Extremely Slow

[Rik]

You're exactly right, MO, that connection is straight onto the 'exchange pair' and it's where BT will test from. If they get a good connection at that point, they just blame your wiring and give you a bill, hence we always encourage people to try it themselves first.

If you haven't got a spare filter, I can always lend you one.

[MO]

Thanks for your help and offer Rik, I'll talk to a neighbour and see if I can borrow a filter for a couple of days. So I presume I'll give it a few days being connected at the filter to determine if the line is clean.
Thanks again for everyone's advice.

[Rik]

That's it, MO. If the problems stop, your wiring is an issue. If they don't, it's a reasonable bet that it's on BT's side.

One other trick you can try, btw, is to take a battery-powered AM radio, tuned away from a station so you only have white noise, and then follow the route of the phone wiring. If the noise increases at any point, you're hearing the noise which is affecting your signal.

[MO]

Thanks Rik, I'll get on the case........please take my first IDN's Karma!

[Rik]

Thank you, MO, glad to help.

[Steve]

Mo if you get chance look here http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php#4 If Rik et al can get more info regarding your adsl stats it would be useful for diagnosis.The Belkin's have hidden pages so if you can find them great,what would useful is to know your downstream attenuation the higher the figure the further away your are from the exchange and as a consequence the lower your downstream sync.If there is noise on your line there maybe a dysparity between your downstream attenuation and sync also your downstream noise margin will show possible evidence of attempts to stabilise a noisy line.

[MO]

Hi Steve,
Thanks, I have tried to access the "hidden pages" but get a "The page you requested from Modem could not be found" message. Shown below, thank you.


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Steve]

Shame! have you tried this

192.168.2.1
Logon with "admin" and your password.

at the prompt type: port a1 counters

[MO]

Shame! have you tried this

192.168.2.1
Logon with "admin" and your password.

at the prompt type: port a1 counters

Thanks Steve, unfortunately I get the same error message. 

On a side note, I am happy with my Belkin and it's range etc, but is there something better which also gives more useful information at times like these?

[Rik]

Ask for an opinion on routers, MO, and you'll get a dozen replies.

Many of us here use the 2-Wire 2700 model. It's only available via eBay and has no official support channel, hence we've dedicated a board to it. That drawback aside, for those of us on poor lines it seems incredibly good at stabilising the noise margin and improving sync speed. I gained 1000k on my profile from using one.

For logging, the Netgear DG834G is good, and v4 onwards has moved away from the AR7 chipset, so is a better performer than earlier versions. After that, I'd recommend a Speedtouch 585, though it's a little more 'fussy' to get stats from it.

[Steve]

Rik beat me to it I post anyway.From my experience it easy to get the adsl statistics from the following; speedtouch 585v6 edit sorry as Rik said not as easy  2wire BT2700HGV Zyxel P660hw any of the Netgear DG834* series. Apparently idnet support will lend a NetgearDG834g out in certain circumstances,In my opinion without knowing the full information,its difficult to move forward but as Rik suggested plugging into your test socket may see a rise in downstream sync if internal noise is an issue , this figure is available to you at present.Conversley if you discover that your downstream attenuation is high i.e 63db there may not much room for improvement (hope not)

[MO]

Thanks for your replies guys, I'll report back ASAP. Regards.

[Rik]

We'll be here, MO.

[Pistol]

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
    Your DSL connection rate: 7616 kbps(DOWN-STREAM),  832 kbps(UP-STREAM)
    IP profile for your line is - 6500 kbps
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 6065 kbps

Quote from kitz.Pistoleer I don't know whether your interleaved or not but if you are this maybe of interest

It should also be pointed out that whilst BTw state that applying interleaving shouldn't reduce your line speed, it does reduce the maximum line rate achievable from 8128kbps to 7616kbps due to the additional overhead required for check bytes.
Note: although BT state 7616 is maximum sync speed with Interleaving, many instances of higher sync speeds have been reported by users. This is dependent upon your router being able to support S=1/2 mode which effectively combines two RS code words into a larger logical code word of 510 bytes (ANSI T1.413).

If you want a bit more try 585v6,wag54gs or dg834n The latter gives me a full sync with interleave on the other two one notch down. Whilst the 2wire and zyxel P660hw give me a sync of 7616

Hiya and thanks for that.   Ive been trying out both my routers and seeing what my stats are (following the other helpful posts in this thread) interestingly the router itself changes my stats, while all other variables are the same..   so it reports the full 8128kbps instead of 7616kbps as it was earlier on the other router..  So do i not have interleaving then? When i look at stats page it says:

Mode:      Autosense 
Type:    Interleave
Line Coding:    Trellis

So perhaps i am? But from what ye wrote i thought if i had it on then i would indeed be getting 7616.. 

My Billion 7300G i tested on earlier:

Upstream    832 kbps
Downstream    7616 kbps
Noise Margin (Upstream)    9.0 db
Noise Margin (Downstream)    10.0 db
Attenuation (Upstream)    21.5 db
Attenuation (Downstream)    39.5 db


My D-Link 2542B running on now:

Downstream Line Rate (Kbps) :        8128
Upstream Line Rate (Kbps) :       832 

               Downstream     Upstream

SNR Margin (dB):       9.1    15.0
Attenuation (dB):  37.0    21.5

The 2nd router, unless im mistaken, is slightly better all round, and quite a bit on upstream margin. Oddly enough my bt speed is a bit worse even now then heh.

[Rik]

Your d/s noise margin has dropped from 10db to 9db, which could account for the speed increase (and you've lost 2.5db of attenuation). Also your u/s NM has improved from 9 to 15db. I'd be suspicious of the Billion atm, as 10db is very low for an upstream margin.

Is there any chance of borrowing a third router to see which of the other two is being more accurate?

[Steve]

So perhaps i am? But from what ye wrote i thought if i had it on then i would indeed be getting 7616.. 

What I was trying to say by using the kitz quote as information: BT say max sync is 7616 with interleave on however by changing your router you have managed a full sync with interleave on, the advantage being in about four days your profile will rise from 6500 to 7000 and then perhaps even max at 7150 which may give you a higher throughput.

[Rik]

What do you make of the NM changes, Steve?

[Pistol]

Thanks Rik and Steve, appreciated.  Im not sure i have all the bits to a full working 3rd router (have parts to about 3 more heh)
The billion is coming on 4 years old now while the d-link is 1 week old.

So my profile should increase simply from my router d/s connection rate, not my actual achieved throughput..? excellent if so. Cheers

edit: reading that link ye gave earlier steve, it suggests interleaving on can increase latency.. as i game a fair bit this is interesting, as i tend to get a higher ping than others i play with (partly because im in Northern Ireland but also because im with Idnet) When i was on Orange my average ping to the same servers then as now was perhaps 10-30 lower.  Am i right in thinking its just a request to support to turn it off? Now my router shows the top rate, will this impact me? Perhaps in a bad way? But would it still drop my latency? If so i may think about that as in FPS gaming tournaments even 10 ping edge can help heh.

[Steve]

What do you make of the NM changes, Steve?

I dont have the feel for those as you do. However the d-link ones make more sense. I suspect the throughput being less on the D-Link may be spurious?time of day? But in my experience the profile will rise in four days and indeed I await Monday to see if I personnally can get from 7000 to 7150 with interleave on. Which interestingly is what I had with Pipex sometime ago using then a dg834gt.

[Steve]

With regard to interleave yes it will increase latency and in my opinion is applied far to commonly by BT. The info I have read suggest advantages for marginal lines, the added latency allowing error correction and hence increasing throughput. If gaming is important ask idnet to ask BT to turn it off obviously you take a risk by reducing throughput but you won't know until you try. For me throughput and stabilty is more important than latency, as I dont play online games I am happy to have it left on.

[Pistol]

cheers i might try that then. I assume its a pretty quick request to make to support?

Perhaps i might suffer though, even on this reboot my downstream SNR margin has dropped 1 point to 8.1.. and i think 8 is supposed to be the lowest stable mark?

edit : now 7.9...

one more question!  

MTU.. i read that can be tweaked in windows registry.. but.. i noticed i can set it in my router also.. do ye know what this should be at and would it affect my stats? the default router setting is 1400.

Lastly, pppoa or pppoe, connecting either either/or make a difference? cheers!

[Steve]

Your snr margin will fall at night time as long as you stay above 6 you should be fine. it ultimately depends on your line quality. if it falls too far you will resync atomatically at a lower rate in order to maintain your noise margin. Looking at your downstream attenuation you are posibly borderline for a full sync anyway (mine is only 21db) the higher the attenuation the further you are away from the exchange.

MTU. set your router wide open at 1500, if using Vista it has dynamic TCP/IP optimisation so you can leave it to sort itself out. if using XP TCP/IP optmise at  http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php will sort out your xpPC RWIN\MTU

PPOA

see also http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=1904.msg31525#msg31525

[wrtpeeps]

Terribly terribly slow tonight

It seems to just be problem after problem these days 

[Simon]

Have you eliminated any local issues, Andy?  IDNet did say that it may take a few days for the current congestion to ease (although there have been good signs already), but it might just be worth backtracking through this thread to here, just in case you may have a different problem. 

[Nutter]

I've just run another BT Speed Test, and my results are now:
   Your DSL connection rate: 6304 kbps(DOWN-STREAM),  448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
    IP profile for your line is - 5000 kbps
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 4109 kbps

So my speed has improved some more.  I'm still on a slower profile than I used to be (was 6500), so I suppose 4.1mbps isn't bad for now.  I'm still getting some high latency sometimes though, as you can see here:

Tracing route to idnet.net [212.69.36.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    62 ms    65 ms    56 ms  telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]
  3    66 ms    69 ms    63 ms  telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]

  4    70 ms    61 ms    67 ms  redbus-gw2-g0-1-331.idnet.net [212.69.63.5]
  5   104 ms    78 ms    63 ms  redbus-gw1-fa2-0-300.idnet.net [212.69.63.225]
  6    58 ms    56 ms    58 ms  www.idnet.net [212.69.36.10]

Trace complete.

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.131]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    53 ms    78 ms    44 ms  telehouse-gw2-lo1.idnet.net [212.69.63.51]
  3   915 ms  1404 ms  1194 ms  telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]

  4   507 ms   225 ms    63 ms  rt-lonap-a.thdo.bbc.co.uk [193.203.5.90]
  5  1554 ms  1266 ms   345 ms  212.58.238.129
  6    61 ms    64 ms   226 ms  rdirwww-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.131]

Trace complete.

IDNet were going to try changing me to a different segment of the network, so I'll send the results to them too and see if they still want to try that.