Slow Upload Speed

[saxacat]

Hi

I'm looking for an explanation of how upload speed works.

Although I have an FTTC connection, my broadband is relatively slow; I'm told by Openreach engineers this is down to the fact that our estate has a copper/aluminium mix of cabling, we are 700m from the cabinet and download is 17Mbps and upload is 0.77Mbps (used to get 1.2Mbps upload on ADSL).

I want to know why my upload is so slow; is upload speed a factor of download speed?

I cannot understand why, if the cabling can support 17Mbps down, why I can't get a couple of Mbps up.

I'd appreciate any help in understanding how this works.

Thanks

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

@saxacat 

This chart will explain it. Most of the upload bandwidth is located at the top end of the frequency band. This is the part of the band that has the most loss, when you have either thin copper cables, or aluminium cable.

Look at the VDSL image, and you will see that a large upload part of the spectrum is between 8.5 and 12MHz, which is going to be somewhat restricted on your line.

As downloading is more important than uploading, this does not really matter unless you are uploading very large files.

You must be quite close to the exchange if you got a better upload speed on ADSL, but I assume you upgraded because you wanted a faster download speed, although I doubt the difference was worth it, as your ADSL speed must have been quite good anyway.

[saxacat]

Thank you @Keith_Beddoe , that helps me understand the issue. 

I used to get 13Mbps download on ADSL; I was the first to be connected when they upgraded the cabinet in 2013, I was told I'd get downloads in the low 30s and upload of about 8Mbps.  I got 19Mbps down and 0.5Mbps up (download has decreased due to a couple of line faults over the years, that have involved being swapped onto different pairs). None of my neighbours thought it worth upgrading once they became aware, but since I'd made the jump I just hoped things might eventually improve 🙄

Unfortunately, as our cables are buried and not ducted, nothing is going to change anytime soon, but at least I understand the issue better now, thanks again.

[Keith_Beddoe]

I am on ADSL, and get a similar speed to what you had. I am not using a BT Home hub.

As there is only the wife and I living here, the speed I get is more than adequate.

Line Status:Connected

DSL Modulation Type:ADSL_2plus

Annex Type:Annex A

	Upstream	Downstream
Current Rate (Kbps)	1195	12180
Max Rate (Kbps)	1204	12088
SNR Margin (dB)	6.7	2.9
Line Attenuation (dB)	20.6	36.5
Errors (Pkts)	0	0

[welshgit]

when i was on adsl (copper) due to the distance from the exchange (6.7km )i was getting down 1.5 up 0.2 then once fttc was put in (and I'm still 830m from cab ) my speed shot  up to  60 down and 12 up this speed is high as i have nice 0.9 thick copper  from the cab to the pole and d/w 12 (0.9 ) from pole to socket  this speed was great  , then about 4-5 years ago bt changed my snr from 6 to 3 and my down speed changed to 73 but my up stayed the same until about 3 weeks ago and for some reason it has gone up to 19 .openreach have said that fttp will be in the village before end 2020 , not seen and work being done so far