Broadband woes

Computers & Tech
1

Advice requested regarding broadband speeds/connectivity. Please bear in mind that I’m middle aged, not incredibly tech savvy and also a bit thick.

Our Broadband is quite regularly shit. We never reach the guaranteed minimum of 20 Mbps and currently are getting less than 5 Mbps. I now have a company supplied PC connected via ethernet and yesterday performed a speed test. I was amazed to get speeds of 50-60 Mbps, far better than anything ever achieved via wi-fi or our other (ancient) desktop. It’s a fibre connection and allegedly TalkTalk’s latest router.

Any ideas? Or should I just burn the lot in the back garden and revert to two tin cans connected by a piece of string?

2

It sounds like the issue is with the wifi - ie router to wireless devices. Your broadband is OK.

3

Cheers, but why do I also get dreadful speeds on our other desktop which is also connected by ethernet?

4

Is that desktop a piece of shit computer?

5

Of course. :slightly_smiling_face:

6

It’s important to understand that web pages are all huge now. The average size of a web page is greater than the game of Doom, which is probably the last playable game on that computer. You’re asking a lot to expect a good experience even browsing the net on a really old machine. You can feed it with 50Mb/s, but it can’t process modern web pages fast enough.

7

Try this Speedtest. It will tell you if your pc is a potential bottleneck

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

Have you logged into the router to check the connection speed it reports?

Your laptop using WiFi may have a very old WiFi adapter too.

8

What is damnation’s name is buffer bloat?. Why do I have it? Will peppermint tea sort it?

3 Likes
9

Thanks folks, I’ll have another day tomorrow of disconnecting/moving/testing.

Technology is overrated. :frowning:

10

Works for me
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Sometimes!

1 Like
11

Same result with that test as I get with any other speed test

12

Says the man who complained he couldn’t do video calling from a moving boat in the middle of the oggin :rofl::rofl::rofl:

13

So, a visit from Mr Openreach has restored our connection to something resembling decent. No faults found within the house, he just reset the line connection. This has previously resolved problems we have had but seemed beyond the wankers at TalkTalk, despite my numerous requests to do so.
Hopefully we’ll have a few months of stability before I have to start the whole tedious process again…

14

There’s your problem, lady.

15

I had very few problems with them. And if you use chat rather than phoning, things usually got sorted ok. And they were cheap.

I only left as I wanted FTTP and they couldn’t tell me when they could offer it.

16

I found them absolutely crap. Of course YMMV.

17

And it did :rofl:

18

I’m pleased for you.

Really, I am.

3 Likes
19

I only renewed the contract because we were days into lockdown and I couldn’t risk replacing shit broadband with no broadband at all if we switched provider. When this contract is up I’ll go elsewhere.

1 Like
20

Can anyone shed any light on what the bloody hell is going on here.

I’ve got a PlusNet router, it’s averagely shit. It and my laptop are having serious issues though.

Speedtest on my iPad looks like this;

Photo 24-11-2020, 11 52 20
Photo 24-11-2020, 11 52 202388×1668 180 KB

A speedtest run on the laptop straight afterwards, looks like this

wifi shite
wifi shite1901×1436 117 KB

I have seen ping >1,000ms

Both are connected to the 5GHz network. The wifi on everything (including the previous laptop) was fine and the wireless performance of the laptop seems OK connected to other things. The hardware settings, when connected to the router show as follows. Any ideas why it’s such a dog?

image
image3840×2160 726 KB