Need help getting issues with upload speed.

Usman Aly

Honorable
Feb 21, 2015
51
0
10,630
Hi there guys,
Sorry for the long post but I have to go in detail for you to understand my issue.

I am using 8Mbps connection. 100:100 ratio it means I get 8Mbps download & 8Mbps upload. Now I am facing issues with my upload bandwidth. I get 8Mbps download but uploads are below 1.5Mbps. Mostly 900~950Kbps. I complained a lot to my ISP but they are saying that I don't have any issues from there side.

I got the advertised speed for 3 or 4 months now I am stuck with slow uploads for the past two months. I do upload a lot of stuff for my clients to preview because I am a freelance video editor. So files from 1~3000MB (up to 3GB) is a routine thing for me which is why upload bandwidth is very important to me.

Now I did three things which improved my speed but again they're back to where they were.

First I used a free VPN service which got me to 6~7Mbps upload as soon as I told my ISP about the VPN. I am unable to join the VPN. (They have blocked it maybe?)

Second I put google DNS (Optional) (8.8.8.8) in my router settings which improved my speed to 6~7Mbps upload again as soon as I told my ISP my speed went down again.

Third I cleared cache on my firefox as I keep a lot of tabs open & don't clear my history much.
Which Improved my speed to 2Mbps upload. (I haven't told my ISP about this yet).

When ever I perform speed test I get full 8Mbps upload & download but on other websites my uploads stay below 1.5Mbps but I do get full 8Mbps downloads

Now please help me find the issue If ISP is not giving me the advertised speed then I'll sue them for sure as I am fearing that maybe they are throttling my uploads. If you can pin point any issue related to my side do let me know.

Connection layout:
Fiber>ONU/ONT DEVICE>Router>LAN to PC
Same from the day I got the connection.

Do let me know If you need anything else.

 
Unfortunately there may not be much that can be done.

Upload speeds are as a rule slower than download speeds.

The 100:100 ratio may be only applicable to some pre-defined circumstances. (E.g., a speed test via the ISP's website.)

Read your service contract - there may be some limits being imposed once you reach some data cap.

What router are you using? Log in as administrator and see if there are any logs being kept - you may need to enable logging if available and not enabled. Look for performance related warnings and errors.

There may also be some troubleshooting options that may provide helpful information.

 


First of all sorry for the late reply as I was busy with work n stuff.

Okay but why not much can be done?

Yeah I know but they advertised it & I had that thing/speed for 3 or 4 months continuously with excellent performance. I never had to worry about the uploads as I do again now.

Nothing in the contract.

TP-Link WR841ND.

Yeah sure will do that.
Okay will see those too.
 
"Not much can be done" simply because the problem may be not only outside of your purview but your ISP's purview as well.

The longer/larger the file and the further it has to travel (upload/download) just means that there is more opportunity for problems to occur. The transmission stalls or crashes - starts over....

All the worse because the process worked for a while and has now stopped.

Not throwing in the proverbial towel - just need to focus on identifying the reason for the slowness.

You might try some pings, pingpath, and tracerts to the normal destination source. Get a sense of travel path (which can and will vary) being used for uploads.

See if and where you find increased latency between hops. Be it on your end, your ISP, the destination, or somewhere in between.

Keep some records and notes to look for patterns.

 
It sounds like a throttling issue, if your ISP is blocking your VPN, you should try one with deep packet inspection bypass, often referred to as stealth servers. This should be enough for them to be unable to block VPN protocols.

Once connected to VPN, if you can attain 6-7Mbps again, I think that will be best case scenario.
 


As far as I think they are throttling my uploads. As I mentioned earlier I got better uploads with VPN & optional DNS but as soon as I told the support staff about the solution I found to get better speed they stopped working. So my opinion is different than yours.

I've uploaded a lot of files but didn't face any issue with any size but suddenly they dropped & its been two months I am trying to figure out what is wrong.

Maybe but there must be a way to fix it & find why it stopped.

I tried ping test got losses, high pings & 35+ jitters.
Tracert were different every day. For example just for google.com I got up to 21 IP addresses. I don't know what is going on. 4 to 5 entries were just blank with * in them.

Yes there were differences between hops but not always.

 


That is what I am thinking but they said they don't block or restrict any VPN or DNS servers. Don't know much about the VPNs as I don't use much can you please tell me in details about the deep packet inspection bypass (stealth servers). I tried tor but to use google I have to accept cookies which I think reveals everything as far as I know & I didn't get any speed improvements.
I am not a pro in networking sorry. :)
 
Tracert will be different every day and may even change during any given upload. The packets can and do take different paths.

And some routers along that way may be configured not to respond to pings.

For the most part ISPs and other entities do not want any given user being able to consume large amounts of bandwidth at the expense of other customers. Hence throttling etc..

Still there just may be some bottleneck(s) along the way that limit upload performance. And not necessarily intentional.
 


Okay I didn't know about that thanks for the info.

I think they are. Let see what happens I have sent them an e-mail in detail like I told you guys in here that how & when my speeds got slow, VPN stopped working & optional DNS also stopped working.

They responded with a negative reply saying that they don't block VPNs & DNS. Asked me to wait till saturday so lets wait & watch what they do.

No bottleneck can't be an issue. My whole country have a 7Tbps bandwidth & they got 24Tbps submarine/undersea cable installed exactly two or three months back so they have three times more bandwidth then my whole country which is why I don't think they have bottleneck issue while having limited number of co-operate & end level consumers.
 
Sorry guys I totally forgot to tell you I do get double bandwidth at night so at night I have better uploads but not stable like it jumps betweek 6~20 Mbps only uploads. Downloads are stable all the time. Mostly it stays between 6~13. As soon as my bandwidth is back to normal in the morning I get 900~950Kbps upload.
I am so sorry guys. I totally forgot to tell you about the important aspect/thing.
 
The undersea cable etc. may be a very large "pipe" but there are many other locations and devices that could bottleneck or otherwise restrict bandwidth.

Not unusual for some component to be working well with full performance up and until some threshold is reached: e.g., x number of users okay, x +1 users - performance degrades.

Keep monitoring, take notes, look for patterns.

Maybe Saturday is important because they are planning to fix something.
 


Yeah I totally forgot about the infrastructure while talking about the bandwidth.

Yeah I am trying.

I don't think so to me its the same old excuse.


Update:
It did got fixed but just for half day or you can say 12 hours now I am back where I started. So struggle continuous.
Also they sent me a message saying there international partners are doing maintenance so I'll experience speed degradation & high pings till 18th of march now I can only wait till 18th I think because I complain now they have an excuse. So I'll have to wait.
I am getting way to much disconnections their support person was here to check & said I have low signals too. I think situation is getting worse with time.
 
Sorry for a deleyed answer my issue is solved & yes the issue was from the ISP's end. Now I am getting the speed they advertised, promised & I got for three or four months. Thank you very much guys for taking your time out & helping me.