Fredbargate

I believe that Speedtest.net gives rather optimistic results.

Before changing from Telefonica to Vodafone I always tested with

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

using their Chicago server.

Speakeasy gave me a speed of 5 Mbs with Telefonica
Speedtest gave me 7 Mbs or more with Vodafone.
Speakeasy gives less than 5 Mbs with Vodafone.

Fred James

Does it matter?

The point of the post is to establish any speed differences across the country so it is essential to use the same test and Speedtest seems to be the preferred method.

Incidentally I just tried the Speakeasy test and got identical results to Speedtest - 2.6 on a 3mb connection.

Fredbargate

Fred my point is that when I first took out the Vodafone contract I thought I had got a good increase in performance.

However by testing on the same server I had used when with Telefonica it was apparent that this was not the case.

Fred James

That was my point Fred - always use the same server/test site when doing comparisons.

Fredbargate

Correct Fred

However if people on this forum are comparing speeds then it is also necessary that they all use the same server

Joddle

I am supposed to have 6mbp but at the moment only get 2.7 even when using telefonica's own assessment tool. What is worse its the constant dropping out of the ADSL - this seems to happen at certain times of the day, early morning at about 9am then at midday at about 13;00 and then again in the evening at about 4pm. We have had telefonica engineer out to test everything which is supposedly OK, they even re-connected the wire to the house and changed the router but it has made no difference. The main problem is when the engineer comes the system works fine and almost as soon as he leaves again if fails.

It's not the PCs - we have three and the same happens whether they are on or off - also two of the PCs functioned without fault in the UK over the whole of the summer which was for 9 weeks. Only when we arrive back do we get the problems which are exactly the same as before we left/ Where can we go from here? - Change provider? Orange seem to be offering some good packages at the moment.

Fred James

The problem is almost certainly the line between you and the exchange.

Old fashioned copper cables were never designed to carry high speed data - one of the miracles of technology is that they work at all!

Telefonica will nearly always fix a line fault if it affects the speech part of the service but are less ready to sort out ADSL problems as they are usually minor faults which unfortunately have a serious effect (ADSL drop outs or low speeds).

All you can do is keep moaning about it. Changing supplier will have no effect at all, in fact it will almost certainly make it worse as you still retain the Telefonica cabling even if you are not paying them directly for it. Having another supplier just gives Telefonica another excuse not to fix the problem - they will blame the Orange router!

Jur

Crap speed in Ayamonte, we´re changing to Orange.... see what´s happening (I do hope Fred´s wrong :-) )

Joddle

Likewise - even after saying we had crap connectivity at the moment they have said they would guarantee connectivity - wish they would put it in writing though!

ricardoylucia

Fred is correct - the voice of reason; many ADSL problems are to do with the old fashioned copper cables - not the ISP nor our computers. If we were all using fibre optic cabling, in theory we should be having downloads of up to 50mbps, but I do not think that will happen for many years to come.

We are about 10k from our exchange and we are lucky if we receive a decent download speed. We are paying for 6mbps download speed, but on average ours is about 1.5mbps and sometimes much less, of course that depends on time of day or night, how much other traffic is using the same line and how old is the copper wire cabling.

Where I used to live in the UK (Bournemouth, Dorset), I know as fact from my friends, that their speeds can be more erratic than ours and they are within 100 metres of a local box.

Saw another poster, saying their line drops quite often. Our does regularly, it is very frustrating, but I do not think there is much we can do about - this is Spain after all.

Changing to another supplier will not resolve any increase in download speeds.

Joddle

Well I am only about 500 meters from the exchange and on a good day get almost the full 6mbs but more often in times of heavy dropout it (4 or five times a minute) the speed drops to about 2.7.

Orange are promising a 10mb service - and cheaper too especially with the mobile deals thrown in as well.

However I have my doubts about the reliability as logic says unless they rewire to our house there aint going to be much differnece - we will have to see on that - meanwhile am hasteling telefonica to do something about the dropouts - 20 today so far!!

VFR

I just used the link Fred .......
Download Speed: 2550 kbps (318.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 258 kbps (32.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Damn near the same as Speedtest.

The Pope

Not that bad... You just need to feed your mice more

Joddle

Thats mine in Valenica at the moment - after many drop outs so far this morning

05/09/2010 – telefonica router
0910: Dropped out 30 secs to reconnect
0913: Dropped out 40 secs to reconnect
0916: Dropped out 75 secs to reconnect
0920: Dropped out 25 secs to reconnect
0945: Dropped out 40 secs to reconnect
0949: Dropped out 30 secs to reconnect
0956: Dropped out 15 secs to reconnect
0957: Dropped out 20 secs to reconnect
0958: Dropped out 15 secs to reconnect
1001: Dropped out 15 secs to reconnect
1002: Dropped out 60 secs to reconnect
1004: Dropped out 20 secs to reconnect
1051: Dropped out 15 secs to reconnect

ricardoylucia

Ours is really awful today; we are over 10k from the exchange with I imaging very old copper cabling throughout the whole area.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/942366249.png