Broadband download speed

[sahbman]

In order to work from home my Broadband download speed needs to be 3000 kbps. I have attempted the speed tests that the company uses and can only get a max of 489kbps. My Broadband speed (Pipex) states Broadband Speed 3.4mbps. How can I improve on the download speed and is there something wrong?

Many thanks in advance

[KevSparky]

What your seeing is most likely a problem with your ISP's Contention Ratio. This is a rating of how much the ISP over-sell the bandwidth they have available. If an ISP has 10MBps of bandwidth available and it sells 1MBps to 100 customers, then it has a contention ratio of 10 to 1 (10:1). It works on the idea that all customers won't be using the internet at the same time, but when things get busy i.e. during peak usage during the day, you'll start to notice speed falling as you can't draw your full 1MBps from the pool. Some ISPs can operate at contention ratios as high as 48:1.

Try the internet connection test in the middle of the night (3-5am) when usage will be down, if you're still having speed issues, contact your ISP. Also try a speed test at www.speedtest.net and use the closest server. If it's still only 500kBps then it's definately an ISP matter, if it's faster teh slow-down could be at your company's end.

Also you could try getting a contention free connection, though this can be expensive some times.

[fo3nix]

Report numbers from here,
http://www.speedtest.net

(Using closest server to you, or the orange one.. whichever gives the best speed.)

[sahbman]

okay from the www.speedtest.net site my results were
download 494 upload 339

[fo3nix]

OK well that download speed is atrociously slow. I'd phone Pipex and ask them to do a line test or something, because you aren't getting anything like that,

I'm assuming you had no other internet-using apps running at the time, and no-one else was using your internet connection.