BT Broadband suddenly very slow on Mac OS X 10.5.8

[Mrs_Frisby]

Hello,

I'm posting on behalf of my dad as his broadband is now so slow as to be almost unusable. He lives in the Suffolk countryside but should still be able to receive broadband speeds of up to at least 1.5mb/s on his local exchange. His BT broadband service has never been brilliant but has recently slowed right down. He has an iMac 2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo running OS X 10.5.8. He has tried upgrading to a BT Home 3.0 router but this has not improved his broadband speed. I have tried to run the BT speedtester but I can't get it to work because it says Java is not installed despite it appearing to be enabled as a plugin. I have tried this in both Safari and Firefox. I have asked him to try the speedtester available on the uSwitch website which has recorded a download speed of only 0.2 and upload of 0.1mb/s.  I would be very greatful if anyone has any suggestions as I am going to visit him tomorrow. I intend to try plugging the hub directly into the main socket via a microfilter. I also plan to try upgrading his operating system to snow leopard but I doubt that this will improve his connection. The quality of the phone line seems to have decreased recently too.  Is my only option to try ringing BT customer services?

Thank-you!

[john46]

Hi Welcome to the forums

Here are some help pages done by CL Keith http://www.btinternet.com/~cbeddoe/speed/Speed.html

also post your full hub stats details shown in this link http://www.btinternet.com/~cbeddoe/others/adslstats.html

Can you also post the full results fromBT Speedtest speedtester.bt.com

Have you tried connecting to the test socket at the rear of the master socket   

Have you tried the quiet line test? - dial 17070 option 2 - should hear nothing - best done with a corded phone. if cordless phone you may hear a 'dull hum' which is normal

This is a customer to customer self help forum the only BT presence here are the forum moderators

[Mrs_Frisby]

Hello, thanks for the swift reply. I can't post the results of the BT speedtest because as stated in my orginal post I can't get it to work because it tells me I do not have Java installed (however I'm fairly sure that it comes as standard with OS X 10.5.8 and appears to be enabled in plug in preferences). I am not currently at my dad's house but plan to visit tomorrow when I will try connecting to the master test socket. Will also try quiet line test.

[Mrs_Frisby]

Will also post hub stats tomorrow.

[john46]

Ok please post back when you can

[Mrs_Frisby]

Hello,

Have upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6.3 and now able to run BT speedtester:

Also here are hub stats:

Ran Uswitch speed tester again:

This suggests that we should be able to get up to 2.5Mb on this exchange.

Have tried quiet line test, line is not silent, there is low level interference on wire connected handset. Have tried connecting hub directly to master socket which has given a slight improvement in performance but still to my mind unacceptably slow. Could not repeat BT speedtest as limited to one test per hour. Ran Uswitch test again:

I know that he has just changed from Hub 2 to Hub 3 and it will take time to settle but broadband speed had already declined notably (to the point of being barely usable) on Hub2 before switching to Hub3.

Any further advice gratefully received....

[john46]

H your Ip profile has dropped to 135k and your noise margin has increased from the default 6db to 19db plus this is due to a number of disconnections and restarts you need to leave the connection alone and ensure the hub is powered up 24/7 with no restarts for the next 3/5 days if there is no improvement by then we will need to get you in touch with the forum moderators who will be able to get your connection reset

[imjolly]

with your attenaution I would hope for about 2.5/3mb connection speed  on a good line with no noise.  connection teime is only 18hrs is that due to manual reset or when hub change?

are you connected directly to the master or better the test socket?  is there other sockets in the home apart from master?

[Mrs_Frisby]

Hello,

Thanks again for quick replies. The 18 hour connection time is since the hub change yesterday. I am a bit worried about the master socket. It is very old so I am thinking about trying a modern replacement. There is no test socket but I am connected directly to the master, which as stated above has given an incremental improvement from 0.1 to 0.2Mbs. There are no other sockets although there are two telephones on splitters (with microfilters) on the same line. The modem is currently connected to the master via a microfilter splitter. I am fairly sure that the slow broadband problem was pre-existing and there is unlikely to be dramatic improvement even if hub is allowed to settle. Do we really have to wait another 3-5 days?

[john46]

yes you will have to wait up to 5 days for the exchange equipment to see the line as stable again I am afraid there are no shortcuts after that time the forum mods will be able to reset for you if needed most times it resets automatically