hey guys, just got got connected to Time Fibre 8Mbps plan today. speed test results are great, as expected giving 8Mbps or more with local servers and around 4-8Mbps with foreign servers. ping time as low as 0ms!

however, speedtest results are one thing. i have learnt from experience that they do not always translate to fast download speeds. so i decided to run some of my own file download tests. these are single connection direct downloads from different servers. my neighbour has Unifi 5Mbps so i was able to compare results. disappointingly, despite better speedtest results my Time Fibre 8Mbps connection performed well below my neighbour's Unifi 5Mbps when it came to file download speed.

the only time that the 8Mbps truly delivered was when i downloaded from a local server. for the rest, the speed was about 4Mbps or even less (the download test with Singapore server was only 2Mbps!).

i would like to point out that i have experienced something similar before with my previous TM Streamyx connection, whereby the speedtest results were excellent, downloading from local servers was at maximum speed, but downloads from foreign servers seemed to be "capped" well below my maximum connection speed. for that particular case, i replaced the TM provided free router with a new store bought one and the problem amazingly disappeared. after replacing the router, all my downloads from foreign servers boost up to almost maximum speed!

sorry for the long rant, but i am hesitant to buy a new router just yet. i was hoping if any of you guys can help me do the same download tests below on your Time Fibre connection and we can share our results.

1) download from the links using Internet Explorer.
2) let the file download for a while (about 90 seconds) so that the speed can "normalize" before reading the result.

thanks in advance to those who can help!

here are my results....


TOP RESULT: TIME FIBRE 8Mbps BOTTOM RESULT: UNIFI 5Mbps

Download Link: http://ipv4.download.thinkbroadband.com:8080/1GB.zip






Download Link: http://test.fileburst.com/50mb-testfile.zip

*Comment: i think the speed here is limited by the download server.






Download Link: ftp://ftp.fcc.gov/pub/Bureaus/Engineering...are/terrain.zip





This post has been edited by 4th alphabet: Sep 20 2013, 11:30 PM

Download Link: http://124.217.224.5/speedtest/stage2.rpm

*Comment: this download is from a local server.






Download Link: http://124.217.238.101/speedtest/stage2.exe

*Comment: this download is from a Singapore server. Time Fibre result is surprisingly slow!






Download Link: http://archive.org/download/IS2013-04-20.m....20track05.flac






Download Link: ftp://ftp1.optonline.net/test64

*Comment: Time Fibre was not able to connect to this link for some reason. could it be related to the recent DNS issue? anyway, the result below is by UNIFI.



This post has been edited by 4th alphabet: Sep 20 2013, 11:32 PM

thanks JJ. hope the rest of the Time Fibre users here can also help to test.

i will do some tracert tests tonight as you advised.

This post has been edited by 4th alphabet: Sep 20 2013, 08:32 AM

here are the Time Fibre and Unifi ping plotter results for download servers in my tests. as you can see, there is clearly a difference in the Time results. i did the same download speed tests tonight and the results are still the same. except for the singapore download which will occassionally give me maximum 8Mbps download speed, although this is not consistent every time.

i am pretty disappointed as i thought switching from Streamyx 4Mbps to Time Fibre 8Mbps would be an upgrade. but so far, apart from the speedtest.net results the download speed is actually worse!

i hope there is some way to fix this within the 1 month trial period. i at least expect the download speed to be on par, if not more than Unifi 5Mbps.

hopefully somebody can run the same tests and show me their results. maybe it's just my line/area that's experiencing this problem.


TOP IMAGE: TIME FIBRE PING PLOTTER RESULT
BOTTOM IMAGE: UNIFI PING PLOTTER RESULT

Download Link: http://ipv4.download.thinkbroadband.com:8080/1GB.zip






Download Link: ftp://ftp.fcc.gov/pub/Bureaus/Engineering...are/terrain.zip






Download Link: http://124.217.224.5/speedtest/stage2.rpm

Download Link: http://124.217.238.101/speedtest/stage2.exe






Download Link: http://archive.org/download/IS2013-04-20.m....20track05.flac

thanks for the reply ezinger. appreciate your feedback.

yes, the ping results for Time is super low on my connection. my speedtest.net results for local server is 0ms! very impressive. however, my concern is more to do with the download speed i'm getting. i understand that parallel downloads or multiple connections using a download manager will get me maximum speed in total. but still, there is clearly a difference between Unifi being able to max out on a single download connection compared to Time which is pretty poor on a single connection.

also, the Time Fibre ping plotter results for two of the download servers above show packet loss occurring. not a good sign either.

i assume your download results from the archive.org server is with multiple connections using a download manager. did you try downloading through your web browser with just a single connection? i just want to know if the results i got is "normal" for Time or if it is just my line/area.

This post has been edited by 4th alphabet: Sep 21 2013, 11:44 AM

i believe videos from youtube and file downloads from microsoft are all routed to a mirror server that is local or close to Malaysia. that is why it is fast. however, in all my download tests (not just the ones i posted) with international servers the results have all been very poor with Time. this is just a fact that i discovered.

i have yet to find an international server eg. US or UK which downloads at full speed on a single connection (can anyone?). in comparison, Unifi downloads from almost all servers i have tested with at maximum 5Mbps. even Streamyx 4Mbps, which was my previous service.

i understand that you can download in multiple chunks with a download manager, or use a bittorrent clients to get full 8MBps total speed (even this is not a perfect solution. some servers limit the number of connections per IP, and some rare torrents only have 1 or 2 seeds). however, that is not the point i'm trying to make. i'm just saying that on a single connection Time's download speed is very slow and looking back at the earlier posts in this forum it seems that there were a few others that discovered this fact too.

there are many reasons why one would desire a fast single connection to international servers, rather than using a download manager and bittorrent. of course, everyone's individual requirements is different. i'm just saying that for myself, it is something that i expect to have.

just my personal review. but i'm still hoping this issue can be fixed or addressed by Time.

hi JJ, any news?


and btw, thinkbroadband is the largest service provider in the UK and archive.org is widely known as the "internet archive" hosting billions of files. these are not random servers. of course, i can do download tests with other well known international servers as well and show you the results. unfortunately, they are all the same.

This post has been edited by 4th alphabet: Sep 21 2013, 08:36 AM

hi JJ. thanks for taking the time to run some tests, even on a saturday. really appreciate your help.

i have reviewed your test results and they are pretty much the same as mine. the only thing is if you're downloading with chrome the download will appear to start off with a burst in speed because chrome actually pre-downloads the file in the background, but as you can see after a while the download speed normalizes to about 300+kb/sec as in my results.

there is definitely no QOS session limitation on the servers i tested with (except for the one noted where both Unifi and Fibre only managed 200kb/sec) because as you can see from the results UniFi is able to max out at 5Mbps (i believe this could be even more if i tested with UniFi 10Mbps) whereas Time 8Mbps only manages 2-4Mbps.

appreciate if you can run some more tests. i really hope this issue can be solved.

hi Matrix. thanks for sharing your feedback.

i definitely agree that we can get 8Mbps total speed if downloading with multiple connections (as in your screenshot) and the same if we're downloading from multiple seeders on bittorrent. definitely no argument about that. my issue is, Time Fibre cannot download at full speed from a SINGLE connection (hosted from an international server). please try downloading the test files i posted above with your internet browser. i am interested to see the result.

i have streamyx 4Mbps @ 5Mbps as well, and my neighbour is using Unifi 5Mbps and both services can download the files at maximum speed on a single connection alone.

also, i don't think it is fair to compare total bandwidth between streamyx 4Mbps and time fibre 8Mbps. obviously Time 8Mbps has more bandwidth to accomodate your downloads and streaming through Netflix. it has 8Mbps total after all.

i hope nobody misunderstands me. i am just pointing out that Time Fibre performs poorly when downloading on a single connection, not that it can't achieve maximum 8Mbps total bandwidth overall.

This post has been edited by 4th alphabet: Sep 21 2013, 05:29 PM

hey thanks for doing the tests man. yeah, Time is definitely better value and much better customer service which is the main reason why i decided to change service providers. believe me, i would love to stay with Time if i can sort out my download speed issue.

may i know which program you used to perform the download test? just to clarify, i am not talking about a single file link download, i mean a single connection download. when you use download managers like jdownloader, it will download the file using multiple connections to get the total 8Mbps speed. in your screenshot, on the bottom right corner you can see Max Connections has been set to 6. please try the download test with Max Connections set to 1, or download using your web browser (without the use of a download manager).



This post has been edited by 4th alphabet: Sep 21 2013, 06:01 PM

hey thanks Matrix. appreciate your feedback. that is actually good news for me, which means that this issue can actually be fixed for my connection. i did try a different router but the results were the same. anyway, i'll wait for JJ to get back to me and see what he advises. i still have 1 month free trial for Time to fix this issue.

by the way, the download servers i perform my tests on are not small scale servers. they are all stable and from reputable organisations. microsoft downloads are routed to local servers based on your IP address that's why it is fast. i get good results from that as well.

anyway, i hope my problem can be fixed.

thanks for all the feedback guys. JJ, that sounds like good news. look forward to hear your results. yeah, really hope i can sort out my download speed issue. believe me, i wanna stay on Time and ditch TM if i can.