Very off-topic - broadband speed

[robgil]

i shall get you the router spec this evening , what exactly do you need to know?

Something like the following:

Actual Data Rate
Up Stream 448 (Kbps.)
Down Stream 2400 (Kbps.)

Upstream Downstream
Noise Margin 16 dB 7 dB
Attenuation 63 dB 60 dB

More is better than less if you are unsure which are the correct figures.

how do i find them out then?

ok here goes,
data rate
up stream 448 (Kbps.)
down stream 7200 (Kbps.)

noise margin
up 5 db down 20 db

attenuation
up 13db
down --- db

i cant see an actual data rate and attenuation down is just bas shown above..

 

[MdB]

ok here goes,
data rate
up stream 448 (Kbps.)
down stream 7200 (Kbps.)

noise margin
up 5 db down 20 db

attenuation
up 13db
down --- db

i cant see an actual data rate and attenuation down is just bas shown above..

Ok, the down attenuation figure would have been useful but isn't something to worry about too much about as it looks like you have a good line. Could you check to see if your up and down noise figures are swapped? It would be unusual to have them that way around. Assuming that they are swapped, I would expect you to get speeds of something like 6000kb/s down and 400kb/s up. Neither is what you are actually seeing. Next thing to test is what BT has set your connection to be. To do this you need to run a BT speedtest http://speedtester.bt.com/ and then post the results here. Note: the BT tester is slow and sometimes appears to have stopped. Don't try to run it twice as it has a 1hr limit between attempts. The important bit is the IP profile as your actual speed will always be lower than this. Mine looks like this:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1829 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 400-2000 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :2400 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 2000 Kbps

 

[robgil]

ok here goes,
data rate
up stream 448 (Kbps.)
down stream 7200 (Kbps.)

noise margin
up 5 db down 20 db

attenuation
up 13db
down --- db

i cant see an actual data rate and attenuation down is just bas shown above..

Ok, the down attenuation figure would have been useful but isn't something to worry about too much about as it looks like you have a good line. Could you check to see if your up and down noise figures are swapped? It would be unusual to have them that way around. Assuming that they are swapped, I would expect you to get speeds of something like 6000kb/s down and 400kb/s up. Neither is what you are actually seeing. Next thing to test is what BT has set your connection to be. To do this you need to run a BT speedtest http://speedtester.bt.com/ and then post the results here. Note: the BT tester is slow and sometimes appears to have stopped. Don't try to run it twice as it has a 1hr limit between attempts. The important bit is the IP profile as your actual speed will always be lower than this. Mine looks like this:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1829 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 400-2000 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :2400 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 2000 Kbps

nope , thats what my noise figures are.

up is 5 and down is 20.

i will run the bt test and report back.

 

[MdB]

nope , thats what my noise figures are.

up is 5 and down is 20.

Very strange :?

 

[robgil]

nope , thats what my noise figures are.

up is 5 and down is 20.

Very strange :?

does that mean somethings broke? could a polarity reversal on the phone line be responsible?

i did the bt test and these are the results,

Download speed achieved during the test was - 4308 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :7200 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 6000 Kbps


thats just over half of my max achievable speed.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

MdB - I get the below - does it help?

Thanks

Robin

adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 608 Kbps, Downstream rate = 832 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: OFF
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 8.8 6.0
Attn(dB): 63.0 31.5
Pwr(dBm): 15.9 11.9
Max(Kbps): 1056 704
Rate (Kbps): 832 608
G.dmt framing
K: 27(0) 20
R: 16 16
S: 8 8
D: 2 2
ADSL2 framing
MSGc: 1 1
B: 27 20
M: 8 8
T: 1 1
R: 16 16
S: 8.5714 8.7619
L: 224 168
D: 2 2
Counters
SF: 2230428 2230426
SFErr: 71 48
RS: 18958648 18958621
RSCorr: 1445 594
RSUnCorr: 121 0

HEC: 42 36
OCD: 1 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 74404454 0
Data Cells: 3058691 0
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

ES: 62 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 12 0
Total time = 10 hours 27 min 17 sec
SF = 2230428
CRC = 71
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 62
Latest 1 day time = 10 hours 27 min 17 sec
SF = 2230428
CRC = 71
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 62
Latest 15 minutes time = 12 min 17 sec
SF = 43402
CRC = 5
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 4
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52931
CRC = 2
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 2
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
SF = 0
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-30 min to -15 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52930
CRC = 3
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 2
15 minutes interval [-45 min to -30 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52931
CRC = 2
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 2
15 minutes interval [-60 min to -45 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52930
CRC = 1
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 1

 

[MdB]

does that mean somethings broke? could a polarity reversal on the phone line be responsible?

Polarity reversal on the flux capacitor? that means we are doomed, all doomed I tell you. The world as we know it will end and be replaced by something far more evil and full of spiders. And its all your fault!

eeerrmm, sorry - I think I misread that. Polarity reversal on the phone line doesn't matter. Panic over.... The noise figures are unusual and might point out an issue somewhere but are far too good to be considered a fault. The BT result shows that the link from your modem to the exchange is working pretty well and far better than most peoples. I could tell you various things which might get the BT IP Profile up to 7000 but it isn't worth the effort.

What is worth the effort is sorting out your slow speeds. It could either be from your computer to the modem (down to you) or from the exchange to the internet (down to Pipex).

To test your side of things, I would connect your computer directly to the modem using a cable (if you are using wireless) and switch wireless off and run another test. I would also try a different computer also directly connected.

To check Pipex's side of things, phone their tech support. However don't bother you won't get anywhere even if there is a problem. Read through this lot then get a MAC code and move to a better ISP. http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/pipex.html

 

[MdB]

MdB - I get the below - does it help?
Status: Showtime Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 608 Kbps, Downstream rate = 832 Kbps
SNR (dB): 8.8 6.0
Attn(dB): 63.0 31.5
Pwr(dBm): 15.9 11.9
Max(Kbps): 1056 704
Rate (Kbps): 832 608

The important bit is above. This tells me that you are on an ADSL2+ connection which will be a LLU connection with TalkTalk. This means that your connection isn't with BT so the BT tester won't work. The SNR figures of 8.8 and 6.0 are consistent with the connection working correctly for the noise levels (about 5 dB to 9dB range is typical).

The Attn figure of 63.0 dB plugged into here: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/max_speed_calc.php tells us that you should be about 4.6km from your exchange as the line goes. Is this about right? It also tells us that you should be getting something like a 2000kb/s connection which you aren't. This tells us that interference is getting onto the line somewhere. Do you have a BT master socket like this:

.
If so, remove the bottom section (two screws) and plug your modem into the test socket behind. This should disconnect all your house wiring so none of your phones will work. Check your stats again. If the downstream rate improves then report back as bell wire removal (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm) or iPlate additions may help you. If it doesn't there isn't much you can do apart from move to somewhere closer to the exchange.

 

[Tom]

Try living at the end of the line in N Wales:

Still, you're doing slightly better than me....

 

[Baron de Gynes]

This is me:

 

[robgil]

just a thought but my microwave knocks out my connection (wireless) so perhaps you live close to a big microwave emitter of some kind?
thats silly isnt it?

 

[FamilyWiggs]

just a thought but my microwave knocks out my connection (wireless) so perhaps you live close to a big microwave emitter of some kind?
thats silly isnt it?

Well, SWMBO's mobile phone knackers our digital telly in the bedroom every time it receives a text message!

Fortunately we have few friends, and even fewer who care to text us.

 

[d49xc]

The biggest culprit if often people's own internal house phone wiring.
When I went broadband I took out the entire lot and then re-wired it in screened cat5 network cable: to eliminate any possibility of interference from within the house (and didn't connect the 'bell wire').
I'm 2.4Km from the exchange as the cable route goes, sync speed is usually 8096, SNR down is always around 6.0 (the default setting)
If you have a noisy line or the line is prone to interference spikes then the exchange DSLAM will 'up' your SNR margin from 6 to 9 or even 15 and the result will be a lower sync speed. (to ensure any interference spikes will now not affect the signal)

Note that rural lines are interleaved which improves error correction on the line at the expense of some speed.
(urban/short lines are fast path rather than interleaved)
Data integrity is paramount so noisy/dodgy lines are marked down in speed and after a mark down often the only way to get them marked up is to ask for your ISP to do a 'retrain' as if it is a new line - they don't like doing this and will often refuse unless you can "show/prove" that the cause of the problems/noise has been removed.

Also note that on ADSL max generally quoted as up to 8M the max possible sync speed is 8182 but some routers will only connect interleaved lines at a max of 8096.
Whatever the max is.....the IP setting for the line is always lower - I think the upper limit is something the 7150 and hence you are only going to get something again below this as a max practical download speed say 6800+....and this is before we start talking about exchange contention (to many users per exchange)and the availability of the website/ISP to supply data at the top speed.

 

[worms]

just a thought but my microwave knocks out my connection (wireless)

That is easily sorted by changing the settings on the modem (how to log in to it is printed on the base of mine). I had this problem until I was told what to do. It was a one-off change to the channels (or something) and hasn't recurred, so I can't now remember how to do it! Someone else on here can advise.

 

[MdB]

just a thought but my microwave knocks out my connection (wireless)

That is easily sorted by changing the settings on the modem (how to log in to it is printed on the base of mine). I had this problem until I was told what to do. It was a one-off change to the channels (or something) and hasn't recurred, so I can't now remember how to do it! Someone else on here can advise.

Stage one - get your microwave checked. It sounds like it is leaking microwaves.

Stage two - changing the channel of your wireless is quite easy but probably will require reading the manual to find out how to do it. Change the channel to either 1, 6 or 11.

 

[Flyfisher]

Changing the wifi channels might help the interference, but won't help the microwave leakage. :shock:

 

[Feltwell]

My broadband seems to have intermittent periods of slow and fast all of a sudden. It was bearable until recently! We did get an email saying that BT was "improving" our service, maybe this is the cause!

I ran a speed test during a quick period and it gave me a download speed of 3 Mbps. So I viewed a Youtube video, and it ran perfectly for about three-quarters of it's length - then went to an slow, jerky, unwatchable crawl. Ran another broadband test and got:-



I get my new computer tomorrow, so I'll hang on, get that working and then come back and ask for help!

 

[Tom]

Well, we've had to resort to using a phone as a wifi hotspot, as BT Broadband are having problems over 'the North of the UK' :shock: There must be an awful lot of people affected.

 

[robgil]

had a google and apparently its quite normal , most microwaves will do this.. :shock:

 

[Flyfisher]

Microwaves will, microwave ovens shouldn't. Well, ours doesn't, although I realise that's probably not a statistically significant sample. :wink: