Help ADSL utter newbie

schnipps · 4 Sep 2007 at 21:23

Been on virgin 20 meg for a while and was before that on 10 meg for years and now im in a new house that cant get it which is a nightmare, how much of a nightmare im just finding out. Sky 16 meg max service has just come on tonight although i havent had a letter saying it has or even a connection date.

The most i can get is 300k/sec and thats from speedtests and newsgroups, my wireless says connection strong and the conn to router seems fine.

Going from an exhange distance site it says im 1.7km from exhange. Is this a normal speed for this connection is seems appauling to me?

Phemo · 4 Sep 2007 at 21:49

Log in to your router and copy/paste the line stats - sync rates, attenuation and SNR will be most useful.

schnipps · 4 Sep 2007 at 22:12

Phemo said:
Log in to your router and copy/paste the line stats - sync rates, attenuation and SNR will be most useful.

Will do but can you explain how please?

Phemo · 4 Sep 2007 at 22:43

The default IP of the Sky supplied router is 192.168.0.1 I believe, so go to that address in a browser. The default login is username admin with a password of sky. Once logged in, click "Show Statistics" at the bottom and another window will pop up with your sync rates etc.

schnipps · 5 Sep 2007 at 08:01

Phemo said:
The default IP of the Sky supplied router is 192.168.0.1 I believe, so go to that address in a browser. The default login is username admin with a password of sky. Once logged in, click "Show Statistics" at the bottom and another window will pop up with your sync rates etc.

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 11146 15498 0 30 426 10:43:53
LAN 10M/100M 746 0 0 6 0 10:45:19
WLAN 11M/54M 17563 15476 0 442 40 10:45:09

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2848 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 49.0 db 30.0 db
Noise Margin 11.6 db 14.0 db

Phemo · 5 Sep 2007 at 08:36

So that means you have a 2.5mbit line, hence the 300KB/sec. The attenuation suggests you've got a pretty long line so there isn't a great deal you can do. Are you plugged straight into the master socket or do you have phone extensions?

schnipps · 5 Sep 2007 at 08:59

Phemo said:
So that means you have a 2.5mbit line, hence the 300KB/sec. The attenuation suggests you've got a pretty long line so there isn't a great deal you can do. Are you plugged straight into the master socket or do you have phone extensions?

There are 2 built in sockets so its hard to know which is the main one but i have just tried the other one and i now get

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3776 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 49.0 db 30.5 db
Noise Margin 8.3 db 14.0 db

But i ge a poor wirless signal from it so i may have to wire it in, does it matter if i have a phone extension cable of a few metres, will it make things worse? or is it better to extend with cat5?

tolien · 5 Sep 2007 at 09:38

Provided the extension is of a decent quality, it won't make much odds.
Bear in mind that the whole point of connecting the router at the master socket is to filter everything there - there isn't much point using a short run of decent cable to connect the router to the master socket, then running a whole load of unfiltered poor cable that'll just pick up interference.