Broadband Speeds - Lack of Bandwidth to the Home

[engine]

With so many people at home with lock-downs, i'm wondering how the broadband data downloads patterns have changed.
At an office there's probably a "thick pipe" of some sort, and the type of data would be different, however, unless you are lucky to have fibre, I would imagine that the vast majority of people have copper to the home, and a contention ratio that is always going to challenge the bandwidth over time, probably until the pips squeak.

No doubt, many are at home using video to communicate, and are streaming, or downloading movies and shows.

I'm at home at the moment and i'm getting
Download 8.49 Mbps
Upload 9.15 Mbps

Yes, you read that correct. Upload is faster than download.
I'd normally expect to get around 50Mbps download, so the connection is certainly challenged right now.

How are the rest of you fairing?

[lammert]

I am on cable with a SOHO subscription of 300 Mbps upload and 40 Mbps download. Currently, it measures:

Download: 265.2 Mbps
Upload: 39.8 Mbps

I'm still happy :)

[not2easy]

37K up, 698K down
I'm used to it and yes, use it for Netflix/hulu/Prime (@720 res, and not without the occasional caching hang) :(

[engine]

@lammert yours seems very good.

My subscription at home is for way more than i'm getting, and i'd probably have a case with the provider, but it's most likely because of the contention ratio and extremes of downloads going on at every house in my street, which would all be served by one cabinet a street away.
Under normal circumstances, it's usually more than adequate, but these are not normal times.

@not2easy, that's very poor, but if that's what you're used to... Not making excuses, it's pretty bad.

[not2easy]

I should clarify this, as averages are misleading. The official description of my plan is: Residential 6M/3M. The numbers quoted above are a 30 day average. For today's first 4 hours, it is at 37/707K On occasion it is faster than those numbers, on occasion it goes away while accessing a site. A desktop app monitors the current status (that's where the average is from) and I know I have seen it at 5.90Mbs while downloading updates. My router has dual speeds and I stick to the lower bandwidth connection so I don't need to switch out when TV is streaming. My numbers are so low because of my personal usage, they don't measure incoming bandwidth but usage. My connection is an assigned IP via radio wifi. It would be better if there weren't all these tall trees around and if the signal wasn't coming from a lower altitude, but it is acceptable as is. That 707K download for today is because I've only opened a few windows and nothing with high demand. It is not as bad as it may seem. I also have a hughes satellite dish, it is worse.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Unaffected here, though I'm in a rural part of the UK. 80Mb/20Mb package, getting 65Mb/18Mb which is pretty normal. I'm with BT.

[lucy24]

7-and-a-bit Mbps down, .5-.65 up, based on three different tests picked from search results (deliberately excluding my own ISP, since it would be to their advantage to fudge the results).

I don’t think I ever consciously realized that it’s megabits not megabytes (even though I do know what a baud it).

Where I live, all high-speed internet is ultimately down to a single physical cable running to the Bay Area under or alongside a somewhat vulnerable highway, so we may not be subject to as much variation. We’re good as long as the highway isn’t washed out and CalTrans doesn’t accidentally cut the cable.

[tangor]

Oddly, I'm getting near triple what I actually contract for. Could it be an abundance of caution that has upped everyone's speed so no one is left behind?

Nah... probably a glitch. Certainly don't expect it to remain that way.

And if next month's bill reflects A HIGHER RATE than what I bargained for there will be a polite discussion about arbitrary and non-authorized upgrades to my satisfactory service at a "bargain" price.

[engine]

I spoke with a neighbour and they are far worse off, and not much further from the cabinet. It's never been worse, they said.
It's difficult to measure their actual connection, but I tried a video call and that suffered badly, so we switched to audio only, and that was terrible, too.

[lammert]

Is there any relation with the Ugh! 4.6Mbps Download [webmasterworld.com] topic a few months ago? If your neighbor also experiences problems, it could be an issue with the ISP equipment in your street or cross-talk between multiple wire pairs in the street cable. With cross-talk issues, your wire pair picks up communications of neighbors and vice-versa. Cross-talk problems occur more often in the download path because it uses higher frequencies than the upload path. Telco cables have a higher impedance and worse signal-to-noise ratio at higher frequencies than lower frequencies.

[engine]

Thanks, but, no connection to the other problem. The new router works just fine, and when i test the speed outside of busy times it's back to what i'd expect to get. In fact, the new router is easily 10 or more percent faster than the ISP-supplied device.

I'm pretty sure this is simply congestion as a result of everyone being home.

[lammert]

Ahh, understood. I didn't realize the bandwidth problems were only certain parts of the day.

[graeme_p]

I am getting 31 up 7 down with the Ofcom (UK telecoms regulator) test which is typical and within my ISPs estimate of speeds when I signed up.

In the UK, Zen Internet, edge of town (fields next to suburban like rows of houses) location.

[engine]

I just tried the ofcom speed test
Download 4.5 Mbps
Upload 8.7 Mbps

It seems worse today.

[RedBar]

Interestingly I hadn't given this much thought since I haven't had any issues whatsoever until a couple of days ago when I uploaded a 1.2 GB file to a folder for a friend and it took me 3 hours!

My ISP specialises in high quality download speeds for both commercial and domestic users and I've never considered big file uploads before since my sites are designed for speed etc.

Download 20.0 Mbps
Upload 1.0 Mbps

Absolutely as advertised by them and what I've had for years now, I've never found the necessity to upgrade since everything's always worked fine.

However, this Saturday afternoon, whilst my sites are all working fast and the Google / DDG search pages are coming up ok, links to nearly all results are unbelievably slow ... It's a long. long time since I experienced this slowness / inability to connect.

[lucy24]

It's a long. long time since I experienced this slowness / inability to connect.

That’s to be expected, since everyone’s online. What I’ve especially noticed is that YouTube’s entry page--the part with nothing but thumbnails and titles--takes forever to load up, though individual pages don't take longer than usual. Same goes for selected other popular sites. Sometimes there will be several seconds of wondering if the stylesheets will ever kick in, and boy do some sites look weird without styles.