Does your internet feel slow at the moment? What impact will this have on home working?

py_megapixel · 22 Mar 2020

I'm personally finding that my internet connection is incredibly slow, presumably due to greater use than usual in light of many people being told to start - or at least prepare to start - working frrom home.

I'm sure this will cause problems for some people because they simply will be unable to access the facilities they need to work from home, and their workplace is no longer open due to COVID-19

Anyone having similar issues.

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Bletchleyite · 22 Mar 2020

Short answer, no, not really.

Most work stuff is low bandwidth - but please do turn off your video

Darandio · 22 Mar 2020

All good here. Although I imagine there is inevitably going to be some strain on those not on cable, despite those in charge claiming there are masses of capability still available.

Bantamzen · 22 Mar 2020

py_megapixel said:
I'm personally finding that my internet connection is incredibly slow, presumably due to greater use than usual in light of many people being told to start - or at least prepare to start - working frrom home.

I'm sure this will cause problems for some people because they simply will be unable to access the facilities they need to work from home, and their workplace is no longer open due to COVID-19

Anyone having similar issues.

To pass a few hours yesterday I set about downloading some PS+ games that I had stored up. Usually a 10GB game file will download in a few minutes, yesterday it took over an hour. Now it might have been down to PSN being exceptionally busy, but that was very slow indeed. And just checking the speed I'm getting about 45Mb down on a 150Mb connection. Not terrible, and shouldn't compromise my work's connection, but yeah there is definitely a slow down.

Cowley · 22 Mar 2020

Ours is always slow! I did wonder if it might be the time for all mobile phone providers to allow unlimited data for their users for the next couple of months.
It doesn’t seem fair to me that they’ll be profiting from this situation as people purchase extra data just to be able to get online for work etc.

Bletchleyite · 22 Mar 2020

Most work stuff is pretty low bandwidth. It's streaming video that hits it.

Skie · 22 Mar 2020

There are a lot of people working from home who are now realising their home broadband isn’t up to much. If you’ve just been streaming the odd show on your smart tv or pootling around the web, suddenly having 2 people working remotely (video/audio conferencing and transferring files about) and kids bored on YouTube is exposing how poor the copper based “fibre” services are.

FTTP and Cable will power though intense use, fake fibre and ADSL won’t.

The_Train · 22 Mar 2020

Cowley said:
Ours is always slow! I did wonder if it might be the time for all mobile phone providers to allow unlimited data for their users for the next couple of months.
It doesn’t seem fair to me that they’ll be profiting from this situation as people purchase extra data just to be able to get online for work etc.

Most mobile providers do offer unlimited data these days. I've been on an unlimited data package with 3 for nearly 2 years now and its allowed me to get rid of broadband altogether. Admittedly the other big names in mobile providing are only just catching up and I think they may have 'fair usage' policies in place whereas my 3 package is unlimited data without restriction.

I'd also add that I'd be surprised if anyone has agreed to work from home knowing they would have to use their limited mobile data to do so, surely if that was the case their company would have to do something to get them broadband access?

Adam Williams · 22 Mar 2020

It's going to depend on your ISP and the extent to which they've oversold cheap packages. If you're using WiFi it'll also depend on the kit you're using - I'd expect to get a much more reliable and performant connection from a separate access point vs the "free" routers that ISPs send in the post to new customers.

Skie said:
FTTP and Cable will power though intense use, fake fibre and ADSL won’t.

I both agree and disagree with this. I have a poor-quality ADSL connection and yes, it would be a lot better to have proper fibre direct to the property (or hell, even FTTC! My next door neighbours have it). But I don't think most problems consumers are going to be facing are necessarily to do with the type of their connection.

My connection (despite being ADSL) has held up consistently. I pay a niche ISP approximately double the cost (~£36 pcm) of what a mass-market provider sells cheap plans for. It copes fine with video conferencing. It copes fine with downloading software. I've not had any issues with speed or packet loss since the pandemic was declared.

More to the point, the support is second to none. I'm not treated like a moron. This week, the director at my ISP helped me troubleshoot an issue with Janet's higher education network which was impacting myself and a bunch of colleagues trying to work from home by dramatically limiting the throughput to something like 50 KB/s.

Despite it being nothing to do with his network, we troubleshooted it, worked out it was a problem with Janet's peering infrastructure @ LINX and were able to escalate the problem to Jisc. They investigated, found damaged (but not completely broken) fibre responsible for the problem and sorted it. There's no way I'd have ever got that level of support with an ISP like PlusNet or Virgin Media - you absolutely get what you pay for.

Cowley · 22 Mar 2020

The_Train said:
Most mobile providers do offer unlimited data these days. I've been on an unlimited data package with 3 for nearly 2 years now and its allowed me to get rid of broadband altogether. Admittedly the other big names in mobile providing are only just catching up and I think they may have 'fair usage' policies in place whereas my 3 package is unlimited data without restriction.

I'd also add that I'd be surprised if anyone has agreed to work from home knowing they would have to use their limited mobile data to do so, surely if that was the case their company would have to do something to get them broadband access?

Yes suppose I was thinking about our situation. If we had to work from home (which neither of us do), and all of the kids were trying to watch Netflix or something similar on our creaky WiFi, there’s no way we’d be able to get online.
However if the kids could watch their things on mobile phones without running out of the data that their cheaper packages all have then we’d still be able to use the main WiFi for work if you see what I mean.

gazthomas · 22 Mar 2020

I'm on ADSL with fibre to the cabinet. I usually get 25 mbps at best given the distance from house but over the last few days I've been getting around 20 mbps which is still plenty for my work. While speed tests suggest I have no issues with latency I would say that it has become less responsive. How I dream of 200+ mbps, but I've been told the conversion to fftp (premise) is coming

td97 · 22 Mar 2020

BT have stated that current daytime demand is about 50% higher than average.
Usual peak time in the evenings are 70% higher than average.
The highest ever usage measured 350% compared to average use, and their network held up then.

Mobile network traffic is down by 5% as people work from home.

A Speedtest at home for me shows VM are delivering 107% of their headline speed, 378 Mbps when I pay for 350.

87 027 · 22 Mar 2020

As has been said upthread, cheaper packages have speed limits, so people may not be on the fastest package that the technology makes available to their premises today. And if the server at the other end of your internet connection is under heavy load, that’s not the broadband provider’s problem (unless it’s their service e.g. BT Sport)

Xenophon PCDGS · 22 Mar 2020

87 027 said:
As has been said upthread, cheaper packages have speed limits, so people may not be on the fastest package that the technology makes available to their premises today. And if the server at the other end of your internet connection is under heavy load, that’s not the broadband provider’s problem (unless it’s their service e.g. BT Sport)

I should imagine there cannot be all that is new to view on current British sport items on BT sport....not that I ever watch any live sport on the internet or the normal broadcast channels.

mark-h · 22 Mar 2020

The_Train said:
Most mobile providers do offer unlimited data these days. I've been on an unlimited data package with 3 for nearly 2 years now and its allowed me to get rid of broadband altogether. Admittedly the other big names in mobile providing are only just catching up and I think they may have 'fair usage' policies in place whereas my 3 package is unlimited data without restriction.

In a lot of Edinburgh, and probably elsewhere, a lot of the Three mobile towers are overloaded and give poor speeds even when standing outside in direct line of site to the tower. If I could get the speeds that some of the uncongested towers give then I would dump the landline. Things may get better when they upgrade the network for 5G.

deltic · 22 Mar 2020

Just splashed out on a wifi booster as the room I'm banished to work from home in is a cold spot - our home broadband is poor compared to work especially when trying to download 1000MB files!

WatcherZero · 22 Mar 2020

Up here in Greater Manchester we seem to have been at just the right time as they were in the process of rolling out universal fibre and a fresh backbone for public buildings (Local government project to connect every single public building to Fibre to home connections, 1,300 connections and a new 450km long backbone). So I would say even in the middle of this crisis speeds are faster on average than they were a year ago.

Certain mobile networks seem to be struggling with data capacity however.

AM9 · 22 Mar 2020

This is typical of my speed test results:

I pay for 38Mb/s and get 58.12Mb/s down and 9.84Mb/s up.

The_Train · 22 Mar 2020

mark-h said:
In a lot of Edinburgh, and probably elsewhere, a lot of the Three mobile towers are overloaded and give poor speeds even when standing outside in direct line of site to the tower. If I could get the speeds that some of the uncongested towers give then I would dump the landline. Things may get better when they upgrade the network for 5G.

I live in an apartment block and as they are built like nuclear bomb shelters I sometimes don't get great coverage but I'm easily able to do what I need on my phone whilst also hot spotting to my laptop. In fact I logged into my Steam account for the first time in ages not so long ago and the first thing it did was update train sim to the latest version - I was amazed at how quickly the download happened.

I suppose though, as proven by your own issues, it can be pot luck as to what you area is like for specific providers

The_Train · 22 Mar 2020

Cowley said:
Yes suppose I was thinking about our situation. If we had to work from home (which neither of us do), and all of the kids were trying to watch Netflix or something similar on our creaky WiFi, there’s no way we’d be able to get online.
However if the kids could watch their things on mobile phones without running out of the data that their cheaper packages all have then we’d still be able to use the main WiFi for work if you see what I mean.

Ah yeah, I live alone so don't automatically consider how having multiple devices trying to draw from the broadband router could affect things. Definitely see your point now

hooverboy · 23 Mar 2020

py_megapixel said:
I'm personally finding that my internet connection is incredibly slow, presumably due to greater use than usual in light of many people being told to start - or at least prepare to start - working frrom home.

I'm sure this will cause problems for some people because they simply will be unable to access the facilities they need to work from home, and their workplace is no longer open due to COVID-19

Anyone having similar issues.

I think this week and next are where we are likely to see the impact.Lots of kids and folks at home now with nothing to do but skype/video conference/online game/stream netflix etc.

I see netflix have stopped 4k broadcast as a temporary measure to improve bandwidth for the rest of the network.

hooverboy · 23 Mar 2020

87 027 said:
As has been said upthread, cheaper packages have speed limits, so people may not be on the fastest package that the technology makes available to their premises today. And if the server at the other end of your internet connection is under heavy load, that’s not the broadband provider’s problem (unless it’s their service e.g. BT Sport)

I suspect that if the network gets really cramped there will be some sort of bandwidth rationing introduced.
not necessarily data rationing per se, but maybe a limit on upload/download speeds(and as we've seen with netfix,resolution caps.

4k HD is a non-critical luxury at this stage, but enough horsepower to provide 720p/1080p conferencing and streaming and complete transactions and communications in a speedy manner should be seen as more "essential" to the maintenance of commerce( and public sanity if people are confined to their homes)

sor · 23 Mar 2020

Skie said:
FTTP and Cable will power though intense use, fake fibre and ADSL won’t.

I also disagree with this post.

Cable is probably the most vulnerable - those networks are split into segments (with hundreds of homes) and there's not actually much capacity available. Virgin currently do not do it, but they used to limit the amounts of data you could download per day to avoid that network becoming congested. There's a very good reason why Virgin has never been too generous with those upload speeds. The Virgin forums were at one point full of examples of people experiencing long-term bouts of peak time congestion, though I've not taken a look in a while

FTTP has a similar approach, though the splits are smaller and the amount of capacity higher (Openreach's current design allows for 2.4Gbps down, 1.2Gbps up shared between up to 32 homes). It is unlikely though not impossible for FTTP to become congested, especially now that ISPs are launching gigabit services (BT has done so this morning)

FTTC, or "fake fibre" as you insist on calling it (bear in mind that Virgin started that idea), can be better. The connection between cabinet and home is what it is, but the green cabinets can have plenty of capacity linking them back to exchanges.

The core networks will be fine - as we've seen with BT publishing their numbers, showing that the normal evening peak totally outstrips anything they're seeing during the day

Adam Williams said:
More to the point, the support is second to none. I'm not treated like a moron. This week, the director at my ISP helped me troubleshoot an issue with Janet's higher education network which was impacting myself and a bunch of colleagues trying to work from home by dramatically limiting the throughput to something like 50 KB/s.

I guess it depends on which ISP we're talking about. I was previously a customer of a provider that you'd probably say was in this group, but the technical "support" I received was quite frankly shocking. I also wouldn't suggest that all ISP routers are crap - some are better than you might think (and arguably better suited to people without deep technical skill)

hooverboy said:
I see netflix have stopped 4k broadcast as a temporary measure to improve bandwidth for the rest of the network.

It's at the behest of the EU - https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/tech/netflix-internet-overload-eu/index.html

As a die hard remainer/rejoiner even I think they might have overstepped on this one - it would have made far more sense to let the ISPs make that decision based on their own data.

AM9 · 23 Mar 2020

sor said:
... It's at the behest of the EU - https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/tech/netflix-internet-overload-eu/index.html

As a die hard remainer/rejoiner even I think they might have overstepped on this one - it would have made far more sense to let the ISPs make that decision based on their own data.

It's not just an ISP bottleneck. Unnecessary viewing of streamed programming at 4K, (or mostly UHD to be more accurate) could tip the total traffic into caps on internation and transatlantic links so the EU is taking a pragmatic view on the importance of preserving a network that can handle all needs rather than allowing hogging. Potentially, it might argued as a form of network neutrality control by ensuring that the big money to be made by Netflix & Amazon doesn't allow those operators to consume unreasonable levels of bandwidth that needs to be shared by all users.

py_megapixel · 23 Mar 2020

AM9 said:
It's not just an ISP bottleneck. Unnecessary viewing of streamed programming at 4K, (or mostly UHD to be more accurate) could tip the total traffic into caps on internation and transatlantic links so the EU is taking a pragmatic view on the importance of preserving a network that can handle all needs rather than allowing hogging. Potentially, it might argued as a form of network neutrality control by ensuring that the big money to be made by Netflix & Amazon doesn't allow those operators to consume unreasonable levels of bandwidth that needs to be shared by all users.

Indeed. 4K video is a luxury. Work and education are not. People will just have to put up with 1080.

sor · 23 Mar 2020

AM9 said:
It's not just an ISP bottleneck. Unnecessary viewing of streamed programming at 4K, (or mostly UHD to be more accurate) could tip the total traffic into caps on internation and transatlantic links so the EU is taking a pragmatic view on the importance of preserving a network that can handle all needs rather than allowing hogging. Potentially, it might argued as a form of network neutrality control by ensuring that the big money to be made by Netflix & Amazon doesn't allow those operators to consume unreasonable levels of bandwidth that needs to be shared by all users.

The impact will not be that severe though. We've long moved beyond the idea of video content going long distances and over shared links. When half the UK is streaming the same latest Netflix title it will actually be coming from a Netflix content farm either in a UK datacentre or in an ISP owned facility, with dedicated connections into that ISP's core network.

Sure, some ISPs will have problems - but they can manage their own networks and take appropriate measures. It doesn't need a continent-wide response.

3rd rail land · 25 Mar 2020

Since Tuesday I have there has been a noticeable drop off in internet speed. I had a Skype call yesterday afternoon and one this morning and the quality was so bad that I had to give up on both as the audio kept cutting out.

I was attempting to do some video training yesterday and for a while it was constantly buffering.

I have FTTP (fibre to the property) which in theory shouldn't experience slow downs that traditional FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) might.

AM9 · 25 Mar 2020

3rd rail land said:
Since Tuesday I have there has been a noticeable drop off in internet speed. I had a Skype call yesterday afternoon and one this morning and the quality was so bad that I had to give up on both as the audio kept cutting out.

I was attempting to do some video training yesterday and for a while it was constantly buffering.

I have FTTP (fibre to the property) which in theory shouldn't experience slow downs that traditional FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) might.

When there is high network traffic, FTTP suffers all of the restrictions as FTTC or even twisted pair all the way to the exchange. The only difference is that the speed of the feed from the cabinet or exchange is faster with FTTP. So backbone limits will render FTTP not much faster than all but the longest copper links if you are using a medium bandwidth service like Skype.

nlogax · 25 Mar 2020

Not seeing any issues or bandwidth problems here at the moment but if things begin to slow down then Zoom video sessions will be the first thing I chop

sor · 25 Mar 2020

3rd rail land said:
Since Tuesday I have there has been a noticeable drop off in internet speed. I had a Skype call yesterday afternoon and one this morning and the quality was so bad that I had to give up on both as the audio kept cutting out.

I was attempting to do some video training yesterday and for a while it was constantly buffering.

I have FTTP (fibre to the property) which in theory shouldn't experience slow downs that traditional FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) might.

I guess the pertinent questions are :- what ISP? How are you connecting to your router? What speed are you paying for?

Lots to unpick before concluding that it must be congestion, if you're using wifi I'd suspect that first of all

Does your internet feel slow at the moment? What impact will this have on home working?

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