ADSL connectivity questions

[Lee]

Basically I'm with Plusnet and have been for a long time. I've been fairly lucky and not really had any problems. My line has always been quick enough and certainly stable.

Since I've been upgraded to 8mb I'm connecting at 8128kbps Downstream and 448kbps Upstream which is as expected.

My line attenuation is pretty good as I'm not far from the exchange. 26db down and 9db upstream.

I think my problem lies with the Noise margin. I'm not very well up on how ADSL works and how phone lines function so I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this for me as I know a few people on here are.

From what I know the noise margin is the higher the better, and anything lower than 6db would be bad, giving an unreliable connection. Mine is dropping to a low of 3db at which most ADSL hardware won't even function from what I've read. Last night it hovered around 6db and this morning had dragged itself up to 8db. Which seemed okay when playing Doom on 360, unlike last night where I had the worst lag I've ever seen.

I've logged it with Plusnet, so I expect they'll look into it sometime before Christmas if I'm lucky. Is there anything I can do to try and improve my connection or am I just going to have to get the line speed reduced to get it stable again? Before they ramped it up to 8meg speeds were good and the connection was stable, now it's very bursty and I often lose my Xbox live connection and lag is ubearable.

One other thing. I think plusnet have interleaving switched on for all connections. This should stabilise things a little shouldn't it, but mainly for surfing? But also have a negative effect on gaming?

Anyone tried Sky Broadband yet?

 

[Clart]

i swapped from plusnet to sky - don't seem to have any real issues (other than a dodgy router - waiting for a replacement). Line speed varies from 5500kbps to 12500kbps

 

[SimonD]

Have a look at this:

http://yarwell.blogspot.com/2005/08/adsl-tweaking.html

Historicaly, all phone circuits had a ring circuit to make the bell ring in the phone. (youngters here will probaly not remember when phones had REAL BELLS in them!) This isn't needed now so you can disconnect it. It significantly affects the SNR on a phone line. Somone here at work was having similar noise/signal ratio problems on his 8Mb BB line and this cured the problem. You might need a special tool to disconnect the wire (he borrowed one off our facilities people at work!)

HTH....

 

[Lee]

Cheers Simon, I'll have a look at that. I've got a tool for pulling the cables. It's just a hook on the other end of an IDC insertion tool.

Just had a read of that. Looks ideal. I don't even have a phone connected to that socket, just Sky and my router. Fingers crossed it helps.

 

[Clart]

have u tried the bt test socket?

 

[Lee]

have u tried the bt test socket?

What's that then? I moved my router to the master socket last night and got the same results.

 

[Griff]

have u tried the bt test socket?

As Clart suggested. The BT test socket is behind the removable plate on the BT master socket.

By removing the faceplate you isolate all the extensions in the property (and therefore any associated problems with them). Once you remove the face plate you'll see another phone socket which it the test socket.

 

[Lee]

Cheers guys, that's another thing I can check tonight.

 

[Griff]

Just read the end of your post properly.

Interleaving/Fastpath only really come into play with ADSL2+ where Interleaving is pretty much used without exception due to the speed's involved.

As an example my pings to Multiplay servers on Fastpath were 14ms and on Interleave they are currently 21ms. Not a differance worth losing sleep over.

 

[Lee]

Just had an excellent response from Plusnet.
The results of our tests show no fault with your broadband connection. Completed speed tests show that your connection speed is: none found

According to BT, this speed is within the limits of acceptable performance for broadband service.
Kind Regards,
Customer Support

So not having a connection speed is acceptable. lol

 

[Griff]

Haha good old Plus.Net.

BT Wholesale have MASSIVE tolerances on their IPStream speeds so that response is all too common.

Update us on the test socket later/tomorrow Lee.

 

[Lee]

My router is blocking pings so that's why they got no response atall.

I'll allow them later and try running the test from here: www.l8nc.com

Will do Griff. I should have time to do it this evening.

 

[Adam K]

bt acceptable speed limit on an up to 8mb line is 400kbps for your sync rate of 8128kbps.

what router are you using?

 

[Darren S]

Lee - we had similar issues when our home BB connection was upgraded to theoretical 8MB. I think because we were at the limits of BB connection from the local exchange anyway, this played havoc with our line.

Having discussed this with the ISP (and trying equipment solely through the BT master socket) it appeared that all was not well on the line. However, we had our service throttled back and I manually changed the routers MTU setting from 1500 to 1458. In an instant, the BB line was working fine.

Where we live, we are still stuck on 1MB (sometimes 1.5MB) with the upstream still set to 468k. However, it works, so I'm leaving it as it is!

D.

 

[Lee]

bt acceptable speed limit on an up to 8mb line is 400kbps for your sync rate of 8128kbps.

what router are you using?

The speeds it's bursting to are fine, it's just not stable enough for what really matters, online gaming. Download speeds were better when the line speed was lower.

Netgear DG834G.

I'll have a poke around this evening and see what happens.

 

[rap-]

Have a look at this:

http://yarwell.blogspot.com/2005/08/adsl-tweaking.html

Historicaly, all phone circuits had a ring circuit to make the bell ring in the phone. (youngters here will probaly not remember when phones had REAL BELLS in them!) This isn't needed now so you can disconnect it. It significantly affects the SNR on a phone line. Somone here at work was having similar noise/signal ratio problems on his 8Mb BB line and this cured the problem. You might need a special tool to disconnect the wire (he borrowed one off our facilities people at work!)

HTH....

Nice one for posting that link, I'am on AOL should be getting up to 8meg, I was always getting between 3.5 to 4.8 just pulled out the bell wires and checked the connection I'am now gettng 6.8 meg :approve: again nice one :approve:

 

[Lee]

SimonD, you are hero mate.

I've just removed the unused cable. Plus the other orange one which they connect purely to keep things neat.

My connection is back to how it used to be now. I click, it opens. The biggest improvement has been on the upstream.

Stats wise I'm now seeing:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8128 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 26 db 9 db
Noise Margin 9 db 23 db
The downstream noise margin is sticking around 9db and 10db. When I got home and check it it was showing 3db, which is obviously totally useless.

I've just downloaded a file from Microsoft as they have bandwidth galore, just shy of 600k/sec.

Just going to test out the 360 and a bit of Doom to see if it's really helped.

 

[dk]

so do you essentially remove the orange/white wires?

how do you identify the master socket please?

thanks

 

[seb]

i am a computer leper... will this help my 1mb AOL connection???

 

[Adam K]

i am a computer leper... will this help my 1mb AOL connection???

no

 

[seb]

ok

 

[rap-]

so do you essentially remove the orange/white wires?

how do you identify the master socket please?

thanks

Try this Dave http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephone/uk_telephone.html

It may help, if not pull the bell wires on all the sockets :S

 

[Adam K]

the master socket is the first bt socket coming into the house.

 

[Lee]

the master socket is the first bt socket coming into the house.

Plus it's got a large capacitor inside to make it more obvious.

I pulled the orange/white and white/orange. One is connected purely to look neat, the other is the ring circuit.

I'd not bother if your connection is fine.

LOL rap-, I read that page last night before doing it.

 

[Clart]

what does the ring circuit actually do then?

 

[Lee]

From what I read it's what makes the phone ring, but there is a loop circuit in a microfilter which does the same thing so you don't need it connected.

 

[Griff]

what does the ring circuit actually do then?

Provided power to old fasioned phones with bells inside them (as in provied power to activate/ring the bells when someone called you)

 

[dk]

the master socket is the first bt socket coming into the house.

thats my problem, its not a house, its a flat so i am not sure which it would be, will need to remove the face plates i guess.

 

[dk]

Try this Dave http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephone/uk_telephone.html

It may help, if not pull the bell wires on all the sockets :S

thanks!

 

[SimonD]

SimonD, you are hero mate.

Well, I like to try!

Glad it sorted your problem