After just a week latest broadband upgrade speeds drop drastically

According to findings from research company Epitiro the speeds of ADSL2+ broadband connections seem to downgrade after just a few days, which leaves customers who have paid for the upgraded services without the speeds they expected.

Michael Cranna, described the trend amongst providers of ADSL2+ where speeds rise in the beginning, reach a plateau but then drop off after just a few days of joining the service as “alarming.” Cranna said “It’s a little alarming because [ADSL2+] provides a decent improvement for only a short period of time,” Cranna said.

Provisioning that failed to take into account an increase in users and line attenuation where two of the things he blames for the speed drops. A recommendation that user should remain on the old ADSL was one thing, however, that Cranna avoided giving.

He said “We’re not saying it [ADSL2+] doesn’t work. It just requires good provisioning because broadband is a contended service. The more people that use it, the slower it gets.”

It is likely many broadband subscribers will be reconsidering their access choices following the results of the latest Australian Internet performance index from Epitiro.

The fact that ADSL2+ services “do not deliver proportionately faster web browsing speeds than ADSL services” were amongst its findings. Tests carried out in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne were the basis for Epitiro’s findings and were conducted in a controlled environment where PC’s ran automated scripts on a subscribed connection. Cranna said “We like to keep the line identity confidential in case ISPs [decide they] want to game it.”

Results collected from 3600 software “agents”, which were small pieces of computer programming code that could be randomly downloaded by anybody as part of the company’s free performance measuring software called Isposure, were combined with the rest of the results.

Cranna said “It sends us back the data and also provides you with a copy as well. You can also compare results with other agents located in your area”.

The measurements taken by the scripted test routine were TCP upload/download speeds, cached and non-cached HTTP download performance, email round-trip times, synchronisation speed, ping time, packet loss and DNS response times and various other factors. A proprietary weighted index was filled with the results, which found that the best ISP of those measured was Telstra.

The non-cached HTTP download speed test was one area that the incumbent Bigpond2+ service came out very well in. The report stated “It downloaded pages 20 percent faster than second-place Netspace HM2+. It is worth recalling that the test targets are all over the world and are explicitly not hosted by the incumbent. To achieve this result, Telstra are legitimately the fastest in this instance.” The other telco’s that came out in the top 5 were TGP in second place, iiNet in third, followed by Netspace and AAPT.