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[RobJ]

Hi Folks.  I'm engaged in a long and painful debate with BT about the speeds I'm getting and would really like to know whether I'm just wasting my time!

I used to get reliable download speeds of 2.5Mb/s, but then we had a storm and the rotten cable between my house and the telegraph pole snapped.

That was duly replaced, but since then I'm only getting a synch speed of 512Kb.  BT are saying that's all my line will support, but that doesn't seem right. 

I've been through the BT support routine, changed microfilters, tried test socket, etc, etc, but the synch speed won't budge.

I've got a Belkin 54g wireless router and these are my line stats:

       Downstream  Upstream
Data rate                                576            288 
Noise margin                          29.7           23.0 
Output power                         14.9           12.1 
Attenuation                             48.5           23.0 

What do you think - should my line support better than 512Kb/s?  Is there anything else I could check?

If you've read this far, then thanks for your patience!

Rob.

[roseway]

Hi Rob and welcome.

From your stats it seems that you've been put on a fixed 512 kbps service in place of the Max service you were on before (this is indicated by the 288 kbps upstream figure). You have a very large noise margin, so if you are put back on Max you will get a much higher connection speed in the same area as what you had before. What you need to do is ask your ISP to put you back on Max.

[RobJ]

Hi Rob and welcome.

From your stats it seems that you've been put on a fixed 512 kbps service in place of the Max service you were on before (this is indicated by the 288 kbps upstream figure). You have a very large noise margin, so if you are put back on Max you will get a much higher connection speed in the same area as what you had before. What you need to do is ask your ISP to put you back on Max.

Thanks.  I suspected I might have been rate-capped, so I did ask the support guy to confirm that I'm actually on ADSL Max, which he said I am, but I will certainly ask them to check again. According to BT's "High Level Complaints", BT Wholesale are "reviewing their calculations", having previously stated that my line could only support 512 kb/s.  They've been doing that for more than 24 hrs, so they must be pretty tough sums .

I'll report back when I've spoken to them again.

Rob.

[kitz]

That certainly does look like a fixed rate 512kb line and not max.

The only other thing I can think of is that you are still on max but at the time of the telegraph pole incident for some (obvious) reason the DLM thought your line was struggling and moved you to an "Assured rate" max account.   

If this is the case, then the ISP wont necessarily be readily able to identify it.   
There's a thread on this very forum where it happened to someone else (all be it 2Mb assured)..  and you can see how at the time we all struggled to understand what was happening - until the ISP rep did a bit of investigating and pushing BTw - linky

[RobJ]

Well, several tedious conversations with BT's "High Level Complaints Team" later, we've finally made some progress.

For several days they were sticking to their guns about my line not being able to support higher speeds, but I passed on your comments and insisted that I was really willing to risk an occasional dropped connection to see if I could get a better connection speed. 

Three days later and I now have the following stats (there was no change yesterday, so they must have removed the cap sometime today):

Data rate                4768  448 
Noise margin          11.4  18.0 
Output power         19.8  12.3 
Attenuation             48.5  23.0 
 
I'm currently seeing throughput of 3424 kbps according to this tester: http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/speedtest/  (before it was reporting 476 kbps).

So, I'm optimistic that the throughput may increase over the next few days, but even if it doesn't it's a heck of a lot better.  Of course, after dreadful service like that and now knowing there's nothing wrong with the line I can't help wondering whether it's worth switching to BE anyhow, but that's for another day.

Thanks again.

Rob.

[roseway]

That looks good to me. If your connection speed stays around that level you will have an IP profile of 4000 kbps, with throughput speeds up to that value.

[RobJ]

According to speedtester.bt.com, my IP Profile is now 5000 kbps.

I *think* my router was reporting a data rate of around 6000 kbps when I first looked at it this evening.  How often does the Data rate get adjusted?  Does it happen while the connection is active, or does it require a router restart to renegotiate the synch speed?

No sign of any errors on the router stats page (thanks for the info on that, which I found elsewhere in this forum - http://192.168.2.1/statsatm.html for my Belkin router).

So it's fingers crossed.

Rob.

[roseway]

With ADSL Max the router will stay connected at the same speed until it drops the connection and re-syncs (or you do this deliberately). To be honest, you'll be doing very well indeed if you hold on to that profile with your level of attenuation, but I'll cross my fingers for you anyway.

[RobJ]

Well, it's looking good so far.  No dropped connections and here's what I got from BT's speedtester today.

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
    IP profile for your line is - 5500 kbps
    DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)  7040 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 5112 kbps

Now I guess I just need to find a site which can serve stuff up at that rate

Actually, we've got relatives in Uzbekistan and China and now we can manage three way video calling with Skype.  Doesn't always work perfectly, but it's good when it does (which it never did with a 512kbps connection speed).

So, thanks again.

[kitz]

Thats wonderful news.

So glad we were able to help... thanks for letting us know

[roseway]

Yes, excellent result.