Freenet internet is slow and unreliable

I'm in Berlin and I have some package with Freenet. I'm not German speaking/reading and a friend set it up for me. It's allegedly a 16000 kbps connection.

It seems that at random, for hours or days on end, the internet access becomes completely slow and unreliable and prevents me from doing what I need to do. It's quite sad that we live in an age where the internet is for many of us, as important to life as the blood in your veins, but that's how it is for some of us.

I connect to a lot of North American ftp servers, and play online games based over there as well. I can't expect the lowest ping going cross ocean, but i'm getting latency spikes so completely high that I'm unable to do any of these things for nights at a time. It has the feeling like i'm on a shared LAN with many users downloading a bunch of garbage, but I most definitely am not. I've gone so far as to disable any wireless access and I have always run an ethernet cable myself.

Anyone have any ideas? What would be causing this? I'm assuming my ISP is just plain garbage. Is it hard to switch to a new one? I don't care about cost, I want the fastest and most reliable internet available here.

Well, actually you are, only it's not a shared LAN but a shared WAN. Freenet has one of the highest ADSL contention ratios of almost all suppliers and the worst access to transatlantic pipes.
You won't be able to switch until your minimum 2 years is over, and then only if you cancel at least 3 months before that.

Good to know about the overseas access... what's your source for that information?

You could probably get out of the contract with Freenet if they are not offering the service they promised. You could get a lawyer to write them a letter and they'll probably agree to let you go.

I have the same package. My router tells me I have something like 14000kbps available. Doing online speed tests I get anything from 2000 to 25000(!)


It isnt, by any chance, at exactly the same times that half of the US is online too? ie, early evening?


You do realise that has zilch to do with your own connection speed to whatever backbone you connect to and everything to do with the load on the servers you are trying to use? Why not just connect to a european server? I get 20-30ms ping on various half-life variants in Europe which goes to an unplayable 200 and above on US and Asian servers.

But you almost certainly are, just not at your end. Are you connecting via a router? Connect to a server of your choice, check the ping, then take a look at your connection speed. Ill bet you have a great speed this end but still a shitty ping.

If your PC runs anything worth playing online then wireless almost certainly isnt a problem.

As a rule, Freenet is an OK run of the mill ISP. Your connection may be garbage and that may be their fault, but it might also be the fault of your "last mile" cable, in which case you could change to whoever and not get faster.

You might be able to get improvements in performance if someone offers glass-fibre connections in your street but you almost certainly signed a two-year contract with Freenet that you probably wont be able to get out of. That wouldnt be a problem, but they wont let you switch the connection wither, even if you continued to pay the bills.

Do some checking your end first, it may just be that youre trying to connect to the wrong servers.

andy M

Oh yes, Freenet are famous for doing stuff like that. Not.

I would have thought a lawyer's letter stating it was "geschäftsschädigend" (doing harm to the business) would get them worried enough to let you go.

i doubt it. the service is always "up to" the stated speed with no actual guarantee.

If you are using it for business then you should not have it anyway. Freenet AGBs specifically state it is a domestic service and not for business use, not that that stops most people, but it's a get-out clause for them in cases like this.

If the contract in his companies' name then they shouldn't have signed him up in the first place. Maybe that argument would work?

What company?

Freenet's Samsung WLAN DSL modem are absolute crap out of the box. A lot of my issues were fixed with a firmware update. The rest I blame on Telekom and their BS monopoly on anything that resembles a cable in this country.

I've been running misc diagnostics from time to time.
The game servers talked about are fine from other people's connections here and they are fine for all the other people playing. FTP servers and web access are fine when used elsewhere as well.

My disabling wireless access was meaning to infer that there's no way someone is accessing my internet connection without my knowledge and leeching off of it.

Also, unfortunately,
(nerd moment): playing World of Warcraft, have a character of 3+ years... to play on a european server, you have to get a brand new account, buy the game again, buy the expansion pack(s) again and start from scratch. I should cancel the account just for those reasons but I enjoy it on days off and i've put a lot of work into my character..

Freenet hotline: 0431 / 902 1809
It costs the normal price as if you were to call a local number in Kiel, and for those with Freenet Komplett, there's no extra cost to call this number, since it's already included in your tariff.

Freenet supervisors: 0431 / 902 0869
If you're pissed off at a call center agent and you would like to complain (or annoy the living hell out of a supervisor), then call this number. See the text under the first number for prices. Either way, you're still going to save a shitload of money.

Super

Just to break a lance for Freenet here - We recently had a problem that some bint in Berlin managed to type in her access code so wrongly that she managed to re-direct all our calls to her. Freenet gave us a new access code (but were no help in setting up the system again) and as a result my wife spent a couple of hours calling a technical hotline that cost megabucks. She didnt know about the free line and no-one bothere d to tell her. This is all bad and meant we were offline for a couple of days but to be fair to freenet, once we had the technical problem sorted out they refunded us the money we had spent calling the (wrong) hotline, so smiles all round.

andy M