Airtel FTTH - Speed Issue with 200 Mbps plans

[CosmicWisdom]

Hello,
I am having speed issue with my Airtel Xstreme fiber connection. My current plan is 200Mbps unlimited but the download speed fluctuates a lot, during peak hours I get down speed around ~15Mbps but upload speed is always 200+ mbps.

To understand the fluctuation I've hosted a speedtest container in Rpi 4 and in every 20mins its running a speed test throughout the day. So got 3 samples in an hour. You can see the data

See the below screenshots (all speed tests are done over 1Gbps LAN)
24 hours data



1 week data


You can clearly see that in night time after 1am to 11am speed is always above 200mbps but the other times it is dropping as low as 8mbps.
For a day I also disconnected all devices, disabled the wifi interface to make sure that the issue is not due to the connected devices, but the result is same.

I also read some old post from 2020 with exactly same issue (check here).

Over the past 1 month I opened multiple service requests, the guy came to my place and changed the fiber cable and ONT (Huawei to Nokia) and finally told me they cannot do anything for this issue.

So please suggest me what to do next as changing the ISP is not an option for me.

 

[Sushubh]

i mean if it is congestion because of overselling in your area, one thing to do eventually would be to downgrade to 40mbps plan and save money. their 40mbps plan gives 100mbps for most of us so there is no point paying for 200mbps if you are not getting the speeds when you need it.

 

[eatpepsi]

I am on a 200mbps FTTH line as well. I have not noticed any significant drops in the day, but there are times when the upload speed is less than 150mbps.
i have noticed that for some unknown reason my ethernet sometimes shows slower speed compared to 5ghz wifi, so maybe when ever you notice a drop in the connection, connect it over 5 ghz wifi and check...

 

[nishantt6969]

I have the same issue. Download speed sucks whereas upload speed always goes up to 800mbps.

 

[Sushubh]

my excitel rarely goes above 200mbps on my 300mbps plan during the day time. i have considered downgrading but 300 does not cost much over 100 so i stay on 300. i would hate this on airtel because their higher speed plans cost a lot more than the base plan which well costs a lot compared to excitel. but it's fine for backup in the end.



Source
pretty annoying but does not really affect internet usage much. under 50mbps would be noticeable of course.

 

[nishantt6969]

Engineers came and changed my router every time they came, a total of 8 routers got changed and yet the issue is there. During day time speed is 150-200 Mbps but upload always hits above 800+. I think airtel is overselling connections in my area.

 

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[eatpepsi]

@nishantt6969 that should be unacceptable for airtel & Jio. You are paying a premium for the quality of service. you deserve full speed ...

 

[nishantt6969]

Sooner or later you will also experience this issue once your fiber line is saturated.

 

[eatpepsi]

@nishantt6969 we can accept this problem with LCO and i use 3 of them at home & work, but the main line is either jio & airtel for their immense reliability ... if they start faltering then what's the point of paying a premium... I suggest you keep requesting, hopefully they will add another line in your area to solve your problem.

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

@eatpepsi You don't deserve full speed you are only paying for the "up to" part. Since for the residential connection are never really meant to have 1:1 contention ratio; as long as you are getting anything above 2Mbps which is the definition of broadband for India; Airtel or Jio have no other obligation.

 

[nishantt6969]

I ate their brain, They ate my brain but nothing solved it. Right now I am getting 600+ download speed, but soon after 8pm I will get 150-200.

 

[eatpepsi]

@Lolita_Magnum Thats disturbing...

 

[eatpepsi]

@nishantt6969 thats just disheartening to see how companies in india can get away with anything ...

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

That is not disturbing, that is the truth. Do you know how much a 1:1 30Mbps DIA connection costs? 2-4Lakhs a month without any IP prefixes except the /30 for BGP!
Customers wants cheap but they want quality too. That is not how it works. Do you know how much international transit costs; what is the cost for maintaining a sea pipe or just a metro backbone itself?
A big pipe used is divided among many customers; easy way to make it cheap for customers. Kind of like our water supply
It's not an India thing; this is how it is everywhere difference is the pipes there are much bigger since base plans usually start over 100Mbps or even 500Mbps in countries like Tokyo and Singapore.
Not every customer is going to keep saturating all the time hence it rarely affects anybody plus residential TCP have a throttle limit of 35Mbit/s per lane.

You want another cold truth? You know why Jio never has speed issues? Because they take the 3300GB limit very seriously and have enforced it correctly everywhere, while for Airtel well... Airtel is airtel....

 

[eatpepsi]

@Lolita_Magnum thanks for the info, Makes sense ...

I do recall paying exorbitant amounts for internet in the middle east & Europe when i used to consult there, I can imagine it must be the same for the USA if not worse, I don't know since I have not worked there.

As far as imposing the limit goes, I have faced the limit both on airtel as well as jio .. I guess I was just unlucky ...