Checking if your Exchange is congested

J

Juggy

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Are there any on-line tools to check local exchange congestion?

I have a friend with a 2mbps uncapped solution and he gets a maximum of 120kbps throughput on a multi-threaded download. Most of the time much slower.
 
Exchange congestion is usually the result of high latency, rarely speed.

What are his line stats? (found in the router)
Who is his ISP?
What is he syncing at? (found in router)
 
Rickster said:
Exchange congestion is usually the result of high latency, rarely speed.

What are his line stats? (found in the router)
Who is his ISP?
What is he syncing at? (found in router)
Click to expand...

lol

Other way around mate!
 
I'm not new at this, all I need to know is can I check exchange over subscription/congestion on-line or do I need to phone Telkom and be lied to ?

His ISP has already said the exchange is over subscribed I just want to make sure before I tell him he's stuck with the speed until the exchange is sorted out.
 
Juggy said:
I'm not new at this, all I need to know is can I check exchange over subscription/congestion on-line or do I need to phone Telkom and be lied to ?
Click to expand...

Run a tracert while he's experiencing these slow speeds. Ensure that no other downloads are firing off. Check the second hop - if it's above 20ms then you're going to see some degradation of the service, in both latency and speed.

But also do check the line stats and ensure that his ISP is not shaping or throttling him, especially if the second hop of the tracert shows no exchange congestion. if there are issues further than the second hop, then he needs to get in touch with his ISP.

Expect sub 200ms for an international hop to Europe, and 250ms to America and Asia. Local hops should be no more than around 40ms, depending on the location you're pinging from, and the server location...
 
Thanks DJ, these tests have been done already. As would be expected local is generally 15-60ms and international to UK Telehaus or Vodafone is 200-300 across Seacom.

This is the Exchange he connects to, I suppose it could be anything from the DSLAM to the Exchange. I have considered telling him to get his line installed from scratch and asking for a different route but I'd like to check everything in between first. Apparently this has been an issue for 18 months now.

http://www.broadbandstats.co.za/exchange/WRBS
 
Rickster said:
My exchange was congested 120MS ping locally but the speed was fine, thats why I only suspected exchange congestion because in games the pings were very high.
Click to expand...

In bursts when there's no packet loss, but those speeds are not reflective of the actual connection...
 
Juggy said:
Thanks DJ, these tests have been done already. As would be expected local is generally 15-60ms and international to UK Telehaus or Vodafone is 200-300 across Seacom.

This is the Exchange he connects to, I suppose it could be anything from the DSLAM to the Exchange. I have considered telling him to get his line installed from scratch and asking for a different route but I'd like to check everything in between first. Apparently this has been an issue for 18 months now.

http://www.broadbandstats.co.za/exchange/WRBS
Click to expand...

Tried testing with the Telkom guest account?

If the tracerts are fine, there's no noise on the phone line, and no sync issues with the router and exchange, then you need to get on the ISP's case.

Who's the ISP and what account is your friend on?

ISPs have been dishing out budget accounts for a while now, and shaping and throttling them to death...
 
I believe he is on MWeb 2mbps uncapped but has had the same results on WebAfrica.

I will get him to test a few more things before I take it further.

So to get back to my question, is there a website one can check Exchange congestion?
 
Juggy said:
I believe he is on MWeb 2mbps uncapped but has had the same results on WebAfrica.

I will get him to test a few more things before I take it further.

So to get back to my question, is there a website one can check Exchange congestion?
Click to expand...

Not as far as I know. The issue is that such data wouldn't be forthcoming from Telkom, and relying on user submissions means you'll get mostly crap, as the vast majority of adsl users don't exactly know how to confirm exchange congestion as the issue. You could probably mitigate some of the crap, but it won't necessarily reflect the true nature of the beast.

But it's not a bad idea...
 
Try using different ISP's
If the performance is slow on all of them, then it may be the exchange of a noisy line.
Some ADSL modems will show the SNR and Margin, from which you can calculate the expected speed.
Also if the speed varies between peak / off-peak this indicates congestion.
I was connected to an ADSL (v1) port, it was very congested.
Telkom recently changed me to ADSL2+ port and now no congestion.
From the ADSL modem you can see if you are ADSL/ADSL2+
 
DJ... said:
Tried testing with the Telkom guest account?

If the tracerts are fine, there's no noise on the phone line, and no sync issues with the router and exchange, then you need to get on the ISP's case.

Who's the ISP and what account is your friend on?

ISPs have been dishing out budget accounts for a while now, and shaping and throttling them to death...
Click to expand...

If anyone would like to create a small site to do this (allow user submissions and walk them through the process of diagnosing) then I will happily host and pay for it.

Should be simple enough to put together...
 
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