Internet Speed drops when downloading

[alex_boothby]

Hi there,

I am stumped by this.

I am on Sky broadband (not fibre).

When I download something/ watch videos the internet speeds drops to unusable. Running a test it drops from my usual 10 ish Mbps to less than 1 Mbps.

Even when running a speed test it zooms strait to 10 Mbps then gradually decreases until the test stops.

It usually comes back straight away. It seems the act of using it, slows it down.

I have tried 2 different routers. And apparently Sky doesn't throttle speeds.

Same thing happens when using a VPN

Any ideas guys?

Many thanks!

 

[crazyman143]

Call your broadband company and complain.

 

[Cortb]

It could be an issue with the server you're downloading from. Try downloading the Ubuntu (or other linux) .iso via torrent to get accurate numbers.

 

[AMD_man]

Usually the first thing you do is complain. That way we can discard any ISP issues. If they tell you everything is cool on their end then we can get to work.

 

[Crayon1]

Unforutnately, that is just a problem with torrents as due to the P2P nature, you are uploading and downloading at the same time.

The only solution I can think of is to throttle your torrenting speed, which can be done in many torrent clients.

 

[AMD_man]

Unforutnately, that is just a problem with torrents as due to the P2P nature, you are uploading and downloading at the same time.

The only solution I can think of is to throttle your torrenting speed, which can be done in many torrent clients.

He never said anything about P2P.

 

[Cortb]

I suggested using P2P to get a large sustained download so the bottleneck wouldn't be with the server providing the download, since bittorrent allows maximum throughput.

 

[AMD_man]

My bad.

Although that's not necessarily true, since it depends on seeds and leeches.

The only accurate way would be to use speedtest.net or fast.com.

 

[Cortb]

I don't think those are the most accurate. They have relatively small files to transfer when judging the speed. Whereas torrents, especially for large popular linux distributions, will have MANY seeds, so you should be able to max out your connection for 20-30 minutes and get an accurate gauge on your speeds over that time, and your speed won't be limited by something artificial like the maximum throughput of speedtest.net or look higher, because the ISP sees you trying to perform a speed test and cranks up the speed to make themselves look good.

 

[AMD_man]

Linux distributions' installers also have a ton of leeches. I think torrents can work, but you have to make sure the number of seeds is high and leeches are low, which is a bit hard to ensure.