My line attenuation is 18dB, IP profile 13000 and connection rate 15348. I should therefore be getting some really high speeds. However I have been experiencing speeds lower than I did when under the 8 meg service.
I will start off by saying that BT have been very supportive so far in helping me through this experience. I upgraded to the ADSL2+ service at the end of last year and after the training period which included moving my modem to the Master Socket and having to run wirelessly it became apparent that BT Speedtests were constantly being returned at around 3 meg when done on a wireless connection and my downstream noise margin was hovering between 8dB & 9dB. After a long period of monitoring it was agreed that the line was unstable and dropping on occassion.
BT therefore sent out an Openworld engineer on Saturday who replaced the master socket, and carried out various tests and confirmed that the line should be capable of very good speeds. He went away to check the cabinet and I noticed my connection lights on my modem go out - they came back on about 45 minutes later and the phone rang. It was the engineer - he had seen the line drop twice whilst at the cabinet, so went back to the exchange and established that the circuit my line had an intermittent fault. He had therefore put me onto another circuit. Brilliant I thought - bouquet for the engineer all I need to do is wait for the noise to start dropping.
How wrong I have been so far. Downstream noise has been between 9 and 10dB which is actually higher than before!
However the line has not dropped but there are considerably higher errors than noticed during my initial training period. Indeed over the last week the exchange has automatically put me on interleave. I am therefore at a point where I am stuck. I am still in contact with BT as I have pointed out that my actual speeds returned by Speedtester have been been no more than 7meg when run with wired connection which is what I was getting under basic ADSL2, and that wireless speedtests are consistantly around 3.5meg.
BT have asked me to run a test during the day which I have done with my laptop connected to my modem by cable and this returned slightly below 7meg. It seems therefore that whatever the IP profile and connection rate is I am incapable of getting more than 7 meg. I therefore am at the point when I have to consider whether a modem change will help things. I currently have a Zyxel P660HW T1 V2 which is a G standard. the wireless tests have been run either with my laptop no more than 6 feet away from the modem , or from my PC about 25 feet and two rooms away. Most of the time my PC and laptop both report good to excellent strength connections at 54.00Mbps,so I am struggling to see why I am getting such a difference. Unfortunately the one hour limit on test intervals imposed by BT Speedtester means that I cannot do consecutive tests in similar internet traffic conditions to see if my modem is causing issues when running a speedtest wirelessly.
I am wandering whether replacing my modem might give things a boost. I am thinking of either a Billion Bipac 7300N or a Linksys WAG320N. However if there are still issues with the line or indeed the exchange capacity is becoming limited, would either of these make a difference? Are there any other modems that might help resolve the issue? I am also wandering whether the increase in errors is an indication that my modem realises its days are numbered and is slowly dying.
Is the highish downstream noise causing my actual speed to be lower?
Thoughts or suggestions please.
