The Technical Stuff

We will consider each element in turn:

Our Servers

This bit is out of your control. We spend a small fortune on servers, routers, RAID arrays etc to maximise the speed.

We have multiple “racks” of equipment. Each rack contains web servers and database servers. When you connect to Expert Agent, you are connected to the server with the least load on it at that point. We have 250 branches per “Rack” of gear.

The only thing that is worth checking is that you have not created a shortcut to one particular rack in error. Manually browse to www.expertagent.co.uk and login.

Our Internet Connectivity

This is literally uncapped. If we need more bandwidth, our service providers give us it instantly – we don’t have to ask for it.

Your Broadband Connection

This is the bit you need to get looked at. It will all gets a bit technical, I’m afraid. For a good explanation, look at www.thinkbroadband.com 

Connection Speed – particularly Upload speed.

ADSL Broadband is asynchronous – faster one way than the other. The fast direction is down the line from the Internet and that’s ideal for most web browsing. You can make that direction as fast as you want – just by spending more money. However, the upload speed has barely increased. Most broadband connections are 256-350k bits upload. Some of the very latest are 712-1024k bits upload. When you save an applicant in Expert Agent there’s quite a lot of data uploaded and it can take 2-4 seconds on the original broadband upload speed (reducing accordingly on a faster connection). If 3 or 4 of you upload an applicant at the same time, you could easily have to wait for 10-15 seconds if your upload speed is poor. Expert Agent can’t move on till it receives confirmation that your data has been saved.

You can spend more money and upgrade the download speed. It seems that many providers will do this for free if you give the impression you are likely to cancel.

However, try to get the highest possible upload speed. We think that is more important than the highest possible download speed.  Also, check that spy ware and viruses are not using up your upload bandwidth.

If you can get fibre-optic braodband such as BT Infinity – fantastic!

First of all, go to www.broadbandtest.co.uk download and run their test program. It will give you a complete picture of your connection. If you have 1mb per user and 300k plus of upload speed (so a 6mb connection shared between 6 of you or a 12mb connection between 12 of you), that will be plenty.

If you need to get a faster connection, look at http://www.bethere.co.uk. BE is park of Sky and has a great network – IF your exchange allows it. They have a phone number check system. They also do “bonded” broadband where 2 or more connections are joined together. We used that till be managed to get fibre broadband.

You can also check for better providers here http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker – anyone that provides LLU can normally give you a fast service.

Contention

You need to think about the issue of Contention. The speed you pay for is the “maximum throughput”.

With Broadband, other people share the same “pipe” from the box at the end of your street, through your local exchange and on to the Internet. This is Contention.

If many of these people are trying to download large files at the same time, the amount of room in the “pipe” for you to download things may be limited, and your connection may go slow.

In turn, if most people are just surfing the internet (just viewing web pages and not downloading huge amounts of data) or are not connected at all, when you try to download the same file later on there may be plenty of room in the pipe and you will be able to download very quickly. The same limitations apply to all the other people using the “pipe”, not just you. BT Wholesale provide most of the UK’s internet infrastructure. They offer a contention ratio of 20:1 or 50:1 – you are sharing the pipe with either 20 or 50 neighbours. So, if BT Wholesale only have a 20mb pipe available to your street and you are contended at 50:1, you could get a situation where the maximum download speed is less than 1/2mb despite the fact that you are paying for a maximum throughput of 8mb

So, try to get a 20:1 contended line A low contended but slow connection may prove faster than a theoretically faster but highly contended connection. 

MTU

MTU is Maximum Throughput Units and it relates to a setting on your router. If you get this wrong, Expert Agent will give you “page not found” errors or kick you out. MTU determines the size of the “packets” of data that your router sends to your internet service provider. BT Wholesale recommend setting this to 1458bytes (or just over 1k bytes). If you set it wrongly, you will still be able to download from most websites. However, if you set it too high, data that you send to and from Expert Agent may not reach our servers and will give you the errors mentioned above. Most routers are of US origin. US DSL is normally set to 1500 and therefore needs to be changed.

This single change can make a huge difference to reliability and performance.  The following links to a full technical explanation:

http://www.adslnation.com/support/knowledgebase/ht003.php 

Cabling

If there is a problem with your telephone line, or the wiring within your office, or the way you have installed your microfilters, it is very common for your Broadband modem to “lose sync” with your local telephone exchange – sometimes very frequently. This can cause problems because every time it loses the connection to the local exchange your Broadband modem has to try to establish a connection again, and send your username and password again. And if this happens a lot, it can result in lots of “page not found” errors, or for the connection to appear to be slow.

With some routers, You can identify this problem via the lights on the front panel. The “synch” or “connection” light which would normally flash for a few moments after you turn it on then remain steady, will be seen going off, then flashing, then going steady for a while, then maybe flashing again — or at least not staying lit steadily. Each time you see it start to flash it means your router has lost synchronisation with the local exchange and is trying to re-establish a connection.

(NOTE: Although this is true of the majority of Broadband modems, please check the documentation that came with your Broadband modem or router for information on exactly what the indicators on your particular unit mean – some makes and models may have a light that may flash to indicate that all is well, or that data is being transmitted, in which case a flashing light would not mean an error).

Your PC

Most PCs have a direct connection to the internet. If you have an older, more complex setup, you may have a Microsoft Server that interferes with the flow of data. Until Broadband became dominant, it was normal to have a server with an ISDN or even a modem connection to the internet. Some businesses have retained this. Get rid of it! Our experience is that the presence of a Server that controls domain access to the web, particularly when configured as a Proxy Server, slows down Expert Agent access by a dramatic amount.

Make sure you have an up to date Virus Checker on your PC – there is a good one, a cheap one and even free one at www.kaspersky.com 

More importantly, make sure you have an up to date Spyware checker. Spyware can be fairly innocuous – a widget designed to track your web surfing habits so as to throw up suitable adverts. However, it can be malicious – looking for credit card details. Either way, spyware will use up valuable upload bandwidth by constantly communicating with its creator. Some years ago, a colleague’s PC acquired a Trojan-type spyware from a dodgy website. It swallowed up all of our upload bandwidth.

If you don’t have a spyware checker – look at www.kaspersky.com – they have a good one, a cheap one and a free one!