New broadband & attenuation

LEK-89

LEK-89

LEK-89

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11 Oct 2008
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Leicester
We have recently just migrated over to BT ADSL2 (21CN) (yes I know lol, wish me luck but my Mum pays for the internet and wanted a cheap deal with the phone) from another provider and before we were on a 6.5mb/down connection through ADSL max, 6db SNR & 32db attenuation.

Now yesterday was our set migration date to BT and all went well, I've decided to retire my trusty Netgear DG834G (V3) just because it's approaching 6 years old and I thought I would give the BT Home Hub 3 a try. Before I swapped routers when I got home last night I noticed to my amazement that the new BT connection seemed to work automatically on the Netgear router and did not require me to do anything at all for it to work. Anyway, before I disconnected it I noticed that it was connected at 10.5mb/down, now on a 5db SNR and the same 32db attenuation.

However, since switching and using the BT Home Hub 3, it connects at the same speeds but I've noticed now that the attenuation has increased to 33.5db - why is this??

Do you guys think it may be worth investing in a new ADSL wireless router, so far I'm not all that impressed with the BT Home Hub as the wireless range is infact not brilliant too!

Thanks - Liam
 
Different modems detect and display Attenuation differently. Whether this has any bearing on the resultant speed though is another thing. I'm not sure whether the attenuation rate determines use or non-use of certain frequency bands.
 
Thanks for clearing that up guys, that's re-assuring to know :)

The new broadband last night right after migrating was very sketchy and I was only getting between 1-3MB download speeds but at the same time as mentioned, the wireless reception was poor too. After a bit of tinkering with the wireless channel on the home hub the wireless speeds are much better now and I am seeing 8.4MB download speeds (currently synced at 10113kbps) so I think I should be able to squeeze a bit more out of the line somehow.

According to the BT speedtester website my line is currently set on a 9050k profile.

Liam
 
Yep you might see a megabit or two extra yet, depends where the SNR is at present. Kitz calculator says a 32dB attenuation will get about 13Mbit
 
Tealc said:
Yep you might see a megabit or two extra yet, depends where the SNR is at present. Kitz calculator says a 32dB attenuation will get about 13Mbit
Click to expand...

I always had a 32db attenuation on my Netgear router, but now on the Home Hub last night it was at 33.5db as mentioned but this evening it's now fixed at 34db since rebooting due to the wireless tweeking. The SNR is always at 6.0db (during last night and this evening so far at least), however as I am always out at work during the day I am not able to see if it rises or not.

I may give the router a reboot tomorrow morning before I set off for work to see if I notice any improvements.

Liam
 
Update - 11 days on,

Looking at the Home Hub's control panel earlier on the logs, I noticed that the router randomly lost it line sync yesterday and instead of the usual 10,500K downstream / 888K upstream connection - it is now connected at 10,900K downstream & 1195K upstream. The connection latency type has also changed from Interleaved to FAST & the SNR ratio now sits at 3.0db in the evening (compared to 6.0db before).

Speedtests confirm the slight speed incease, with speedtest.net reporting that I am hitting 9.45MB & 1.0MB speeds which is good. However, I would still like to try and hit the 10MB download mark which I am sure I can achieve. My attenuation still sits at 33.5db.

Liam
 
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LEK-89, I was the same as your line. I use to be 6.5Mbps on ADSL (20CN) with 6.2db SNR & 30.5db attenuation. Since BT transfer me over to ADSL2+ (21CN) with 3.3db SNR & 32.5db attenuation.

Before on ADSL:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8128 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 30.5 db 16.1 db
Noise Margin 6.2 db 9.3 db

Now on ADSL2+:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 18739 kbps 1279 kbps
Line Attenuation 32.5 db 17.4 db
Noise Margin 3.3 db 6.3 db

BT IP Profile matched Plusnet IP Profile at 16533K and I get speed of this:

Using an excellent Netgear DGND3700 Wireless Router with this wi fi speed test! :)
 
Bulldog - 16.5meg on a 32.5db attenuation line is mega impressive!

As mine still sits at 11,500k on a 33.5 attenuation line - surely I could try and squeeze more speed out of it, but I don't get why I cannot get it any faster at the moment as the wiring in my house is fine as far as I can tell?

Here is my latest speed result:



Liam
 
My old Netgear DG834N Rangemax only manage 15502k sync rate before brought myself a high performance Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router ADSL2+ Modem Router (DGND3700) and the exchange had re-sync itself to 18739k and also replaced new BT Master Socket to ADSLNation Professional faceplate and 0.5m metre cable from the socket to the router and use wi-fi (300Mbps)

Still fast enough and I am very impressed with this new router with excellent performance (high end premium router)

LEK-89, you can ask your ISP BT to target your snr down to 3db like mine. It will increasing your sync rate! Worth to ask BT. Good luck :) Also BT is now work out 88.23% of your sync rate and will be instant straight away (no more waiting for 3-5 days for the ip profile to rise like the old 20CN use to be)
 
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bulldog147 said:
My old Netgear DG834N Rangemax only manage 15502k sync rate before brought myself a high performance Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router ADSL2+ Modem Router (DGND3700) and the exchange had re-sync itself to 18739k and also replaced new BT Master Socket to ADSLNation Professional faceplate and 0.5m metre cable from the socket to the router and use wi-fi (300Mbps)

Still fast enough and I am very impressed with this new router with excellent performance (high end premium router)

LEK-89, you can ask your ISP BT to target your snr down to 3db like mine. It will increasing your sync rate! Worth to ask BT. Good luck :) Also BT is now work out 88.23% of your sync rate and will be instant straight away (no more waiting for 3-5 days for the ip profile to rise like the old 20CN use to be)
Click to expand...

My HomeHub 3 is reporting already that the tagret SNR is at 3db so I don't need to do anything there :)

I've been thinking about upgrading the router as well anyway as I think this would give me a speed boost and I will be looking at the Netgear DGND3700 you have mentioned Bulldog, but I have also been doing a lot of reading up on the Billion 7800N too. However, I've always used Netgear (was using a DG834Gv3 for over 5 years before we moved onto BT 2 weeks ago) and the DG834G was just absolutely reliable and bullet proof. In 2009 I then upgraded to a DGN2000 which was just a mistake, was totally unreliable with the wi-fi constantly dropping out due to it constantly overheating and also needed a reboot every morning, even after sending it back under the warranty the seconed unit only lasted a few months before it went the same way.

I sold the second DGN2000 unit I recieved and went back to the trusty DG834G again. Sadly since my bad experience with the DGN2000 it has kind of put me off buying another Netgear for the time being, but I think this could change if I do some reading on the DGND3700 as it does look like a promising router :)

Liam
 
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Yeah, Billion 7800N is good as well as Netgear DGND3700 as I had no problem so far, it come with the latest version v2 nowaday.

Of course it your decision to make up your mind if you want another Netgear or go for Billion 7800N. I choose Netgear for my main reason. :)

Good luck. Post back and let me know how it go. You should be able to get higher than 15000 sync rate anyway (depend on router)

I had asked plusnet today how is my line get on so far in the last 30 hours and they say they were very impression with highest sync rate they ever seen! And they checked my CRC errors, only below 100 CRC's in the last 30 hours, so everything seem good. :)
 
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Just done two files 100Mb and 500Mb downloading and was very impressed with the results over wi-fi with this Netgear powerful strongest wi-fi signal:

File size transferred : 100.0 MB (104857600 bytes)
Total time taken : 52.09 seconds (52088 milliseconds)
Throughput : 2013.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 2.01 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 16104.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 16.1 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]

File size transferred : 500.0 MB (524288000 bytes)
Total time taken : 260.6 seconds (260599 milliseconds)
Throughput : 2011.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 2.01 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 16088.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 16.09 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]

 
Another update,

I ended up purchasing a Netgear DG834GT last week off a well known auction site for £12 delivered and I've been tweaking with the SnR for the past few days. The Netgear originally connects at the around same sync speed as the BT HomeHub 3 (11,600K down on a 3.0 SNR profile) but after altering the SNR setting to 60% on the Netgear, it manages to connect at 12,700K during the day but the SnR will sit on a very low 0.5db.

I then decided to increase it back up to 80% and it sync'd slightly lower at 11,900K but the SnR sat at 1.9db this time. The last alteration I did on Friday afternoon was setting the SnR manually higher to 70% and it sync'd at 12,600K but the SnR does sit at 1.2db during the day / 0.9db during the evening. Doing a speedtest.net speedtest revealed the actual download speed was 10.50mbps.

I've been away all weekend but being back at home tonight, I checked the router's logs and it showed that it did loose the sync'd connection once during the day on Saturday and it re-sync'd again at 12,500K. Since then it has not disconnected again and the SnR is currently sitting at 0.9db. I did a speedtest earlier and its showing as 10.83mbps which is the best I have got out of the broadband altogether so far.

Running the DMT tool reveals that their are over 700,000,000 errors in total, no surprise there then lol.

Liam
 
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