9 January 2009

Slow Internet Access since Christmas?

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I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed the very slow internet browsing speeds that have plagued some Canberra ISPs since just after Christmas?

At least two ISPs that seem to be affected are iiNet and Optus. There are Whirlpool threads on this here and here.

Theories range from secret government internet filtering trials, to the usual excuse of incompetence within Telstra somewhere.

Anyone?

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I’m with Velocity and my D/L speeds have been terrible since Boxing Day. Word is that Telstra have made a “change” without prior notification to anyone that has affected all “non Telstra ISP’s” and that the scheduled fix (by Telstra) is will occur on or around 19/1, if they are not too busy…..

Just to update people on the latest I’ve heard.
Telstra know there is a fault. They know what the fault is.
They have scheduled a fix. On January 20!
I wish I were joking.

Mine seems a bit up and down. Sometimes getting the regular 60k/s (a huge improvement on what it’s been) then a minute later I’ll be back to dial up speeds.

I am on 3G mobile – has been insanely slow for several days now…glad it is not just me. Wreaking havoc with everquestII :(.

I hadn’t noticed much slowdown, but if it’s only affecting people on resold Telstra ADSL1 then that would makes sense as I’m on iinet Naked DSL

I’m with Telstra & have been running slow i have noticed, last nite was bad 30secs or more to load a page (broadband)
Hope it gets betta soon

happening to me too.. adsl2+ with node running at half speed. Monash exchange
will wait for the holidays to be done with but if its still slow ill make a call

Madman said :

I’ve noticed my Transact/Netspeed being going alot slower since new years.

mention it to brian in the whirlpool thread. he may be able to tell you what is going on.

I’ve noticed my Transact/Netspeed being going alot slower since new years.

We’ve heard from our upstream providers that the Telstra’s fiddling with DSLAMs on Boxing day was badly handled, and the fix is due tonight. So it seems like the same issue.

Deceit,
I’m wondering if the problems on non-iiNet, with similar symptoms, will be resolved by the same fix?

Must be nearly fixed:

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/386726026.png[/IMG][/URL]

Optus speed – not quite as fast as “normal” but OK.

tylersmayhem12:01 pm 09 Jan 09

I’m with Spectra. My iiNet ADSL2+ has been fine.

x2

If people didn’t routinely block ICMP “Fragmentation Needed” packets then you’d be able to find exactly where the packets were being dropped.

Belles,
Thanks. By confirming it’s the MTU issue with iiNet, that gives us some better idea of what step in the process the whole thing is failing on (and it’s not the original suspect provider)

We have had problems with iinet and as Aurelius said, my partner played around with the MTU settings and after a while it all started working properly again. If we put it back to the default iinet settings then it stops working again.

My partner was on the phone with iinet at one point for 2 hours, for them to tell us it wasn’t there problem it was telstra because we were getting 100% data loss, a telstra guy come and loked at the mine and connected no problem with no data loss, connected back into iinet, and the problems started again.

When it gets fixed, nobody knows.

It has been rather frustrating to say the least 🙂

Happens every year around this time. The school holidays coupled with kiddies getting new computers for Christmas leads to increased traffic. Things settle down again when school goes back.

Using Internode on their own DSLAM (Weston Creek exch.). No issues here.

Aurelius said :

At the ISP I work for (neither of those mentioned above), ADSL connections have been f***ed over by something upstream from us. Our main supplier has been denying all along there is anything going on (despite them doing some upgrades on Boxing Day, when all the problems began).
A short-term fix we’ve discovered works in the interim has been to alter the MTU setting within the router used to connect to 1432 instead of the normal 1492. However, this plays havoc with VPNs and secure sites (such as bank websites).
Our network engineers and manager are screaming to anyone in the different upstream companies to get it fixed, but have been unsuccessful thus far.

Aurelius, is your main supplier a national outfit?

there was talk of an issue re failover services within a couple of wholesalers, just not telstra.

the old TID dual pipe seems to be allowing me to get great bandwidth here in the office, and adequate till upgrade at home.

what is the router you are using?

I have just put a bluecoat box on our network, and now i love bluecoat. the proxy caching has reduced our call to web incidence, and we all can see the same site multiple times prior to refresh.

At the ISP I work for (neither of those mentioned above), ADSL connections have been f***ed over by something upstream from us. Our main supplier has been denying all along there is anything going on (despite them doing some upgrades on Boxing Day, when all the problems began).
A short-term fix we’ve discovered works in the interim has been to alter the MTU setting within the router used to connect to 1432 instead of the normal 1492. However, this plays havoc with VPNs and secure sites (such as bank websites).
Our network engineers and manager are screaming to anyone in the different upstream companies to get it fixed, but have been unsuccessful thus far.

Weren’t trials of the new totalitarian filtering system supposed to begin at the start of the year? And if I remember rightly, iiNet was one of the few signatories.

They were supposed to start Christmas Eve, but were delayed for an undisclosed reason.

Last I heard they were also saying that the testing would not involve the public.

my telstra internet connection has been the same as before – they are upgrading me for free to a 1.5 / 512 offering, currently on 512/128.

Hmmm. Another slow ADSL1 (Kaleen) here. I’m with iiNet.

Weren’t trials of the new totalitarian filtering system supposed to begin at the start of the year? And if I remember rightly, iiNet was one of the few signatories.

Growling Ferret9:08 am 09 Jan 09

My ADSL1 with Velocity in Gungahlin was slower than normal last night – I assumed it was just updating patches as the laptop had not been switched on for a month…

Same as the local media and its problems: it’s the work experience kid/s on while everyone else is on holidays.

I’m with Spectra. My iiNet ADSL2+ has been fine.

Reading the threads, it looks like it’s confined to people who are on Telstra hardware (ADSL1). My iiNet ADSL2+ link has had no problems.

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