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Very slow home broadband, anything we can do?
Lidtop2013
Posts: 4,356 Forum Member
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So my parents just bought a ''brightbox'' from EE for home broadband and its all set up and working but its just very slow, i mean its ok for web browsing but anything else its useless. Things like youtube it wouldnt even load up the home page, i gave up after 15 seconds staring at a blank page, then i did a speedtest on my phone which came out as 0.03mbps, what is that? its pathetic, i get 10+ mbps on my phone(at a different location mind), but thing is when i used to live there about 10 years ago the internet was the same, you'd think in 10 years things would advance abit wouldnt you? unless its just EE broadband thats rubbish? although i suppose its down to the location mainly? if one company is slow they will all be the same i guess?
Its just annoying for my parents, they just want working internet as the phone signal is crap so doing anything over mobile internet is painfully slow, now that they've got broadband its no faster than their mobiles
Ive told them to see how it goes and if its still rubbish after a week they could cancel it? pretty sure they would get 2 weeks cooling off period?
Cheers
Its just annoying for my parents, they just want working internet as the phone signal is crap so doing anything over mobile internet is painfully slow, now that they've got broadband its no faster than their mobiles
Ive told them to see how it goes and if its still rubbish after a week they could cancel it? pretty sure they would get 2 weeks cooling off period?
Cheers
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Therein lies the problem, if you have a crap phone line you won't have a good internet connection with any ISP. Is the line noisy, crackles, hissing ? If you have an NTE5 type master socket unscrew the bottom plate and test in the test socket ... just test a phone on its own first to see is it clear, if so try the router and phone via a filter.
How far are you from the exchange ?
As far as i know the exchange is local too believe it or not.
Your broadband provider (EE in your case) will have a thing on their site designed to tell you what speed you can expect* You'll need to put in your address or/and postcode for this, and it will tell you what speed to expect given your distance from your telephone exchange.
Then bring up your router's settings web page (see router's instructions) and in there it will tell you what speed you are actually syncing at (it will say "downsteam speed" or something similar). (This is the speed of your connection to the exchange, not necessarily your throughput, but it is the first step.)
These two figures should be in the same ballpark as each other. If one is half the other (or worse!), then something seems amiss.
(* Mind you, I've just tried their speed predictor and put in my own address. It says 7Mb/s. I get 16Mb/s! So there's something not quite right there.)
Sounds like a line fault and has defaulted to it's protection settings...which enables to you access the internet, but at very slow speeds. Phone EE, they will get you test everything, may even sent you a new router...if it doesn't work then they will arrange an open reach engineer to come and inspect it.
although you cannot make your line shorter, you can ensure it's as good as it can be by making your internal wiring, sockets etc are broadband friendly, you never know it may be the reason your speed is poor, plenty of advice on this online,
If possible access your router stats page and post the results here
As a kind of comparison, I'm about 5km's away from my exchange and connect at about 3Mb/s,
That indicates clearly that there is a problem with the line (or router), so get on to EE about it.
Even places with the slowest broadband should be able to get 500 Kb/s.
You say you did the speedtest with your mobile phone, so therefore over wifi?
If your parents have a computer or laptop that can be connected by ethernet cable, then do the speed test on that, to eliminate the possibility that wifi on the router is faulty.
Another thing you could do is to access the Brightbox router's configuration page and see what the 'Downstream rate' in the Status>Internet section says.
type 192.168.1.1 into a web browser and enter the username and password into the login box.
For a Brightbox the default username is admin, and the 'Admin password' is written on the bottom of the router.
What you can do is get a 3G aerial put up on your chimney pointing in the direction of your nearest 3G mast & get a mobile broadband router that takes a regular SIM card.
A data sim only can be quite expensive tho', especially if you wanna stream tv shows etc . .
But worth it because your speed is so much better.