Recently switched to Airtel broadband. I opted for the 128kbps unlimited plan. Now in the daytime i get around 13-14KBps and a steady 26KBPs at night even with the default IE downloader which was a pleasant surprise considering what i'd read here regarding Airtel resorting to 'back-end caching' or something which means u get decent speeds with download managers and p2p apps coz they make multiple connections to servers/peers. But surfing speeds suffer greatly coz of this with pages loading in fits n starts.Now am almost certain that the IE downloader makes a single connection to the server (unless they have patched something in sp2) and therefore the speeds i get with it should be equal to my surfing speeds. But that does not seem to be the case for some strange reason beyond me.With my previous MTNL 256k line i was able to listen to/watch streaming audio/video at 192kbps without any skipping. But now with Airtel when i try listening to stuff at 96kbps even (at night) it skips like crazy and just stops playing for a few secs. Now if am getting a steady 25-26KBps or 26 X 8= 208kbps with the IE downloader, howcome am not able to listen to stuff encoded at less than half the bitrate? With triband i used to listen to radio at 128kbps and still be dowloading at 14-15KBps without any problem. 🙁
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Unable to listen to net radio at decent bitrates!
- Thread starter waterloo_sunset
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- Replies 17
- Views 3,394
vishalrao
The Global Village Idiot
either there is a problem with the route from the radio site to your airtel connection which means this problem (congestion maybe) is long-term or even permanent.or it could be the radio site was serving too many listeners at that time and it might be ok later on.if you are listening on say, WinAmp or something... try going into the settings for the mpeg layer 3 (mp3) input decoder plugin settings and increase the buffer size... if its 64 KB then make it 128 KB or something... the skipping should reduce a bit or go away - although might not help at all if the "skips like crazy and stops for few secs" happens every few seconds
Already tried all that.....tried listening to many stations..increasing the buffer...but no luck. The max bitrate which i could manage w/o skipping was 64kbps. Anything higher and there are frequent buffer underruns.
real_india
Regular
Well i am on airtel 256kbps plan and i am writing this reply while listening to 192kbps stream without skipping.
Am using winamp.And real_india, that is probably coz ur getting 512kbps at night. So 192kbps is nothin to shout abt. But that is something that i'll have to consider next month....shifting to home999 that is, coz am not able to listen to my fav stations and 64kbps streams sound crappy on my big speakers.
anirudhashish
Regular
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pik u ur phone and dial 121
vishalrao
The Global Village Idiot
ok thats sounds right... doesnt airtel only guarantee 64kbps for whichever plan... maybe it fluctuates based on what data other users are downloading at various points in timewith my BSNL 256k and 512k connections i can listen to radio streams upto 160kbps without hassles... if there is skipping (rarely) its usually overload on the other side (coz i switch to another and it works)...so, again, serves u rite for deserting one ISP and moving to another hehe
I had the same problem with PAcenet 300kbps nite plan connection. In fact i couldnt even listen to 64kbps streams without skipping. the Firefox default downloader gave speeds of only 4-5 KBps. Bittorent and download managers give full speed though.Pacenet is a big chor . I called them up and told about this , they said that the minimum speed guaranteed on these plans (>72kbps) was 1/4th of the plan speed.(This is not mentioned on the site anywhere)So actually i should be using 64kbps radio without problems, still it dint work.
TheMafioso
Newbie
[/quote]
I've also studied the airtel unlimited plans brochure and found that they mention a ratio along with plan like 1:2 or 1:3.So they maybe giving out shared connections like sify used to give.So it depends on u'r luck, on the type of person sharing connection with you, if he's/she's a heavy downloader, you get slow speeds.
I think that'll explain some people getting low speeds on airtel while some get okay/good speeds
I know, i've done quite a lot of guess work in this, guys correct me if u find me wrong.
real_india
Regular
[/quote]
You are right to some extent. Airtel does have 1:2 contention for thier unlimited plans but in actual fact the average speed will be usaually higher than the min speed(i.e 128kbps for a 256kbps connection and 64 kbps for a 128kbpss connectin).
This is because airtel is allocating fixed amount of bandwidth for their local DSLAM's.
Usually this fixed amount is high enough to handle the load of simultaneous users. But recenctly the influx of new users and the airtel's double speed offer at night was choking the end users. Airtel is in the process of upgrading their DSLAM's bandwidth, so all those airtel users who are getting slow speeds should have patience!
I know all this because i was getting slow speeds and packet loss since last 1 month and i have been talking directly to their technical support team(right from the lowest level-DSl 'engineers' , team leaders to DSL manager(technical) Noida). In fact they were so impressed by my efforts to get the speed issue resolved that they decided to give me the mobile number of Manager 'Nock' NCR( read--highest level backend teachnical team who have acces to the Routers). Within 1 day of my calling him the speed and the packet loss issue was reolved. After upgradation i am getting better speeds now.
anirudhashish
Regular
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sharing ratio reffers to upload:donload.now if ur getting the right speed on downloaders and dap's then the isp is fulfilling its comitment the prob lies at ur end ,may some setting or some thing.Airtel gices u a gaurenty of 50% of the download speed the enrolment form says so also specifing the actual bandwidth is only till te las mile connectivity i.e that big blue box som where near ur house.
