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[Weaver]

Any suggestions on models worth checking out for a group test?

[orainsear]

Speedtouch 585v6

2wire HGV2700 (BT Business Hub)

[dizzy4528]

Netgear DG834 GT with DgTeam firmware
Billion 5200G R4  with forced 6db firmware
Both of which i have used on my 63.5db 6 Km+ line.

[Azzaka]

The best modem for a long is one that uses the AR7 chipset.

Netgear DG834Gv3 with the new firmware is the way to go.

[kitz]

and finally the caveat.. what works best on one line wont necessarily be the best for another.

My own line - the ST585v6... which is just slightly better than a Netgear dg834gt with various firmwares (tried gt team and ubergt)... which is slightly better than other BCM 6338/6348/6358 series such as the Voyager... which is slightly better than the DG834v3.

Yet take the same routers round to a friends house and the dg834gt performs best.. then the st585v6.
Traditionally it always used to be the DG834v3s

I havent actually tried the 2wire but have heard good things.. billions seem to do ok too.

I think the main thing is that there are certain routers which are known not to perform too well either..  but it always seems to be the same names that are in the top 5 or 5.
Thompson TG585v7 is a bit of a disappointment IMHO :/

[Weaver]

> Yet take the same routers round to a friends house and the dg834gt performs best.. then the st585v6.

Understood. And a "friend's house" is on the same DSLAM?

I think we should put out an appeal to find out who has the worst lines.

Annoyingly a neighbour has a DG834v3 which I installed for him that tonight is running at a staggering sync rate of 2304 on 63dB attenuation with a reported SNR of 1dB (!) in the dark very late at night on a wet day, which I think is an astonishing tribute to the DG834v3.

So despite having 2dB worse attenuation than me, my 63dB neighbour is enjoying an IP profile of 2000 as opposed to my 1500, penalised as I am with a huge SNR margin of 12dB (SNR is 10dB tonight @ sync of 1920) for the crime of rebooting routers too many times before christmas while testing, and then having various lighning storms, and am still serving my sentence at DLM's pleasure.

[kitz]

>> Understood. And a "friend's house" is on the same DSLAM?

No neighbouring, but still same MSAN manufacturer and both exchanges being satelittes of the same area. (be LLU)

[Weaver]

And out of nowhere, tada [!!].

End of a long saga, after a three month jail sentence, I'm now out on parole and have caught up with my "lucky" 63dB next door neighbour.

I'll post up my numbers elsewhere and discuss some thoughts on jail-time at DLM's pleasure and what you have to do to get out.

[mr_chris]

lol - best watch out you don't 'reoffend'

Glad DLM has let you out for good behaviour

[Mick]

I think that the comparisons would be more meaningful if we also included the local exchange chipset.  There seems to be some correlation between the modem chipset and that of the exchange.

My local exchange has a STMicro Alcatel chipset (last time I looked) and performance seems to be best with 2WIRE 2700HGV.  Next best (say by 150-250 kbps) was the ST585v6.  I have also tried DG834v1/v2 and DG834GT.  The DG834GT was slightly better than the DG834v1/v2.  All three however were rubbish with regards to sync speeds - sorry Netgear.  At least 500-700 kbps lower than the 2WIRE 2700HGV.  It is not only the lower sync speed that bothered me, but most importantly these modems do not seem to have the processing power to deal with more than one connection/protocol at a time.  Look at the attached graphs to see what I mean.  The brown colour dots are uploads, the green downloads.  In the DG graph the latency of the router to LCP pings goes off scale during an upload (turquoise colour) and the same happens with downloads (light green).  With the 2WIRE there is no perceptible difference.  It feels as if the modem is throttling throughput (I have tried these in bridge mode to take out any side effects of respective firewalls and rule processing).

I am now on the look out for a Bipac 5200 with the 6dB firmware to see how this performs.  Please let me know if you have one of these knocking about in your garage. 

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[Weaver]

I'm grateful to Mick for his contribution.

I've pointed out before that rather than simply wearing a "Netgear DG834v3 superfan" badge (which is a TI AR7 chipset device) these results ought to be checked out with an exchange with a non-TI DSLAM. I will look out for some suitable candidate test sites next week when I'm out and about.

[daveh85]

How do you determine what chipset is being used in the Exchange?

thx
Dave

[b4dger]

How do you determine what chipset is being used in the Exchange?

thx
Dave

Depending on your router it will show you the 'vendor', here's mine from my trusty Thomson 585v6:
"Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / TSTC" (Thomson / Texas Instruments)

[daveh85]

Shame, I'm using a DG834GT that doesn't give that functionality. Time to get out the Linksys router..

thx for the tip ;-)

[kai]

I think that I'm probably classed in the 'ultra-long' line category.

My ISP is O2 (previously left Sky because of DLR which cut my speeds quite drastically). My estimated speed is around 3Mbp/s and I sync at around that kind of speed. However, I get what I think is an inordinate amount of CRC errors and I'm lucky if my line can keep connected for more than a day or two. I crave reliability as I nearly always need access remotely back home when I'm out and about. Bearing this in mind, I hope someone on here can give me some advice on what to do to get better reliability.

Of course I've also done as much as possible to try ensure I've got the best possible connection. This includes buying a filtered faceplate (from ADSL Nation a couple of years back), making sure my router is connected to the master socket, etc. My phoneline is what I'd call very poor as people frequently tell me that they struggle to hear me on the phone and I can almost always hear faint noise. I have called out BT before about this, but they said there wasn't that much they could do.

My router used to be a Netgear DG834GT (supplied by Sky) - but I had it configured as a modem only and routed it to a WRT54G powered by Tomato to handle all the routing functions. Once I changed to O2, I decided to switch to a ST585v6 as I'd heard many good reports about these and long line lengths (I decided not to use the supplied 585v7 - that's a whole other story). It has made some difference - not a huge amount, but every little helps for me! I currently sync anywhere from 1800Kbp/s to 3400Kbp/s. Average is usually around 2850Kbp/s. (When I was on Sky, DLR reduced my line to a maximum of 1600Kbp/s).

Bearing all this in mind, my current router stats are (on ST585v6 running v6.1.4.3 firmware):

Code: [Select]

Uptime: 0 days, 0:59:48
Modulation: G.992.5 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 828 / 2,946
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/GB]: 149.21 / 1.17
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 17.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 37.0 / 63.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.0 / 6.5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / µ
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 270 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 87,589
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 23,596 / 840
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 15,181 / 556

I hope this of use to someone and if anyone can give me some advice on what to do to try up the reliability of my connection without sacrificing too much speed it'd be most appreciated!

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