Max or fixed

[Bob]

Hi forum,

I am currently off broadband at home due to some complex removals exercises but hope to be in a new home shortly.

I have, until recently, enjoyed the delights of Talk Talk Broadband but am considering investing in a better service.

I did find with Talk Talk that we received a pretty good fixed 1Mb service (which is the maximum I am entitled to expect at 1.6km from our Caversham exchange, thanks to www.samknows.com for that) but, when the LLU came along and "upgraded" us to the adaptive 8Mb service everything went down the drain.

The main problem was frequent (very frequent) disconnection which I am fairly sure was down to noise on our local circuit where we had a really low signal strength (my TalkTalk router couldn't cope with telling me how low and resorted instead to showing 6 digit figures which were clearly untrue, the Netgear one couldn't hold onto the signal that much longer either). The results were everso slightly better from the Master socket but most of the problem seemed to be external to the house wiring. As my new house is almost next door to the old one I am anticipating similar problems with the line.

I am not desperately worried about the connection speed we can achieve but I would like to get a consistently useable service (or more accurately, I would like to come back from work and not be faced with my wife carefully explaining that the b****y broadband hasn't worked all day, even after resetting the connection about 50 times).

Would I be better to aim for the 2Mb fixed speed service, rather than the adaptive 8Mb, or are both likely to suffer equally?

Thanks in advance,

Bob

PS I did check out the sticky's and some other posts but if this has already been answered, please point me in the right direction.

[Rik]

Hi Bob

Welcome to the forum.

Max is a 'best effort' service, which means that we trade some stability for speed. For most people, it has been worthwhile. In my case, I went from a fixed-rate 1Mbps service to a 2.5Mbps service, with pretty good stability (loss of sync about once in 10 days on average). My significant stats are a 56db d/s attenuation and a 9db target noise margin, set to that level at my request for better stability. I usually sync at around 3100-3300kbps, so just miss the 3000 profile. With a following wind, sometimes I creep that high.

Which service would best for you is hard to predict without line stats, but my instinct would be to start with Max and see how it goes. If it doesn't work for you, and IDNet cannot resolve the problems, then they will switch you to a fixed-rate service.

It's important, btw, to understand the difference between the master socket and the test socket. The master socket is the same as any other extension you have. When it's connected, so is all your extension wiring and the problems of noise that can come with them. The test socket, behind the master socket, means that your internal wiring is disconnected. If results improve there, then your wiring needs to be looked at.

The very large numbers expressed by some routers for noise margin are just a bug, they haven't been programmed to show negative numbers correctly. Despite the laws of phsyics, my Netgear will hold this line with -2db of noise margin!

[DorsetBoy]

At 1.6KM from the exchange (unless the actual loop is a lot longer) you should get a lot faster than 1MB!

My line is 1.6KM and I am on a synch of 448/8128 with downstreamspeeds of @ 6.5MB.

Check all wiring for possible causes of noise then look at what is happening with the line with the help of your chosen ISP.

I know of someone that is 11k from the nearest exchange and with Extended reach BB gets a 2MB service.
BT recently told a chap in a Manchester suburb that they could not supply BB,the line would not support even 256K...........he went ahead with the order and his speeds are over 3.5MB all day.

As Rik says go with the broadband max and see what happens ,get lots of stats in case you need help.