Poor connection speed on ADSL

[Streeteh]

Hi guys,

Unfortunately i know nothing about ADSL, but did attempt as much research as possible before forking out and felt confident i knew what i was getting, sadly i was wrong.

I checked the location of my exchange (around 3/4 of a mile away) and checked on the BE website for a rough estimate of my expected speed. It claimed 22meg on a 24 meg package. Obviously i didn't expect these speeds but sadly my line has now been connected at 11meg and that's with my profile set to 'optimise for speed' which is far less than i'd hoped for.

Is there much i can do to improve this? I've contacted BE and am awaiting a reply. Is it worth trying my own ADSL router/replacing the filters or will all this make no real difference? I've checked my BT socket which is one of those really old ones with a junction box, no test socket or anything, so perhaps that's causing my issues?

Also, am i right in thinking if i ask to be downgraded to their 12meg package i'll still connect at around 11meg, or is it a pecentage thing? Ie i'll get 50% of 12meg so connect at 6meg?

 

[Streeteh]

These any help:

DSL Type: G.992.5 annex A
Maximum Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,386 / 11,910
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,390 / 11,404
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 18.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 14.0 / 30.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 4.0 / 3.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / BDCM
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): 14 / 193,802
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 14 / 19
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 20 / 13

 

[Streeteh]

11 Meg is poor?

What tier does my 1.5/2 meg lines fall into then I wonder.

As for your 'poor' speeds, turn off gaming mode/fastpath and keep your BE profile set to max speed. Use a BT filterplate as opposed to a filter dongle. Don't use shoddy cables, keep the runs as short as possible and don't have powerlines crossing all over the place around your modem. That's my general checklist.

Your theoretical max at that db is roughly 15 meg with a throughput of, again roughly 13 meg. So you're not too far off.

It's quite poor when BE indicated i should expect 22meg (yes i know it was never going to be that high, but half of what they suggested seems a little naff to me.) With 11meg i might as well have signed up to their cheapest service and saved £4/month (yes it's not much, but every little helps!)

As stated in the op i've got one of those old master sockets that don't have the engineers socket, which makes fitting one of those filter plates impossible as far as i know. With that said my parents had problems with their ADSL a while back and bought some decent quality filters, i'm fairly sure they've got one spare so i'll nab one. I was originally stuck at 10meg, but changing my profile to max speed wangled an extra 1meg out of it, before posting those stats i also updated the firmware on the supplied ADSL router and that seems to have added an extra ~0.5meg, might be a coincidence though.

I'll have a tinker and clear as much away from the modem as possible, thanks for the suggestions/helpful input.

 

[Streeteh]

Moved house last year, it had the old type of BT socket when I phoned BT about it , they replace it free of charge, plus wiring to the pole.

I then changed the faceplate to a ADSL Nation XTE 2005, it gave me a 1mb increase with my Be connection.

If you have the old style BT socket isn't the wiring a bit grotty then.

The wiring is shocking. Someone told me they charge £129 to replace the socket but your experience has persuaded me to get on the phone tomorrow to see if i can wangle a free overhaul.

Fingers crossed!

 

[Streeteh]

I've got my hands on a XF-1e filter and for some reason it doesn't work at all - i get no dial tone nor does my modem connect. I'm assuming it's a dodgy filter, nice waste of £7!

I've also taken the time to disconnect my ring wire which has pushed my connection up to 13mbit, a much larger difference than i expected.

 

[Streeteh]

Aye, i think i've done pretty well considering the condition of the line, it's just a shame i believed the Be website and expected a connection that made forking out the premium for a 24mbit connection worth it.

Ho hum, at least i'm now outstripping 12mbit so i'm at least getting something for my £4/month extra.

 

[Streeteh]

Your SNR margins are razor thin, I'm surprised your line is stable at 11Mbps, and your racking up downstream errors at a heck of a rate.
My gut feeling is that your going to need to change your router to get any more speed out of that line, it may be worth asking around your workmates and seeing if you can borrow a different model of router (preferably with a broadcom chipset to match the far end) for an evening to see if the stats are any better.

To be honest i'm surprised too, but i've never suffered a single line drop... yet. The uptime with all those errors was small, but apparently the router supplied by BE has an error when reporting them, something like it doesn't reset the error count when you reset the connection, so if that's true then the errors came from a weeks use.

I've got access to a DG834G, will that do? I don't know what version number it is sadly.

just a quick question, have you disconnected the bell wire in your socket? That would probably improve it a little...google is your friend

As stated previously i did this today, it made a 10% increase to my line speed.