Broadband Related > ADSL Issues

Broadband Speed Advice

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Cowan:

OK, i'm currently signed up with Pipex on their 'Up to 8 Meg' service. I've been having bother with it since late October 2007(So quite a while now...).

First, a bit of back-story

I live quite far away from my local exchange, so I was initially using Pipex's 512kb service with very little problems, the odd dropped connection every so often but nothing major(We had the special BT master socket installed, that provides an ADSL socket rather than using microfilters around the house). In early 2007, I was made aware that i'd be able to get faster speeds, so I upgraded to the Up to 8 Meg service I currently have. It was going very well, getting roughly 1.7Mb downstream and 512kb upstream which I was more than happy with. 

Fast forward to late October 07 and my connection started acting bizzarely, it was constantly disconnecting and reconnecting every 10 seconds or so for an entire weekend, this then stopped and it was perfectly normal for roughly a week. The same thing happened in the middle of the next week, only this time when my connection re-established itself I was only getting 160kb downstream.  I manually reconnected my router over the next few days, slowly increasing the speed from 160 to 192, 256, 448, 792 then up to around 1152. The problem was that if it disconnected at the higher speeds, it would go all the way back to 160 and take roughly a week to build back up.

This was rather annoying, and I contacted Pipex numerous times, all they really had me do was endless speed tests on a special BT site. This carried on until early 2008, when my connection was down for an entire week. Pipex arranged a BT engineer visit at this point. So the engineer comes round, does various tests and can't get connected, so he goes to the junction box at the end of my street(which is quite a distance away) and tells me he did a test there, and i'm getting roughly 2.7Meg there so the problem must be between the junction box and my house. He changes us onto one of the spare lines in the street then attempts to connect again. The connection establishes itself for about ten seconds then dies, so he tells me that he doesn't have time to discover what the problem actually is and leaves.

It was at this point that I discovered this site, and went about reading some of the advice given. By sheer coincidence my dad had the Netgear DG843G router that was reccomended on here, so we gave that a try, and after about 20 minutes of trying it managed to achieve an ADSL connection.

The only problem was is the speed was now permenantly stuck at either 160, 192 or in very rare occasions 256 downstream, I still get around half a meg upload. Also, it can take absolutely ages to establish a connection in the event that I try to reset it in order to achieve faster download speeds.

So, several phone calls to Pipex later and they say that they've told BT to limit my connection to 512kb downstream, which i'd be happy with, seeing as that's what I had for several years with no problems. However, i've seen absolutely no change in my connection since this cap has occured.

Here are my current line stats;

Connection Speed - Downstream 192kb/s Upstream 448Kb/s
Attenuation - Downstream 60db Upstream - 15.5db
Noise Margin - Downstream 12db Upstream - 17db

I've told Pipex that i'm still not getting decent download speeds and their response has been to ask me to run more speed tests, I really can't see this going anywhere and I really want all this nonsense to end, so i'm thinking of switching ISP's to BT. Is this likely to actually make any difference to the speed I get?

I know this is a fairly long post, but  I thought it'd be better to list everything that has happened. I'd really appreciate if people took the time to read it and give me any kind of advice on what to do next.

Cheers.

roseway:
Hi Cowan, and welcome.

It has to be said that you do have a high attenuation, and lines like this can be troublesome. But that being said, your figures do suggest to me that there's a problem with your line. You're using a filtered faceplate, so your own wiring isn't likely to be the problem. It could be a serious local source of interference, but my money would be on a line fault.

Grasping at straws a little, is there any audible hiss or crackling on the telephone? You can check this by dialling 17070 and selecting 'Quiet line test' from the menu which you're given. If there is clearly audible noise, then you can report it as a voice fault (dial 150). Voice faults always get a serious response from BT.

Failing this I'm afraid that it's down to arguing with your ISP, or changing to a different ISP. Changing to BT as an ISP is possibly not the best option, as they don't have a very good record on dealing with this sort of problem. Best of all would be one of the more expensive ISPs such as Zen, but I get the impression that among the low cost ISPs PlusNet are better than most at sorting out customers' technical problems.

Cowan:

I did initially suspect that it was a problem with my line, and although the BT engineer wasn't the most confidence inspiring man i've ever met, he did tell me that we'd been switched onto a new phone line using the spare wiring available in our street. I'll look into the quiet line test thing though.

I think i'll ask my neighbours tommorow which ISP they're with and what speeds they're getting.

kitz:
I could be wrong - but I suspect that the period of instability has pushed your target SNR margin up the the maximum figure, which has decreased the speed at which you can sync at.
It could be a period of bad weather/storms that could have done this - water on the line etc.
Follow roseways advice.

Some very long lines dont have sufficient SNR Margin to be able to cope with say a 15dB target SNR and this means that they either cant attain sync.. or sync at very slow speeds.
Normal SNR fluctuations also play havoc with long lines due to the IPprofile then limiting to slow speeds for several days at a time.
The higher upstream speed you are getting will also be "taking up" frequency bins that could perhaps be utilised for downstream.

tbh I dont recommend maxdsl for long lines for the above reasons..  and I know my own ISP (and several others) dont look at putting such long lines (60dB) on maxdsl.. or if they do.. they will quite happily put it back on to the fixed 512kb service.

>> they say that they've told BT to limit my connection to 512kb downstream,

They obviously havent, because your line stats show you still being on a maxdsl service rather than fixed rate.  Maximum upstream on a fixed line is 288kbps.

>> I really can't see this going anywhere and I really want all this nonsense to end,

I cant see why they dont cut their losses and put you on a BTw fixed rate service.. although I have a suspicion why they may not want to mess too much with your line right now.

>> so i'm thinking of switching ISP's to BT. Is this likely to actually make any difference to the speed I get?

At the end of the day you will still be stuck with the same long line that cant really cope with speeds more than 512kbps due to the physical conditions that adsl signal deteriorates over distance. There are some ISPs that are far more helpful than others at putting their customers on to the fixed rate 512 service.

If you do want this - then my advice to you is get out of Pipex now. 

Normally I would say try bear with the ISP or try some further testing... but just in case you havent seen the reports this week you may be best requesting your MAC asap ---  before tiscali get their mitts on you. Many Pipex customers over the past week have suddenly found themselves on the tiscali network and receiving a very bad service/connection. Once you are on tiscali LLU then it wont be as easy to move to another ISP. :/

Like eric I'd suggest looking at one of the other ISPs - particularly one that has a one month contract such as zen/plusnet/enta/idnet etc.
All of the above also have support staff you can arrange fixed services if needed and at least have an understanding how adsl works.

Cowan:
Cheers. I'll look into a different ISP then.

I did specifically ask Pipex to return me to my old fixed 512kb/s connection, but the tech support guy told me some story about how when I switched to the MAX service, BT had 'destroyed' some piece of equipment that I had used previously. I have no idea if this is absolute nonsense or not, but would this cause any kind of problems if I did go back to a fixed service with another ISP?

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