>> Does this mean that ISP support staff are not aware of it, or are we not supposed to know about it?
I should imagine that the vast majority of CS staff in the larger ISPs (particulary those with foreign call centers) such as AOL, BT, Wanadoo, Tiscali, TT etc wouldnt know, since unfortunately most of them dont even have an understanding of how UK adsl works nevermind know what SNR is. :/
Most of their "training" seems to revolve around things like the basic PC problems such as reboot the PC type of thing and is mostly scripted. About a year or so I received mail from a head of department of a troubleshooting team from one of the largest ISPs, who aside from having a foreign call center also still have a few teams in the UK. He told me that he makes sure all his (uk) team have a read of my site in addition to their normal training to help aid understanding.
I should imagine most of CS from the "smaller" type ISPs such as Zen, PlusNet, IDNet, Enta re-sellers will have an idea of what SNR actually is and how important it is when on MAXdsl. Although spot the trend - these ISPs have UK call centers. Some of them may be aware of DMT.
However, the problem also is that not everyone would know (or even want to try and understand) how DMT tool works. It may in itself be a bit too complicated for your average adsl user particularly since the site is in german, therefore even if they are aware then they may not suggest it. The average adsl user just simply expects things to work and not have to tweak anything.
>> that my SNR margin setting had been raised to 12db.
Then there is the little known fact that your Target SNR is a configurable aspect of the DLM and it is set in your BTw profile. It is possible to get your ISP to amend this and get it set to something else. But here we have a bigger problem in that although not all ISP CS know what is configurable within the profile.. but if they request the change.. then on occasions the ISP themselves can enter into a game of ticket-tennis with BTWholesale staff when trying to get it changed.
I know my own ISP has had some battles involving ping-pong tickets to BTw when trying to get what should be simple things like Interleaving OFF and changes to target SNR.
