Broadband history for user alexatkin
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Before 13/09/2011: Be Broadband ADSL2+ connection:
On the left is the typical connection if left to its own devices. On the right is what I was able to achieve with a 3dB profile, fastpath and ensuring I resync at a time of day with the best line conditions. It would maintain this kind of speed for weeks at a time even though the SNR would get as low as 1dB sometimes, and some of my E side is even aluminium.
13/09/2011: My Origin Broadband is activated. Fairly high default interleaving setting, typical for Digital Region at the time.
27/7/2012: Interleaving and impulse noise protection is turned off.
10/8/2012: Upgraded to Origin Max with the now famous 70Mbit cap seemingly due to an unforseen limitation of the line cards used for the network.
23/8/2012: Switched to the new Origin network which improves latency further.
28/3/2013: Line card is upgraded, speed cap is finally removed.
15/8/2014: Digital Region closes leaving me with no connection.
19/8/2014: Migrate to Zen ADSL temporarily for an emergency connection. Crikey, using BT FON is faster!
20/8/2014: Using dual-WAN to bond both connections is slightly less painful.
17/9/2014: Back on Origin via BT Network. Average speed is lower than expected, off-peak is sometimes a bit better: 
2015: Speeds still all over the place, I miss Digital Region!
27/11/2015: Speedtest.net giving extremely odd results lately so decided to add a different site to the test list.
04/12/2015: New Zen connection is live and seems to confirm my suspicions, Origins network really is underperforming on the downstream speed.
Load balanced with the Origin connection is really nice though.
10/12/2015 Zen vs Origin:
17/12/2015 Zen vs Origin:
Different servers but they are basically the best-case result for each ISP.
Strange how Origin is consistently slower down but slightly higher up, when both lines are connected at identical line rates.
19/01/2016 Zen with their crappy Technicolor TG839 vs pfSense
The reduced upload is due to the QoS that keeps the BufferBloat so low.
30/01/2016 Tweaked the QoS settings
28/10/2016 RAW Connection without router/QoS
03/03/2019 Crosstalk has reduced my speed over the last year or two :(
03/03/2019 Zen + Three MiFi :)
15/03/2019 Zen + Plusnet:
Load Balanced (Zen + Plusnet combined):
26/01/2021 Load Balanced (Zen + Plusnet + Three 4G)
06/02/2021 Load Balanced (Zen + Plusnet + Voxi 4G)
16/07/2021 Three 5G on its own compared to Three 5G + Voxi 4G + Plusnet + Zen combined:
As you can see I've reached diminishing returns now as the 5G link is fast but higher latency, so combined with the lower latency connections throughput on Three actually is much lower than on its own. I can almost get faster out of Three on its own than all four combined.
It looks a good result but in real-world usage its better to focus bandwidth heavy on Three alone, upload heavy on Voxi and latency sensitive on either DSL line.
Interestingly, just using Voxi + Three is almost as good and generally balances better:
11//10/2021 Voxi has dramatically slowed down but Three has dramatically sped up.
Had to use an older test as an example as speedtest.net can't consistently reach the speeds Three does in the real world:
18/12/2021 Got rid of Plusnet in favour of the fastest combination. Now Three (5G), Vodafone (4G) and Zen (VDSL 80/20):
Zen and Vodafone balanced. I do not include Three as its such a vastly different speed and reliability:
14/12/2021 Faulty drop wire replaced some months ago and finally got round to getting Zen to reset DLM.
Full 80/20 service restored on VDSL line.
04/07/2022 The day finally has come, Zen FTTP and Zen FTTP + Three 5G combined:
02/08/2022 Reduced buffer bloat/latency by re-enabling QoS for upload traffic only (single thread and multi-thread results):
05/12/2022 Something seems to have changed on the Zen network, pretty much hitting Gigabit line rate now.
16/06/2023 Three upgraded their capacity, Zen + Three combined can now achieve:
01/06/2024 Upgraded my 5G router to the GL.iNet GL-X3000/ Spitz AX:
For the latest and full test results of my connection history see my speedtest.net profile.
