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[kitz]

The FECs dont affect your speedss..  but the CRCs do and I'm not too happy about those.

For your uptime (if ive done my maths right 13,200 seconds), then the CRC error rate is very high at more than 1 per second.  Each of those packets will have had to be re-requested, which is going to slow you down even more... and anything thats time sensitve such as VoIP or streaming video is going to be bad

Routerstats is an excellent tool that we often use and has helped many track down the source of interference...  however if you are on a 3dB profile, its not going to give the line much leaway. 
There's "something special" about the 3dB profile in that its very seldom used.. and only on the longest of lines in order that some sort of sync may be attained and usually reserved for the very slowest speeds.  I suspect that if and when your line drops, the DLM will possibly bump you back up to 6 dB then in a few days or so 9dB.. and your line will be more stable, but your actual sync (connection) speeds will be bad.  Then when your sync speeds get too bad.. the DLM will drop you back to 3dB so you can at least get a connection.
 I have a horrible feeling that this is an event that could go round in circles of up and down speeds.


There possibly is some interference somewhere that may be adding to the noise.. and thats what we are hoping will show up.  Because your line is so long then its more subsceptable to noise.

Pardon the pun but theres 3 lines of thought.  - Either the twisted pair youre on from BT isnt as good as your neighbours, or you are picking up some interference not picked up by your neighbours... or for some reason your line just cant cope with maxdsl and you may be better on a fixed rat 512kbps line.  The final option would give you a much more stable line, you'd have no profiles to worry about - no ups and downs - and hopefully not as many errors as youre seeing now.  It would be slower, but it would be more consistant.

We can have a go with routerstats if you like and see if it can pick anything up.
Out of interest your neighbour who gets 2Mb - which router do they use and do you know what their attenuation is? 

[kitz]

I Have just done another test with another site and it confirms what I suspected, 127.49 down and 376. 04 upload.

Are these speeds more consistent with the other figures I gave you?

BT is still saying I am getting 1600kbps  but my broadband defiantly  does not not feel like I am getting 1600kbps, I have never had speeds that fast...

Your ISP will be able to see what speed you are actually connected at - however you are currently being limited by your IP profile which can be a blight to those on unstable lines. It takes a few days for your IP profile to catch up with your sync speed... and this is what will be mostly restricting your throughput speed.  (What you think of as your "real time" speed). 

[swampiesue]

Hi

Obviously I understand very little of that, but I can get the gist of it. Don't know about that particular neighbor. my friend just happened to be there yesterday whilst waiting for the engineer to call at his own home, he was discussing it with her so she did a test. I have never known anyone get those speeds, in this area before. She is not with BT but AOL, however she is still on the same exchange.

I could however over the next couple of days take my laptop to my friends house and see what his line stats are, and at the same time keep a check on mine.


The reason I am a bit nervous about routerstats is that it looks very complicated and I do have problems absorbing information and understanding instructions. ( as you probably noticed) My short term memory in not very good at all either. I would rather give it a miss unless it proves to be invaluable to our situation, or I can get my friend who knows a lot more than me about computers to do it.  Is there any other way of finding out what is causing the problem. Or I have noticed that you can do an on line check, which I have done,will those figures be of any help. I have downloaded it and it is in my downloads folder but am not sure what to do next.

The main reason I want better speeds is so I can watch the odd program on BBCi and ITV catch up so I don't think dropping down to 512 kbps will help me much.

Sorry to be such a pain, but everyone seems to know so much more than me on this site, I am a bit out of my depth, me thinks

[roseway]

You're not being a pain at all. You just have a difficult line. I don't know about ITV, but with BBCi you can download the programs first, then watch them later, so the download speed wouldn't be such an issue.

It's just possible that you have an actual line fault. Do you hear any odd noises on the telephone? If you dial 17070 and then press 2 you will get the BT quiet line test. When this is running you shouldn't hear anything apart from maybe a very gentle hiss. If you hear any gurgles or crackles there's a possible fault which needs investigating.

If your router drops the connection and reconnects from time to time, is there any pattern to when it does this? If so, there could be some identifiable source of interference which could be traced.

I understand your concerns about Routerstats, because it can be a bit fiddly to set up. But the 'Lite' version is already configured for a large number of routers. You could download the Windows self-installer version and after installing it all you would need to do is select a router from a drop-down list - the Speedtouch ST585 option is quite likely to work with your Home Hub.

[swampiesue]

Hi Roseway,

That will be great, if I can download the TV programs, I did not know I could do that. ( come to think about I do remember something about 30day catch up).

I have done the test, the line seems OK at the moment, but I do on occasion get a lot of noise, especially if we have heavy rain, back in Sept around the time I had the last broadband  fault we ago we lost the line all together. I have also been cut off on the odd occasion. Our next door neighbours have had noise problems for several months,( maybe longer)  even to the point BT have replaced their phone twice.(They still rent off BT) BT came out and replaced the junction box on the post last year, but as far as I know they are still having problems. The post is in the field next door but only about 10 ft from our house. There are some tree branches that do touch the cables when it is windy. Our friends who are getting the better speeds live either side of the post the junction box splits and sends two separate cables to each of their houses. Their is one other thing that I have thought of, their have been ants in the DSL Box. Could they have affected the wiring at all causing the errors.

I agree about having a difficult line  Since we moved here 5 years ago, we have had a lot of problems compared to where we used to live. We even had the over head cable hacked into a few years ago Ended up with a bill for several hundred pounds, luckily we got it sorted.

I have to go out today, but will have a go at the lite version of Routerstats this evening.

Thanks

Swampiesue
 

[kitz]

General poor quality of your phone line could certainly be causing the problem from what youve said about the line... and if it is poor quality then its common to hear mention of worse during wet weather, and rubbing against trees.
re the ants - TBH Im not sure - depends if theyve done any damage to the wiring.


I watch TV online on occasions and as Eric says you can actually download them to your PC for watching for later - which is something that Ive also done.


The BBC have several different methods. 
~ The high quality stream needs at least 1Mb (I sometimes see it peak at around 2Mb)..
~  "normal quality" which is supposed to work for 512 kb connections..  (the stream buffer varies from 250 - 600 kbps)
~ Download to your PC and watch it later.

ITV
Ive not used the ITV before -  so just quickly checked it out.
I cant see download section, but from a very quick test I did, the stream would appear to be for 512kb connections.

4oD (Channel 4)
In the past ive both streamed and downloaded for later.. iirc its a 512 stream..  but if your connection isnt fast enough they recommend you download to your PC.

[swampiesue]

Hi There

First thing I did today was test the line on the BT test page, things were looking good DSL connection rate 1472 down
448kbps up IP Profile well up on yesterday @ 1250 Actual IP throughout test 648kbps. Great I thought the best way toi test this is BBC i and ITV catch up.

Those figures that Kitz gave me say thatI should be able to get normal quality OK. No such Luck BBCi kept stopping and starting again, every 30-120 seconds or so and ITV played the sound but only still pictures.

surely I should be able to get it on these test results. 

How do I know if the ants have damaged the wiring, and what about lightning. If I get BT to check the box out (that they fitted will I have to pay, 

Meanwhile I am going to give routerlite a go,  hear goes, fingers crossed

[swampiesue]

Hi Downloaded routerstats lite followed instructions to the tea, chose homehub Speed touch (the closes to mine ) even checked that the address was right.

Got Error connecting to router, so I uninstalled it and tried again... same thing 

[swampiesue]

Hi

Thought I would just give you an update, and check that I am right in thinking that things have improved, I know the Download speeds have gone down, but If I think other things have improved my line Stats are as follows.

Uptime 0 days 18:33;17

Up 846 Down 448


line Attenuation   31.5/63.5

SN Margin            13.0/11.00
 
loss of signal       1/0

Error Seconds      10,210/0
FEC Errors            0/1,662
CRC errors            0/113
HEC errors             0/93

If this is the case and things have improved again, can I safely assume the problems with the fluctuations in speed are not within my own home and are caused by our very unstable line.

[roseway]

>> Up 846 Down 448

I think these figures are the wrong way round.

You've now got a slower connection but the highish noise margin will improve stability, so it's not bad for a line like yours.

>> How do I know if the ants have damaged the wiring, and what about lightning.

Someone would need to inspect the box where they were, to check for damage. I rather doubt that they would really damage the wiring though.

Lightning will knock out your connection, and if nearby it could destroy your router, so it's always a good idea to completely unplug the router from the telephone line when there's thunder about.

[swampiesue]

Whoops  yes got them the wrong way round,

Great, I thought things had stabilized, everything seems so much faster and BBCi went a whole 2 mins without cutting out, have not tried ITV yet though.

Well It looks like I must have learned something over the past few days shame I will forget it all again, I am going to make myself a special folder to keep all the line stats info in, so I can refer back if I need to refresh my memory.

So I can assume the problems are not down to a damaged socket, just the length of the line, am I right.

Once again, thanks both of you for all of your help, and for teaching me that   a good broadband connection is not just about the download speed. 

[roseway]

>> So I can assume the problems are not down to a damaged socket, just the length of the line, am I right.

Yes, the length of the line and how much it's subject to interference.

And you're very welcome.