Slow ADSL - Mweb or infrastructure to blame?

[twinghosts]

Hi everyone!

We have a 10mps ADSL line (the max we can get) with Mweb. We've had it for about...ten years I guess? But over the years the speed and connection has become steadily worse, to the point where it's nigh unusable. We clock in an average of 0.25mbs download speed. I'm not entirely sure what could be the issue. We had the line replaced by Telkom a few years back, which improved the speed only marginally. We've had the line tested by Mweb a few times as well, which didn't really come up with anything. I guess what I want to know is if I switch from Mweb to another isp, will the problems continue? Is it a physical infrastructure thing that neither Telkom nor Mweb could be bothered to replace? Is it a router thing?

(No fibre in the area either, so we're stuck with that darned 10mb line)

 

[Off-The-Chart]

first thing would be to test using an account from another ISP

if same result, then definitely something wrong with the line

what kind of stats do you get on your line? Attenuation/SNR

 

[twinghosts]

first thing would be to test using an account from another ISP

if same result, then definitely something wrong with the line

what kind of stats do you get on your line? Attenuation/SNR

Took me a hot minute to find the stats

SNR Upstream is 6dB
SNR downstream is 17.5dB

Line attenuation upstream 31.5 dB
Line attenuation downstream 30.5dB

I don't entirely understand it, but I take it it's not good?

 

[cavedog]

Took me a hot minute to find the stats

SNR Upstream is 6dB
SNR downstream is 17.5dB

Line attenuation upstream 31.5 dB
Line attenuation downstream 30.5dB

I don't entirely understand it, but I take it it's not good?

Not great SNR so I'm pretty sure your issues might be line related. The attenuation is within range to handle 10Mbps so it might just be the line that is getting old with dry joints ect which needs a fault for Openserve to fix.

You can try the Openserve guest logins to test.

guest@openserve
guest

it allows you to do speedtests on Speedtest Custom - Test your internet speeds (saix.net)

 

[pedruid]

I'm in the same situation. My ISP is Afrihost and for 4 years my line, apart from the odd hiccup has been consistent at an average of say 8.0 Mbps. However ince December 2020 it;s been so inconsistent and intermittent. I must have logged about 10 faults in January and each time the consultant resets my port it improves for a few hours only to drop again. My most recet tests to Openserve Capetown have results of <5.0 Mbps. My post was reset yesterday and i got an SMS this morning saying the fault had been cleared. i replied YES which seems a weird way of saying that it's not been resloved. A few weeks ago a Technician pitched up on a Saturday (unnanounced) inspecte my setup and said that it was a bad set-up as my jack was in the adjoing room. I asked him to explain why it had worked fine for 4 years. his next step was to opne a manhole, carry out some tests and announce that he'd logged a falt withe the underground cable guys. The following Monday afternoon I lost my phone and ADSL for a short while, then recived a call from Openserve to say that theyed found 2 dry joins and carried out repairs.
For the next 2 days I flew at speeds over 11 Mbps. It was shortlived henve my logging of a call yestrday. It would appear that most of the Openserve Technicians have very little experience. i long for the days when Telkom had some very comptent members on this forum.

 

[AfriNatic]

I'm in the same situation. My ISP is Afrihost and for 4 years my line, apart from the odd hiccup has been consistent at an average of say 8.0 Mbps. However ince December 2020 it;s been so inconsistent and intermittent. I must have logged about 10 faults in January and each time the consultant resets my port it improves for a few hours only to drop again. My most recet tests to Openserve Capetown have results of <5.0 Mbps. My post was reset yesterday and i got an SMS this morning saying the fault had been cleared. i replied YES which seems a weird way of saying that it's not been resloved. A few weeks ago a Technician pitched up on a Saturday (unnanounced) inspecte my setup and said that it was a bad set-up as my jack was in the adjoing room. I asked him to explain why it had worked fine for 4 years. his next step was to opne a manhole, carry out some tests and announce that he'd logged a falt withe the underground cable guys. The following Monday afternoon I lost my phone and ADSL for a short while, then recived a call from Openserve to say that theyed found 2 dry joins and carried out repairs.
For the next 2 days I flew at speeds over 11 Mbps. It was shortlived henve my logging of a call yestrday. It would appear that most of the Openserve Technicians have very little experience. i long for the days when Telkom had some very comptent members on this forum.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. ADSL is unfortunately ageing and there are some issues that keep coming up that needs repairs.

I can follow up with the fault for you if you want?

I think the ideal solution would be to have a technician switch you over to a different pair of copper cables to the dslam. This could resolve your issue that you are experiencing now.

 

[pedruid]

I registered another complaint which resulted in a visit of an Openserve cable technician who tested at the manholes in our complex. Called me to say everything was ok. Ran tests for several days to numerous servers and could not get above 8.5 Mbps. This was more than a week ago. Today all sites I’ve tried have not been less than 9.5 with highs of 10.46 Mbps.
Happy chappy as long as it stays this way.