Site speeds are too slow

Description - Internet speeds are much slower than expected at a site.

Indicators of this issue

• Users report applications or websites are slow or requests time out.

• Performance charts in the Bigleaf Web Dashboard show a circuit or site never reaching configured speeds.

• Speed tests from the site's LAN are slow.

Potential Causes

• The most common cause is a degraded ISP circuit or a degraded LAN network.

• The remote destination web site or application is experiencing performance issues or an outage.

• A site or ISP circuit is over-utilized / congested and there is no available bandwidth.

Tests and Solutions

• Verify site bandwidth and circuit status.

  • Check the overall site bandwidth utilization in the Bigleaf Web Dashboard’s Performance tab, as there could be limited capacity available for speed tests or new applications. Consider upgrading your Bigleaf Service Plan to increase capacity for higher speeds.

  • Look at the overall and circuit performance charts for throughput, capacity, and Health Monitoring to determine if there is a degraded ISP circuit. If there is a degraded ISP circuit, follow the guidance in our Help Center article A circuit has packet loss or latency.

  • Verify that your circuit rates and type are properly configured in the Bigleaf Web Dashboard Configuration tab.

• Verify and test ISP circuit speeds and overall site speeds (Bigleaf service plan speed) with a speed test application.

  • Bigleaf Support team uses iPerf3 testing between the CPE and TE server in the Bigleaf POP.

  • We advise using a similar testing topology if possible so you can control as many variables as possible in a speed test. However, public speed tests sites and servers are acceptable and valid as long as certain considerations and expectations are set.

• Considerations and expectations for “speed test” applications or web sites:

  • Service plan speeds will be limited by the model of Bigleaf router being used. Review the Bigleaf datasheet to ensure speed expectations are correct. A site’s service plan will not be able to exceed the router’s capabilities.

  • For speed test results, we set expectations to approximately 90% of the fastest circuit's bandwidth. The internet uses flow-based load-balancing, meaning that all packets with a specific source and destination IP and port are considered one flow, and are therefore placed on the same link; this is done to ensure packets arrive at the remote endpoint in-order and to prevent problems with out-of-order packets. Depending on the speed test application, it is possible for all test flows to be load balanced over a single WAN circuit. However, speed test providers like Speedtest.net or Cloudflare often use multiple flows per test, so a single speed test could be placed on multiple WAN links at the same time, and observed speed test results could be much higher.

  • For the best and most accurate results, ensure you test against a speed test server in the same metro area as the Bigleaf POP you’re connected to, and test against multiple servers to rule out an over-utilized server.

  • The Bigleaf service considers the quality of each link while making load-balancing decisions, so certain links may not be selected as being eligible for load-balancing if there is a circuit problem like packet loss happening at the time of the speed test. If a circuit has a problem with download-direction packet loss but not upload-direction packet loss, then only the download side of that circuit could be excluded from load-balancing calculations.