It appears to working fine now - except for one thing. I seem to have a bit of a problem streaming media. Stuff on BBC Iplayer, for instance, will buffer to the point where it becomes unwatchable and youtube videos seem to start off streaming ok, until a few seconds in where the streaming slows down and stops. Once the video catches up with the stream, that obviously stops too. Very frustrating.
Hi
Buffering is very common if your Internet connection is slow, either just because you have a slow broadband connection, or if other folks are using it at the same time.
When the buffering starts, close down immediately the you tube or any other applications using the Internet on your computer and go here on Internet Explorer:
www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk
perform the speed test and then tell us the download and upload speeds you are achieving…
Note you should perform the test at the time you have been experiencing the buffering…. (not some time after!)
Regards
paws
Hi, thanks for helping me.
Ok, I've just done that 5 times over the space of about 15 minutes…
1. D/S 13.26 Mb/s, U/S 0.942 Mb/s
2. D/S 1.67 Mb/s, U/S 0.843 Mb/s
3. D/S 14.56 Mb/s, U/S 0.779 Mb/s
4. D/S 17.23 Mb/s, U/S 0.812 Mb/s
5. D/S 4.63 Mb/s, U/S 0.820 Mb/s
No-one is really doing anything significant on the network at the moment….just a couple of people browsing. As far as Youtube is concerned, it doesnt really buffer - more just kinda stops dead at the point where the video has caught up with the stopped stream.
Thanks
Jen x
The download speeds you quote vary to such a huge extent, indicating that its possible that other users are consuming large amounts of bandwidth.
In No 2 your speed (1.6 mb/sec) ia generally considered to be inadequate to support buffer free streaming, all the others should be OK although No 5 at 4.63 mb/sec is "borderline"
A possible explanation for the wide variation of speeds you experience could be that other computers on the network are consuming large amounts of bandwidth…..( are they using torrents for example?)
if you cannot come to an arrangement for sharing the avalable bandwidth…. then a possible solution might be to obtain a separate broadband connection for your sole use, but of course this will cost money.
Regards
paws
Hi,
I'm pretty much 100% certain that no-one on the network was using any torrents, downloading or even streaming anything when I was doing the checks. Both people who were using the network in the house were sitting in the same room as me at the time and both were doing nothing but browsing.
Thanks,
Jen x
Er, ok…I'm afraid I missed the bit where you said use Internet Explorer and had been using Chrome for those tests. So I opened IE and ran the test a few times and couldnt even get above 1Mb/s for download speed. Then a window came up asking if I would like to manage my add ons because they may be slowing my broadband speed. I disabled the two plug ins it suggested ( a Real player plug in and also a Java plug in) and now the download speed is consistently above 15mb/s.
Thanks,
Jen x
Regards
paws