Just Switched From Virgin Cable To Sky ADSL

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Soldato
Joined
25 Oct 2005
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Hey guys,

I was very apprehensive about making this move, and was only doing it to save money. With the old saying of "you get what you pay for" clearly in my mind, I thought that I was going to get terrible speeds.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that I'm getting a constant 5Mbit according to Speedtest and my downloads, which considering I'm far from my exchange and living in the middle of nowhere with a phoneline that was once struck by lightning, is an awesome speed.

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I am on the Max (up to 16Mbit) package, and expected I'd get somewhere between 512kbps and 4Mbit.

I was previously on the Virgin 4Mbit cable service and have not only just saved myself a fortune, but am now getting a faster connection without the annoying traffic-shaping at peak times. I'm yet to try out the wireless properly but my PDA has managed to connect and browse etc. without any issues yet.

So yeah, the horror stories haven't come true for me yet but I am going to stay on my toes just in case. All in all, my first day as a Sky Broadband customer has been a happy one. :)

Sincerely yours,
Ulfhedjinn.
 
I'm thinking about making the switch also but like you, I'm apprehensive about making the change as I've been with Telewest (now Virgin) for the past 7 years and have never had ADSL.

Glad it worked out for you fine so far. I emailed Sky on Wednesday to ask a few questions to which they haven't responded so it doesn't look great so far and I'm not even a customer yet :eek:
 
mparter said:
I'm thinking about making the switch also but like you, I'm apprehensive about making the change as I've been with Telewest (now Virgin) for the past 7 years and have never had ADSL.
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Yeah, this household has been with Virgin, Telewest, Cable, Cable & Wireless etc. for as long as I can remember and we've only ever been on one ADSL service (BT Openworld).

I hated BT Openworld, switching to cable from ADSL was the best move we ever made and I was worried about switching back, but so far it's not been bad at all to be honest with you.

mparter said:
Glad it worked out for you fine so far. I emailed Sky on Wednesday to ask a few questions to which they haven't responded so it doesn't look great so far and I'm not even a customer yet :eek:
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Ouch, that doesn't look great. :(
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
Hey guys,



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your line stats aint great m8 there is no way you will stay connected at that speed for long, my down speed attenuation is 41 and the best i can get is 4 meg speeds sync at 4768, by the looks of your noise margin its going to resync soon too.

One thing you will notice on ADSL max is you get lots of resyncs if you on poor line stats i get them regular i can't wait till we move and get on 20 meg cable :D
 
Jabbs said:
your line stats aint great m8 there is no way you will stay connected at that speed for long, my down speed attenuation is 41 and the best i can get is 4 meg speeds sync at 4768, by the looks of your noise margin its going to resync soon too.
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Yup according to someone I spoke with at Sky I'm getting better speeds than I should be, but they've not changed yet and as long as they don't I'm much happier than I have been with Virgin so far this year. :)

Jabbs said:
One thing you will notice on ADSL max is you get lots of resyncs if you on poor line stats i get them regular i can't wait till we move and get on 20 meg cable :D
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Already had 20Mbit cable at one point with Virgin, makes it pointless though when they cut you to 4Mbit after 20-25min of steady downloading. Ended up cutting the package back to 4Mbit and ending up being cut back to 2Mbit at peak time so switched to Sky expecting ~4Mbit speeds for less than half the cost.
 
I can't see the problem with the shaping vm are doing, so you get cut too 5 meg speeds between 4-12 so what, you are not shaped any other time and i know lots of m8's getting the full 2mbs download out of those times, i would prefer abit of shaping than have caps as most adsl.

With your attenuation you won't hold those speeds for a steady speed your noise margin needs to stay higher than 15, give it a week or so and your line will settle to its proper speed but you will get lots of re syncs, mine can go upto 5 meg speed download but it don't stop there long soon drops back to 4 meg.
 
Jabbs said:
I can't see the problem with the shaping vm are doing, so you get cut too 5 meg speeds between 4-12 so what, you are not shaped any other time and i know lots of m8's getting the full 2mbs download out of those times, i would prefer abit of shaping than have caps as most adsl.
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No caps on the Sky Max service and no traffic shaping, so I can continue my downloading habits and only spend £10/month on it in the process. Until it goes pear-shaped I am really happy with this ISP. :)

I don't download during the day really and I don't leave my PC on at night or while I'm out so peak times is pretty much the only time I can download the stuff I want and it can add up quite a bit when you have such a small window to do it. With Virgin I would download for about 20min during that time and suddenly find that my ETA would double (or quadruple in the case of 20Mbit.)

Jabbs said:
With your attenuation you won't hold those speeds for a steady speed your noise margin needs to stay higher than 15, give it a week or so and your line will settle to its proper speed but you will get lots of re syncs, mine can go upto 5 meg speed download but it don't stop there long soon drops back to 4 meg.
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It's been 5Mbit all day so far, I'll see what happens. As long as it doesn't drop below 4Mbit or 3.5Mbit then I'm sound as a pound as I am saving a fortune in the long run.

And really the bottom line is, I was expecting much worse. :eek:
 
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When mine started i synced at 6508 mark, and now i seem to hold the 4768 mark but i do get lost connections till.

I would be surprised if you hold 4 meg as i say i got 41db live 2km from exchange and the best i hold is 4768 now, heres the sycns you need for speeds.

3424 - 3999 3.0 Mbps
4000 - 4543 3.5 Mbps
4544 - 5119 4.0 Mbps
5120 - 5695 4.5 Mbps
5696 - 6239 5.0 Mbps


6dB or below is bad and will experience no synch or intermittent synch problems
7dB-10dB is fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions
11dB-20dB is good with no synch problems
20dB-28dB is excellent
29dB or above is outstanding

Thats noise margin obviously.
 
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so what about me?

DSL Status: Connected
DSL Modulation Mode: MultiMode
DSL Path Mode: Interleaved
Downstream Rate: 1024 kbps
Upstream Rate: 128 kbps
Downstream Margin: 5 db
Upstream Margin: 18 db
Downstream Line Attenuation: 50 db
Upstream Line Attenuation: 15.5 db
Downstream Transmit Power: 0
Upstream Transmit Power: 0


:(
 
Jabbs said:
your line stats aint great m8 there is no way you will stay connected at that speed for long, my down speed attenuation is 41 and the best i can get is 4 meg speeds sync at 4768, by the looks of your noise margin its going to resync soon too.

One thing you will notice on ADSL max is you get lots of resyncs if you on poor line stats i get them regular i can't wait till we move and get on 20 meg cable :D
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ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5216 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 59.0 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 5.6 db 7.0 db

My stats are way worse than his and I've held this sync for 4 days now :confused:
 
snazzy_dazzy said:
so what about me?

DSL Status: Connected
DSL Modulation Mode: MultiMode
DSL Path Mode: Interleaved
Downstream Rate: 1024 kbps
Upstream Rate: 128 kbps
Downstream Margin: 5 db
Upstream Margin: 18 db
Downstream Line Attenuation: 50 db
Upstream Line Attenuation: 15.5 db
Downstream Transmit Power: 0
Upstream Transmit Power: 0


:(
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You either have a insanely crap line or your wiring is in desperate need of attention lol :rolleyes:

Have a look at this mate http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php
With your attenuation I would have expecting 4mb or more :) Just to compare, At my old house before maxdsl was out I had fixed 2mb with a attenuation of 52 and my ds SNR was still 20.
 
Jabbs said:
your line stats aint great m8 there is no way you will stay connected at that speed for long, my down speed attenuation is 41 and the best i can get is 4 meg speeds sync at 4768, by the looks of your noise margin its going to resync soon too.

One thing you will notice on ADSL max is you get lots of resyncs if you on poor line stats i get them regular i can't wait till we move and get on 20 meg cable :D
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Going to disconnect soon? Rubbish.

6db is the default target SNR - so his line is 1db over it.

Depending what time of day those line stats were recorded, it should be quite stable @ 5mbit.
 
that line should be fine, 7db is our target noise margin on sky it will be fine.
As he is on max it depends if he has had it capped.

if not keep an eye on it slightest bit of play on line, give sky a call. get it capped at 5120/768 will probably need a few other changes aswell. only IF it gets a bit unstable which it shouldnt.
 
metachi said:
can i get Sky ADSL without the sky phone and sky tv packages?
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Nope you have to be a Sky Digital TV customer in order to also receive the broadband service as well - you dont need to take the Sky Talk phone package though

Jabbs said:
I think you have to be a sky customer to get sky, in response to the op is he on sky LLU then ?
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The upstream connection speed of 768Kbps would indicate he's on the Max Package so yes that would be LLU
 
just get rid of the pants netgear router, try a billion that can hold the signal bettter. or get the ubergt firmware which has sra enabled built in and flash with that. i think that will work with sky?
 
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