Rant about stupid BT line lengths

Colossus · 12 Aug 2008 at 20:04

Recently BTinternet have really started to muck us around and i finaly managed to persuade my dad to get us to switch to Be/O2.

Calling up and they say they cant connect us even thought the local exchange is LLU enabled. Why i ask, we are less then 2km from the exchange following the main road (even less as the crow flies)...

...because the line seems to take a detour into nowhere and clocks in at 6km. :eek:

pennywise · 12 Aug 2008 at 21:05

Looks like you're stuck with old BT then

tipsy · 12 Aug 2008 at 21:16

what are your router stats??? as that seems like old bt records biting U in *** backside there..

post ya stats as I wanna see your line attenuation.

kev

tolien · 12 Aug 2008 at 21:32

There are plenty of other ISPs who aren't staffed by retards (like BT Retail) and will be more than happy to take you on.

starfighter · 13 Aug 2008 at 03:36

As Tolien has kinda said, the ISP should be able to force the order through. www.zen.co.uk is probably your best bet. But not cheap.

Sumanji · 13 Aug 2008 at 13:10

Another vote for Zen.

Colossus · 13 Aug 2008 at 17:51

My router is a netgear DG834PN:

Downstream-
Line Attenuation: 42.0 db
Noise Margin: 26.3 db

Upstream-
Line Attenuation: 31.5 db
Noise Margin: 27.0 db

I'm a network n00b so those numbers mean nothing to me. lol

Windle · 13 Aug 2008 at 17:53

SNRs quite high, attenuation isn't bad though.

Colossus · 13 Aug 2008 at 17:56

Would shortening the home tel lines improve that? The router is a couple of meters away from the master socket.

Carter · 13 Aug 2008 at 18:07

I'd say, roughly, about 3Km looking at that attenuation. My attenuation is 45db, actual line length is 3.38Km. You might even get full 8meg sync on max with that. I think my brothers is 42db, and he gets full sync on max. plenty of other factors to consider though, quality of line, state of internal wiring etc..

tipsy · 13 Aug 2008 at 18:29

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/max_speed_calc.php try the calculator here

Try ringing o2 as say there records are not upto date, 42db is 3km of cable & should give U just over the 8128 sync rate

platinum87 · 13 Aug 2008 at 18:34

the noise is way to high.... do you hear noise on your line???

Call 17070, press 2 and if your hear any noise then youve got bad lines which need replacing

Sumanji said:
Another vote for Zen.

5 gig a month?, id use that in a few hours, i wouldnt use 200GB a month limit if it was free

Colossus · 13 Aug 2008 at 18:58

I did hear hissing on the quiet line thing. Since i cant say i've ever used another land line i always thought it was normal. lol

I'll try O2 again once i've got BT to look at the line and say nothings wrong.

Thanks for the help.

tolien · 13 Aug 2008 at 19:23

platinum87 said:
5 gig a month?, id use that in a few hours, i wouldnt use 200GB a month limit if it was free

50GB on Pro, unlimited on the Office tiers. Back in the real world, bandwidth costs money.

Rabtech · 13 Aug 2008 at 19:42

My line length is 3.3km (45dB attenuation) and max sync rates I have seen is 9.2Mb download and 1.2Mb upload with BE.

I pay for the BE Value package due to the line length and am very happy with the throughput

Antihero · 13 Aug 2008 at 20:36

The noise margin is extremely good (the higher the better).

SNR or Signal to Noise Ratio is the level of the siganl compared to the level of background noise, the higher the ratio the less background noise there is to disrupt the signal.

Looking at your stats I'd agree with Carter you should quite easily get between 7-8Mbps.

tolien · 13 Aug 2008 at 21:56

What speed are you connected at right now - it's impossible to predict what you'll get without that, especially not from the SNR margin...

Colossus · 13 Aug 2008 at 23:39

Currently at arround 1.9 (still pre 8mbps rollout), but after much faffing and ordeal, we managed to get BT to switch us the the 8mbps servise with an estamated 4mbps (ironicaly set to start next monday).

platinum87 · 14 Aug 2008 at 13:34

Colossus said:
I did hear hissing on the quiet line thing. Since i cant say i've ever used another land line i always thought it was normal. lol

I'll try O2 again once i've got BT to look at the line and say nothings wrong.

Thanks for the help.

if they say nothing is wrong its because of rubbish people or rubbish diagnostics if you hear static.. i had to have 4 BT engies come round and on the 4th one he fixed it (all previous 3 said it had been fixed)