High ping and low download and upload internet speed

[subzarbi3]

Hi there,

Hopefully someone can help me with my issue. For the past few days now, my broadband at home have been really bad. Last week the smart hub was restarting every 5 minutes. This have fortunately stop but recently ( past 4 days) we have been getting really slow internet. I did try the bt troubleshooter and speed test, but as the speed test reached 99%, I receive the prompt "we're sorry, something went wrong".

Knowing its not the best option I tried to find out what's my internet using speedtest.net. Even at 5am where I believe the internet traffic won't be that crowded, I get a ping of 90ms, download speed of 8Mbps and upload of 0.36Mbps. Normally my internet speed is around 24Mpbs at this time when we didn't have this issue.

I also tried to do a tracert, and here is what I got when I tracert google.co.uk

Tracing route to google.co.uk [2a00:1450:4009:809::2003]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms broadband.bt.com [2a00:23c5:ba03:e600:9a1e:19ff:fefc:b781]
2 96 ms 105 ms 90 ms 2a00:2302::1100:203:22b
3 * * 107 ms 2a00:2302::1103:100:32
4 98 ms 104 ms 99 ms 2a00:2302::1103:100:3b
5 * 115 ms * 2a00:2380:3013:9000::26
6 103 ms 106 ms 95 ms 2a00:2380:13::e7
7 90 ms 97 ms 109 ms 2a00:2380:2010:3000::27
8 89 ms 99 ms 112 ms 2a00:1450:807e::1
9 95 ms 112 ms 106 ms 2001:4860:0:1::c4a
10 112 ms * * 2001:4860:0:135d::13
11 87 ms 90 ms 88 ms 2607:f8b0:e000:8000::6
12 117 ms 89 ms * 2607:f8b0:e000:8000::5
13 118 ms 106 ms 92 ms 2001:4860:0:1::23
14 93 ms 100 ms 107 ms lhr25s10-in-x03.1e100.net [2a00:1450:4009:809::2003]

Trace complete.

I'm not sure why I'm getting >100ms on the second hop. This has been like this for the past few days. As soon as someone in the house loads one youtube video, internet is unusable for the other residents. Hopefully someone in the community can help me.

[subzarbi3]

I made a mistake, we currently have the Fibre 1 package which is the fastest option we can apply for, in our flat. We are students and we really rely on internet. Hopefully someone can help us solve this issue.

[Keith_Beddoe]

Is there any noise on your phone calls? Dial 17070 and select option 2, there should be no noise between the announcements.

[subzarbi3]

Hi there,

Thanks for replying. We actually don't have a phone connected to our phone line. Is there any other way is our phone line has any noise?

[Keith_Beddoe]

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@subzarbi3 wrote:

Hi there,

Thanks for replying. We actually don't have a phone connected to our phone line. Is there any other way is our phone line has any noise?

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A noisy line is the most common cause of disconnections or poor performance.

For basic testing, a cheap wired phone which costs less than £10, is all you need to prove it.
You need to check at the test socket to be sure the fault is external.

If the line is noisy, then reporting it as a noisy phone line, difficulty in making calls, means it will get looked at quicker.

High resistance line faults are very common, and are caused by the lack of current flowing through the line due to people not using a landline phone occasionally, even just to check for dial tone.

A bit more detail.

You may find this interesting.

Why do you need phone connected to your line?

If the phone line is noisy or has a high resistance connection, then that will affect your broadband.

The lack of any current flowing through the wires due to the lack of a phone providing an occasional loop, causes oxidisation at any joints which causes the line resistance to increase. This does not show up on a normal line test.

There are quite a few people that do not plug a house phone in to check dial tone every so often. This can cause issues with broadband. Also, if one wire has become disconnected (quite common), then that will cause no broadband,  constant disconnections, or a very low speed.

The solution is to get hold of a cheap (less than £10) wired phone, and plug it into the phone socket to see if you get dial tone.

Then dial 17070 (free call)  and select option 2, quiet line test, and see if there is any noise on the line.

If you do not get dial tone, or there is noise on the line, then you need to report it as either no dial tone, or a noisy line. Do not mention the broadband problem, otherwise it will end up in the wrong fault queue, and take much longer to be fixed. There are plenty of people who can fix phone faults, but not as many broadband people.

Once the phone fault is fixed, then the broadband will get better.

You may find that the very act of plugging a phone in, and getting dial tone, fixes your broadband, as it breaks down any corrosion.