Slow FTTC

You can test speed with our speed tester: speedtest2.aa.net.uk

Things to do if you have slow FTTC:

1. Disable WiFi and check speed with a wired connection
2. Go through the FTTC Checks
3. Check the CQM Graphs, to see if it is slow due to lots of traffic
4. Is your line actually slow? Other issues caused by services such as DNS or the device itself can cause things to appear slow without actually being slow! Double check with other people in the property that they are experiencing the same.
5. If you are having trouble narrowing down culprits, or you are seeing unusual usage on your Control Page graphs, then we would suggest contacting Support, who can perform a traffic dump for you. This traffic dump can only be done in realtime and not historically. Our traffic dumps can only be performed with prior permission, and will only capture the packet headers, not the content.
6. Ask us about testing with 'iperf' - as this is generally better than http speed test websites. See: https://support.aa.net.uk/Windows_iperf3
7. Contact Support for further assistance.

If you have problems with Streaming high definition video, We have a page with some help

CQM Graphs

Accessing This Feature

Access is via the Control Pages as follows:

1. Log in to the Control Pages with your xxx@a login
2. Click on the line you want to view
3. Clicking on the graph again will show a 7 day's worth of graphs with options there to view 30 and 60 days

Lots of upload

Here is an example of a CQM Graph with lots of upload traffic,

Lots of upload at the end of the day. This will make the line slow, but is not a fault

Lots of upload in the morning. This will make the line slow, but is not a fault

The example above show a line with occasional short uploads causing spikes in peak latency, and then a sustained upload starting at around 6pm and causing high latency (queue in the router). At 8pm there was more upload filling the link causing higher latency still and some loss (normal when the link is full). This is normal.It may cause the line to be slow. If you don't know what the traffic is, then you can do a Traffic Capture or ask Support to Help.

Line dropped and speed changed

line dropped and came back slower and with higher latency

This FTTC line dropped at 01:50, and came back within a minute or two, however, the speed has dropped (horizontal black line at the top) and also the latency (blue at bottom) has increased. There could be a fault here, but in this case we can clearly see that something has happened. If your line has changed in speed and is shown on the graphs, then diagnostics may find a fault, and the Support Team can help.

Notes on Speed Tests and Fast Lines

One of the issues with a fast internet connection is that you realise how slow some of the internet is. The Ethernet services we provide have no delays or congestion between you and high speed transit providers in our London data centre racks, so they are fast as you can get for a general internet connection. There are a few points to bear in mind when you have a fast internet link.

Speed tests sites can be busy anyway but most are not designed to measure speeds of lines much above that of broadband so if you have even a 40Mbit/s service you may see lower results on speed tests. One trick is to do more than one speed test at the same time and confirm you can get the overall speed you expect on your line.

TCP window. The way TCP works means that it has buffering for in-transit data. Even broadband links can have issues with these buffers not being big enough. Ethernet links are normally local meaning delays of micro seconds in traffic going from one machine to another. However, our Ethernet services work over the whole country and this takes milliseconds. A millisecond is not long, but it hundreds to thousands of times longer than you would find on a LAN. As such a data transfer on a high speed link can be limited by the buffering (TCP window size) on the computers at both ends. It is worth trying several transfers at the same time if you are trying to get the most total data transfer speed out of your link. Slow servers.

Many services that you connect to are either:

1. very popular and so limit data transfer per connection in some way, or
2. connected to the internet on a link that may be slower than you have, or
3. are simply not very fast computers. This can mean data transfers are slower than you expect.

The target for most people running services is that people with broadband can access them quickly. If you have a much faster link you can start to see some of the limitations in the servers that people have on the internet.

The key thing is that the link in to the internet is the guaranteed speed you have purchased with no sharing and no slowing down or congestion. Any issues you see with speed are likely to be on an individual transfer for all the reasons listed above. Having an office full of people all using the internet at the same time separately transferring email, web traffic, etc., will be able to make full use of the link.