Long Line.... even lower sync than [TW]Fox's..

Westyfield2

Westyfield2

Westyfield2

Soldato
Joined
14 Dec 2005
Posts
12,488
Location
Bath
Hi Guys,

This is for a friend's connection not mine, I live in the city and sync at a nice 13mbps :D. They were moaning about the lack of speed they get, so I was doing the usual "LOL BT are ****, switch to Be/O2".... until I saw their stats! One thing to note is that they are (straight line distance) approximately 5.54km from the exchange. Sounds a bit like Fox's situation then!

BT Home Hub said:
Uptime: 0 days, 3:34:24 

Modulation: G.992.1 annex A


Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 288 / 576
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 10.72 / 101.74
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11.5 / 16.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31.5 / 63.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 24.0 / 19.5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / ALCB
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0


Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0


CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 2,098
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 367


Line Profile: Fast
Click to expand...

Yeah, you read it right.... Sync of 576kbps :eek:.

Any ideas on what to do welcome! Change the router? Change to ADSL2+ on O2/Be (they've got LLU on that exchange). Play around with the phone line? Set a target SNR?
 
Aw they're lucky. My brothers got a connection that can barely manage 160kbps, he's getting on for 6.4km though.

Look into a different router, the broadcom chipset in the DG834G v4 and DG834GT are supposed to better for long lines, as I a couple of others 2wire and a speedtouch I think. I've had 2 DG834GTs go pop on me so far this year though.

I put a DG834 v4 (don't need wireless) in last weekend but haven't been able to check the speeds as yet. I've got a couple of ADSL Nation XTE-2005 microfilters to try and fit tomorrow as I've read good reports about them. I'm not expecting any miracles though.

I don't see it improving in his area anytime before 2012 though.
 
Last edited:
They're also on fixed rate 500kbps and could get a lot more with an SNR margin that high (the calculator in the sticky suggests around three times more; hardly 13Mbps but an improvement, they'd get an increased upstream too).
 
with a SNR of 6 (fairly standard for ADSL2 or ADSL Max) nad a product not limited to half a meg you would squeeze a little more out of that line.

Are those stats from the master socket also, as dodgy extension wiring can add to your attenuation
 
63.5dB is the maximum attentuation which lots of routers will report. The true figure is probably higher. That said, the noise margin is decent. They need to change onto an ADSL Max product - probably get 1.5-2Mb. ADSL2 won't do anything at that distance.
 
Thanks all! :)

I've bashed the info into http://212.23.23.177/ADSL/default.aspx and it reckons 1764Kbps on ADSL or 2033Kbps on ADSL2+.


tolien said:
They're also on fixed rate 500kbps and could get a lot more
Click to expand...

Why would they be on that then? And, more-importantly, how would they get off it?

EDIT: Hang on.... do you mean that they're still on one of the old '512kbps' broadband services instead of ADSL Max 'upto 8MB'?
 
Yeah exactly 288 upload and 576 down is the clue here... this is probably due to a number of low sync events or other problems reported on the line. Depending on the stats the engineer can see they may or may not let him move to a rate adaptive service.
 
I'd contact the ISP. 1 of 2 things has happened:

1) ISP missed the account when they moved people from fixed rate to Max accounts.
2) The ISP kept the account as fixed rate as they think stablity would be affected moving it to Max.

Ask them - they might get an extra couple of meg in sync speed.
 
There isn't an IP profile on fixed rate services. If it was on Max you'd see a higher upstream.

Basically, they should ask the ISP why they're still on home500 and if they'll order a regrade to Max. It's possible they decided lines with an attenuation that high weren't worth the inevitable hassle of unstable connections (one nice feature when Max was being set up would have been a customer-configurable sync rate limit).
If the ISP's BT Retail, they were doing exactly that.
 
tolien said:
There isn't an IP profile on fixed rate services. If it was on Max you'd see a higher upstream.

Basically, they should ask the ISP why they're still on home500 and if they'll order a regrade to Max. It's possible they decided lines with an attenuation that high weren't worth the inevitable hassle of unstable connections (one nice feature when Max was being set up would have been a customer-configurable sync rate limit).
If the ISP's BT Retail, they were doing exactly that.
Click to expand...

Ah right, thanks.

I'll point them at their ISP (BT Retail) then....
 
TBH - while they may potentially gain a bit of speed... the bigger chance is the line becomes incredibly unstable and they have to get BT to put it back on a fixed rate service - and trust me thats much harder than getting them to put it onto a rate adaptive serivce... which generally isn't easy in the first place. That said the SNR would appear to have a bit of give in it before you hit too many stability issues.
 
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