Very erratic speeds

[Kaito]

A friend of mine has been having some issues with his speeds since he got adsl. His http downloads and torrent speeds are very unstable, oscillating between around 30 KBps to 260 KBps. The speeds will build up slowly and then quickly fall and it cycles like this. The speedtests yield wildly different results from 0.9 Mbps to just over 2 Mbps. He is using Telkom Uncapped on a 4 mb line.

My first thought was that he was getting shaped so I tried out the Afrihost starter account and used a well seeded torrent but the fluctuations remained the same ( reached around 330 KBps and then fell drastically). I tried WA as well but the results were same.
There is no latency issue on the line. No issue with attenuation or SNR. Tracerts were fine. Ports were reset by Telkom.

Any idea what the issue might be ?

Edit: I have attached the line stats. The slowdowns occur fairly often in the evenings and sometimes during weekends in the afternoons. The results mentioned above were obtained on a Saturday at around 4 pm. I didn't test another router, thanks, I will try that this weekend.
I did do a ping -t, latency remains fine. Will try out the pathping this weekend. Am I correct in saying
that if there is no latency issue, then the problem isn't due to congestion ?

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4304249719

 

[ghostR]

When you download torrents do you limit the upload speed or not?

 

[Johnatan56]

When you download torrents do you limit the upload speed or not?

He is also using a speedtest.

@OP. Please post the line stats and don't just assume. At what times is he experiencing the slow downs?
Have you tried swapping the router?

 

[AntiGanda]

A friend of mine has been having some issues with his speeds since he got adsl. His http downloads and torrent speeds are very unstable, oscillating between around 30 KBps to 260 KBps. The speeds will build up slowly and then quickly fall and it cycles like this. The speedtests yield wildly different results from 0.9 Mbps to just over 2 Mbps. He is using Telkom Uncapped on a 4 mb line.

My first thought was that he was getting shaped so I tried out the Afrihost starter account and used a well seeded torrent but the fluctuations remained the same ( reached around 330 KBps and then fell drastically). I tried WA as well but the results were same.
There is no latency issue on the line. No issue with attenuation or SNR. Tracerts were fine. Ports were reset by Telkom.

Any idea what the issue might be ?

I saw a similar thing on Telkom Internet. It climbs very slowly then peaks, and drops again. It may be the shaper settings are screwed.

Speedtest only gives a snapshot of quality.

Try pinging constantly.

Is it ping -t ??

Can't recall but see if the latency varies.

 

[ghostR]

Can you post a pathping aswell.

 

[Mant1s]

I read erotic in title must be late...