I was reminded again today of the old adage that even when you think you know what the problem probably is, until you measure it, you’re likely to be wrong. This applies particularly to factors that impede your internet speed.
The ADSL internet bandwidth package we signed up for, many moons ago, was 3 Mbps. I know, that seems laughably slow to many of you, but I don’t download video much and it’s adequate for my needs. On a whim, Tim decided to test the speed and found it to be only 1.14 Mbps (even when taking out everything in the way, such as firewall and router). We tested a few times, and got similar results. So eventually we called up the ISP and complained, they ran their tests and found nothing, and as a last resort from their side, offered to send us a new modem.
Now the model I had was less than a year old, a Thomson Speedtouch ST516 V6, which I’d bought when I had trouble connecting last year. So I was doubtful that it would turn out to be an issue with the modem, more concerned that it might be an issue with the phone wiring in this old house. But hey, it doesn’t hurt to try a new modem, so we agreed.
A couple of days later, a new Thomson Speedtouch ST516 V6 modem shows up in the mail. I plug it in, run speedtest.net again, and all of a sudden we’re getting 2.12 Mbps, a good-sized increase and much closer to what we’re paying for. (The house wiring and various other factors probably make up the rest).
So now I’m puzzled. Two modems, from the outside exactly the same, with the same model number, bought 11 months apart, with very different results. It’s not like there are user-configurable jump pins on the back that could be set wrongly. The only thing I can think of is that I got a dud with the first modem. Anyone have other explanations?
Presumably you plugged the old modem back in the verify it was still producing the slow rate of download? This rules out arbitrary changes from the ISP.
This is probably a redundant suggestion, but make sure you have the little filter dongles in front of *all* the POTS devices in the house other than the ADSL modem.
If you make enough noise, Telus will send someone out to your house, test the hell out of your wiring, and possibly run new wire. They did it for us at our old house, and our reliability went through the roof.
At our new house, once they sorted out the SNAFU resulting from the previous occupant’s non-Telus home phone service, and once I remembered to install the dongle in front of the landline, we’re getting 13MBits out of the maximum 15. Not too shabby for $45/month.
Oh, and our modem is a ST516 too, it’s been rock solid since the ancient wiring was worked around.
Well, modems are mostly software these days, so you might have newer firmware and then there is a lot of magic such as “training”.
Quite often turning everything off for a while and putting it back on again /could/ result in a different port, which can make a big difference, especially if yours has been flagged as unreliable and capped. It’s magical and dependent on the ISP, who might have coincidentally spotted a problem with your port or not wanted to admit to it.
Just to brag, I just speed tested my home broadband and got 52.4 Mp/s down 4.65 Mb/s up, 20ms ping, and am a good candidate for 100Mb/s as soon as they roll it out in my area. Fibre is the answer!
i agree with paul, perhaps it’s firmware or a bad port. Failing that it’s magic 🙂 !
the older wiring in a house usually does not come into play as your modem requires only 1 jack (others do not matter) and the loop had to come to your house several kms. dsl filters installed ‘correctly’ are very important! plug filter into wall, then device into filter other wise it is installed backwards. no filter on modem! modems do not fail in this manner and i suspect the software builds are different hence the speed differential