slow and giving me very high latency when I play World of Warcraft.

Does anyone know if there is anything I can do to get a higher MB/s while my ISP "tries to fix it"? I don't hold out much hope for it getting fixed as it's been 3 months already.

I'm not very clever with computers and the internet so I'm not sure if there is specific information I could provide about my connection which would help. I'm in the UK and it's considered Broadband but I'm not sure if that's specific enough. Also, I'm on Vista and the connection is wireless from my modem. Please let me know if there is any other information I could provide. Thank you for any advice.

 

No, there is absolutely nothing you will be able to do on your end. Unfortunately, it is completely on the ISP's side. Most likely they are overselling their bandwidth and really don't have the capacity to give you your full 7Mb/s.

What I would suggest is look through the contract you signed with the company and try to find a loophole so that you can get a partial refund for not having your full quality service.

 

It would help to know who your ISP is, and what type of service - is it DSL by any chance? If it is DSL, there's a good chance the ISP can easily fix it for you, but you have to be a pest to get them to do it.

What manner of measurement are you using to determine that you are really getting only 1Mbps? Before you can take a firm stand against your ISP, you must be able to prove that your bandwidth is what you claim it is.

If you can prove it, then regardless of who the ISP is, check to see what lower bandwidth services they offer, and then contact their billing department and demand that your bill be adjusted retroactively to match the closest next-higher-than-you-are-getting bandwidth, until such time that they meet their obligation for the plan they sold you (7Mbps).

If you are on a DSL line, ask (demand!) that they swap the switchbank your line is plugged in to. Each card can only handle so much traffic, and it is not uncommon for the DSL lines to be oversubscribed. BUT.... that does not mean ALL cards in the switchbank are oversubscribed. I've seen many times where simply getting your line moved to a different bank resolves the issue.

Have you had a tech out to your location to actually measure what is coming in to the modem and what is coming out of the modem? I don't want to sound negative, but you would not be the first one who had a computer that simply could not sustain a reasonable bandwidth, usually because of some simple misconfiguration in the networking stack. A good field tech from your ISP could check that for you. Another easy test is to take your computer someplace that has a high bandwidth connection and see if it works properly with it.

These issues can be frustrating, but my experience is that the major ISPs will work with you to give you what they promised. If at first you don't get the issue resolved, ask them to escalate it to a higher level. Repeat if/when necessary, until they make good on it. Like all businesses, some of their techs will be highly skilled, but others less so. The more you escalate the issue, the higher the likelihood of getting a more skilled tech to help you.

Good luck with it.