Am I being Duped by my ISP?

[Chiggy]

Ive noticed recently a decline in the speed of my DSL connection. I`m with an ISP in the UK called BT Broadband. My package offers up to 8MB.

 

My question to the tech guys here is am I being duped?

 

The reason why I ask is because my connection clearly has an IP Profile of 2000KBS whilst my next door neighbours who is on the same deal has an IP profile of 8000KBS.

 

I have contacted the technical support and they tell me that my connection cannot exceed 2000KBPS. Well that is rubbish for two reasons I was getting a connection of 7MB up until a month ago and also more interestingly look at the down stream speed in the screen shot.

 

I am lead to believe the IP Profile can only be changed at their end. Can anyone confirm that this is true?

 

I did actually think it was something to do with a ill configured BRAS rate?

 

Opinions gentlemen........

 

[Amnot Borg]

It's entirely possible that someone at your ISP is screwing with you. They may have a reason for it. It may be an undisclosed or minor portion of your contract allowing them to limit your usage. It may a tech that knows you are using a large of bandwidth for "special" downloads. Still, it takes about a minute to change certain settings on their end and your usage is sloooowed way down. I had a classmate working for the local telephone company do it in class, because he could.

[Chiggy]

My neighbour is a light user, whilst I am heavy. So you could have a point. BT charge you something like 50p extra for every GIG you download over their limit. I think the most Ive ever been over was 7.

 

So is the answer to find a new ISP to get the speed back?

[Amnot Borg]

Well, you could wait and see if the bandwidth increases if you stop d/ling so much. OR, you can shop around and see who has comparable service for a better price.

[dBLOOD]

I know this type of problems with ISPs. In my country, they doing such things too.

First you should take a look at your contract, and to something called like General Controact Conditions. I Do not really know how this called english, sorry. Probably youre Personal End User Contract refers to it a lot of times, usually the actual "version" can be downloaded from the ISP's site.

By many ISPs, there is a Fair Use Policy limit, that says how much you can download "fairly".

If you find nothing like this in neither of those contracts, than it is maybe a more simple case.

Usually ISPs doing things (at least by us, in my country) with end users, that is not out of the law, "only" unethical. Just because they can do it. Maybe in your country it is not so, or not common, by us it is.

If this is the case, I would advice that you start to search for another internet connection, with another ISP. If they try to fool you once, they will try to fool you more times. Alas, this is the only way for us (end users) to prevent to be threated unethically.

Of course this "theory of mine" is based on my experience, so it is probably too much "East-european", so to say.

[kyran]

They are using traffic shaping  because you are downloading too much

try your speed at three in the morning it ought to be great which would prove the fact

then go get virgin media broadband they don't traffic shape