InvisibleMan

when they say the speed may change/drop within the first week or so, what do you have to do to if anything to get the best speeds, have everything on, just the modem on, have it downloading or not downloading files?

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

nothing you will do will change the result - just use as normal.

haroldhettaturbo

iTrader: (2)

im with plusnet

initially got 6.1 mb but now i average between 3.7 and 4.1.

my cousin 2 mins up the road can only get 1mb hes with orange so it could be isp related?

InvisibleMan

one would hope you can change your price plan accordingly when in a yr contract. Initially it was 4mb now its 2mb. If 2 is what i can get then i'll go back to the normal 2mb cos its alot cheaper

Suresh

I have a "20mb" Wandadoo connection which averages 8mb. The 20mb is a perfect-world marketing number i.e. bullsh1t.
According to the stats from other users 8mb is slightly above the average.

http://www.speedtest.nl/Database/Gra...=84&co_id=1509

judgejules

Its all to do with signal to noise ratio (SNR). The further you are from the exchange, the more noise will be on the line. What were you on before the upgrade? My brother was marginal for the 512kb service but regraded to 8mb and got just over 2.4mb which he was happy with. Where as I could get the 2mb service and have just regraded to about 5.4mb (its still going through the week of testing). Without knowing your SNR I'd be unable to advise much.

Jules

mike1210

with MAXdsl there are several factors, as above Signal to Noise ratio is a factor, as is loop attenuation as is exchange congestion. Also wiring inside your house can also play a part as the wires were never designed to pump fast net connections through them. this may be of use for noisy lines

http://www.adslnation.com/phpapps/ca...roducts_id=105

http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate.htm


when i was on 2 meg the older version of this bumped up my line stats from 22dB to 27dB (SNR Down)

and to get the line stats from your router check here

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.htm

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

Check the above links that Mike posted, they will help. Also try http://www.dslzoneuk.net/

Some decent enough info on there as well.

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

By the way, you would be better of with an always on router, with a modem when it is powered down sometimes the bt exchange can think it is a loss of sync and therefore it may reduce your line rate and also add interleaving (not great if you do online games)

mike1210

Yes, with max you should really always use a router, some say to leave it on, others say on the training period turn it off for 10 minutes, then back again every day

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Most of it is bandwidth related on the DSLAM, higher the users, lower your bandwidth.
Then there is the SNR, personally its more like resistance, copper cable can and does with age deteriorate, this causes more resistance to the signal, is it noise? not always, attenuation and atmospherics can play a part too, rain (yes rain) can cause you problems, lightening definately can with more charged electrons about.
End of it all, if you can still send a signal and clean it up at the end then your going to be able to get higher speeds, fibre would be perfect but its not a perfect world.

Tony

PS, the exchange doesnt really come into it, voice and data are split off, but user capacity has an effect.

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

my attenuation is 46 but I still sync at over 6mb on max

Chris L

Mike hints at the real cause of the problem. No matter how close you are to the exchange or how good your line is, the constraint is the capacity of the provider at the exchange. Your line will be terminated on a DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer) in the exchange. The ultimate capacity of the DSLAM to process the ADSL data connections will determine the amount of bandwidth available and hence the bandwidth you get.

Data traffic levels are increasing rapidly (it overtook voice traffic many years ago). ISPs and backbone providers will continue to struggle to get enough capacity in to the local exchange - hence the end user will suffer (especially noticable at busy times, like weekends and evenings) because the available bandwidth has to be split between more users (how do you think they are able to offer the service at ever lower prices?).

You will only see real improvements when providers start building in proper Quality of Service controls - but this will no doubt be offered as a premium service.

So don't be suckered in by the promise of huge speeds - I've stuck with NTL's cable offering at 4Mb - it may not be the cheapest, but it has proven to be hugely reliable and I always get close to 4meg bandwidth.

InvisibleMan

LA is 35db & SNR 10db whether thats ok and what i should expect i dont know....

Am in the opposite end of the house on a wireless laptop typing this, so its doing ok. Main thing will need to see how the pci adapter in the pc copes.

Chris L

If you're in a built up area or town centre, chances are you'll have a larger telephone exchange with (hopefully) higher data capacity. The higher density of users will always mean that you will tend to suffer more in busy periods though. Not all exchanges will necessarily have data capacity though.

I spent a good few months working with BT at Martelsham testing DSL modems - the DSLAM was the normal cause of any bottleneck. I don't think any provider actually publishes figures to show what capacity they have at each exchange.

The key thing to watch is contention ratios. If you have a contention ratio of 20:1 (you're very lucky ) - this will mean that 'your' bandwidth is shared with 20 users. All carriers work on the basis that not everyone uses all of their bandwidth at the same time and therefore they effectively 'over sell' the available bandwidth - it's been done for years on private circuits for business.

Most home ADSL services will work on 50:1 and increasingly 100:1 (for the reasons stated in my first post). It's not hard to see why there can be periods when your DSL line can appear very slow!

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Never knew that Chris, I work there B26/27

Tony

mike1210

what speed do you sync at to the exchange. IIRC the target SNR for max is 6dB so you are ok in that sense, loop attenuation is quite high though. To get the best picture you need sync rate up and down, loop attenuation up and down, SNR ratio up and down. Stats should also show wheather you are on a "fast" or interleaved" connection. The latter performing error correction which will increase ping times, mine looks like below, i had interleaving taken off my line to reduce ping time and it runs fine for me, you can see among all the jibberish my SNR is currently 10.5 down stream but this varies from day to night, its typically 13.0dB

SNR higher is better, attenuation lower is better, sync rate higher is better of course

login as: mike
mike@192.168.1.1's password:

cisco#sh dsl int atm 0
ATM0
Alcatel 20190 chipset information
ATU-R (DS) ATU-C (US)
Modem Status: Showtime (DMTDSL_SHOWTIME)
DSL Mode: ITU G.992.1 (G.DMT) Annex A
ITU STD NUM: 0x01 0x1
Vendor ID: 'STMI' 'TSTC'
Vendor Specific: 0x0000 0x0000
Vendor Country: 0x0F 0xB5
Capacity Used: 76% 43%
Noise Margin: 10.5 dB 29.0 dB
Output Power: 18.5 dBm 13.0 dBm
Attenuation: 17.0 dB 6.0 dB
Defect Status: None None
Last Fail Code: None
Watchdog Counter: 0x14
Watchdog Resets: 0
Selftest Result: 0x00
Subfunction: 0x00
Interrupts: 7713 (0 spurious)
PHY Access Err: 0
Activations: 10
LED Status: ON
LED On Time: 100
LED Off Time: 100
Init FW: embedded
Operation FW: embedded
FW Version: 2.5.42

Interleave Fast Interleave Fast
Speed (kbps): 0 8128 0 448
Cells: 0 102784257 0 457306491
Reed-Solomon EC: 0 0 0 0
CRC Errors: 0 72 0 25
Header Errors: 0 62 0 15
Total BER: 0E-0 6966E-12
Leakage Avarage BER: 0E-0 4016E-13

LOM Monitoring : Disabled


--More--

StickyMicky

me and my dad are both with BT

he lives on the other side of a small marina from me, we are both pretty much the same length from the exchange, yet i got around 4.2mb and he got 3.7mb

jokes such as
"some of us are just younger and faster pops" don't go down very well

InvisibleMan

How do you check that?

There should be a rough guide 1-24mb table with LA's & SNR's...

mike1210

LOL im pretty close, prob less than 1Km

if it doesnt come up as standard maybe the modem needs an extra utility, but a router is the way to go...even if you only use one machine, not only does it do all the net connecting for you taking the load off your machine, it acts as a strong firewall against incoming traffic by default

http://www.draytek.co.uk/natmovie.html

see the above link for a graphical demonstration

get a router from here

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/

you'll need an adsl router not a broadband router, they are for cable (NTL), IMO i would avoid Belkin and Safecom

shooter007

theres also the problem of ally cable ,you know tony it was all suposed to be changed out well where i live they lied (and it takes very little to cause a problem)

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Yep it was used in the 70's-80's when there was a shortage of copper. It should be replaced every 10 years (your line from the pole that is ) but dont tell em i said so

Tony

shooter007

its ok tony same firm my job was/is trying to sorting out problems on b/b

Chris L

Tony - it was a few years back that I worked there - not for BT though. I was working for a company that designed and made DSL modems & routers (amongst other things) - most models were OEM'd for Motorola and we had to get approval from BT to attach the equipment. Fantastic place to work though. I think they still average one patent filed every week or something silly like that.