Problem with "upto 8meg" connection

Oily

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I've just moved my ISP to Nildram from AOL(no i did't use their software!).I had the Nildram 2meg connection for a week or so,quite happy with it but thought i'd upgrade to the "upto 8meg" seeing as it was the same price.Checked my line to see if it could handle the speed and it came back with the result=Your line can handle 5/8meg.So i thought,5meg,can't grumble at that,so i re-grade.
BIG mistake,i had constant dis-connections whilst the line went through this 10 day 'evaluating what speed your line can take'I put up with that thinking it'll be worth it.
Ends up with this=Your maximium line speed can handle 0.5meg Yep,thats right 0.5meg.This is after AOL have supplied me for over 2/3years with 2meg,sometimes it went down to 1.2meg but never below 1meg.I live 1.6(2.5kms) miles away from the exchange,noise on my line is well below tolerances.They assure me there's no fault on the line.
I just can't seem to get them to understand how it can jump from 2meg from AOL down to 0.5meg after re-grading to this adsl max 8meg s**te.
Anyone else had the same problem??
 

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Well I agreed to upgrade mine but as yet it has not happened and in some ways I am grateful as I have heard a few reports of problems especially around the Manchester area, some nights recently I was not able to logon to certain sites including this with my 2MB connection, so how it would have been with the 8 I have no idea. I switched all our work routers to the zen8000 active some months ago and whilst the first day it was up and down a bit after that it stabilised and we have no problems ATM. I have to say though that if I cannot understand how you had a faster speed with AOL and yet your line will not support it now. Did you have a independant test or was it an AOL test to confirm the speed ;) ?
 

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I did the usual speed tests regulary using the one on ADSL.org site.Never went below 1meg.
I can't understand it either:confused
Someone has mentioned 'contention ratio' but i don't really understand it,something about how many users to a pipe:confused
 

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Oily said:
Someone has mentioned 'contention ratio' but i don't really understand it

Broadband connections are shared with a number of users sharing the same connection. Depends on the supplier but 20 to 1 is not uncommon.

It's like a motorway when you're using broadband internet, most users are not send or receiving all the time. Like a motorway, you can all drive happily until it gets busy. Then it doesn't matter if you drive a Ferrari or a Reliant they all have to slow and wait.

That's why some ISPs watch for 'fair use' as some users download movies and the like 24/7 clogging it for the others who share the connection. they get a warning then disconnected.

On a lighter note, my wireless connection downstairs does a flaky ever time someone uses the microwave!
 

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gameboy said:
On a lighter note, my wireless connection downstairs does a flaky ever time someone uses the microwave!

Never did like my food nuked O-Ha
 

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Oily said:
Never did like my food nuked O-Ha

Doesn't nuke it just excites it....... Don't you like to get excited?O-Ha
 

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Oily said:
I did the usual speed tests regulary using the one on ADSL.org site.Never went below 1meg.
I can't understand it either:confused
Someone has mentioned 'contention ratio' but i don't really understand it,something about how many users to a pipe:confused

You won't get any contention on the adsl connection between yourself and Nildram, although you might be sharing bandwidth on Nildram's connection to the Internet backbone.

If you check on http://www.adslguide.org.uk/, you will see that Nildram is second only to Zen Internet for speed, reliability and customer service, so my advice is to give them a ring and ask them nicely to have a look at your line.
 

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_stu_ said:
You won't get any contention on the adsl connection between yourself and Nildram, although you might be sharing bandwidth on Nildram's connection to the Internet backbone.

If you check on http://www.adslguide.org.uk/, you will see that Nildram is second only to Zen Internet for speed, reliability and customer service, so my advice is to give them a ring and ask them nicely to have a look at your line.

I have done Stu and got nowhere:mad:
My line speed is still the same and now i'm getting authentication errors,never had that before'O'-red
 

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ADSL sync speeds do not work like this "shared" method. ADSL is point 2 point, you have a direct connection with the exchange, whereas with cable its shared and you do not.

You were getting disconnected a lot during your test period as the modem was syncing at higher than your line could handle. Living 2.5km from the exchange, is that straight line or road distance?. Are there any major roadworks going on nearby? Have you tried syncing up at 3am etc.

These are all factors that can play with your line speeds. However at 2.5km from the exchange you should theoretically get the full 8mbit. So it may be a problem with the line in your house. Are you using any extension cables or splitters apart from your dsl filter? Are you using different hardware now than what you were using with AOL?

Phone nildram up and ask them to perform line tests whilst your on the phone to them (this may be from an engineer) what he/she will do is try your line at different sync speeds, capping your line at a certain max rate each time. He/She will be able to find the optimal speed manually for you, and you will be on the phone to them all this time.

Remember if you are capped at 2mbit you have a better chance of being stable and connected at 2mbit rather than if your capped at 8mbit and your connection could be unstable and synching all over the place.

Hope this helps, anymore questions just ask.


gameboy said:
Broadband connections are shared with a number of users sharing the same connection. Depends on the supplier but 20 to 1 is not uncommon.

It's like a motorway when you're using broadband internet, most users are not send or receiving all the time. Like a motorway, you can all drive happily until it gets busy. Then it doesn't matter if you drive a Ferrari or a Reliant they all have to slow and wait.

That's why some ISPs watch for 'fair use' as some users download movies and the like 24/7 clogging it for the others who share the connection. they get a warning then disconnected.

On a lighter note, my wireless connection downstairs does a flaky ever time someone uses the microwave!
 

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D4ftpunk said:
ADSL sync speeds do not work like this "shared" method. ADSL is point 2 point, you have a direct connection with the exchange, whereas with cable its shared and you do not.

You were getting disconnected a lot during your test period as the modem was syncing at higher than your line could handle. Living 2.5km from the exchange, is that straight line or road distance?. Are there any major roadworks going on nearby? Have you tried syncing up at 3am etc.

That's road distance,no roadworks that i've seen.Not tried at 3am but can't see it making a diffrence,my lines capped at 0.5m

These are all factors that can play with your line speeds. However at 2.5km from the exchange you should theoretically get the full 8mbit. So it may be a problem with the line in your house. Are you using any extension cables or splitters apart from your dsl filter? Are you using different hardware now than what you were using with AOL?

It's a wireless network,all other phones unplugged to see if it made a difference,which it hasn't.I'm using the same hardware when i was on AOL

Phone nildram up and ask them to perform line tests whilst your on the phone to them (this may be from an engineer) what he/she will do is try your line at different sync speeds, capping your line at a certain max rate each time. He/She will be able to find the optimal speed manually for you, and you will be on the phone to them all this time.

Have tried but got sick of waiting 45mins on hold

Remember if you are capped at 2mbit you have a better chance of being stable and connected at 2mbit rather than if your capped at 8mbit and your connection could be unstable and synching all over the place.

Hope this helps, anymore questions just ask.
Just had this e-mai off them:

Dear Darren,

Your current throughput is so low because the BT Wholesale Dynamic Line Management equipment on the max service has reduced your linerate throughput , this is oscillating between 576kbps and 1152kbps. The reason that this has happened is most certainly due to the instability of your circuit, as opposed to the BT Wholesale equipment not working correctly.

To ensure that it is not being caused by your equipment or internal wiring you need to test your router connected direct to the BT master socket with any other PSTN devices removed from any other phone socket on this line for at least 24-48hours to see if the circuit stabilises and your line rate is increased.

You should ensure that your router has the latest firmware installed and that it and the filters you use are not actually faulty/getting worn out, and causing the weak synch signal.

These checks are necessary due to the new product that you are on being far more susceptible to such problems and actually being "allowed" to connect at a lower speed if that gives a more stable connection unlike to old 2MB products that were set to only allow connection at the speed and hence if a problem occurred would be prone to frequent disconnections.

As a side note your exchange is congested at the moment however until the stability of your line is resolved this will not be having a great affect on your throughput which is determined by the Exchange DLM equipment.


Once you have carried out the equipment checks we can get BT to investigate the disconnections/no synch periods on this circuit.
 

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Just had a look and i don't have a "master socket":confused:confused just a normal phone socket
 

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Hi,
Your post made an interesting reading.

I have a suggestion; this may be foolish, but worth a try:

How many phone handsets have you connected, in parallel? Do you use an ADSL splitter? if yes, are the phones connected before the splitter or after the splitter?

If you're paralleling a number of phone handsets, this affects the adsl carrier, and affects your bandwidth - from my experience.

hope this helps,

regards,

nitin.
 

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The 'master' socket will normally be the first one in your house after the outside pole in the street (as opposed to any extensions you may have)


L.:)
 

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The ADSL modem should have it's own monitoring software (in Windows control panel? Or, a desktop icon? Depnds on particular software provided, and how installed!). That should be able to tell you whether the speed problem is the connection between your own modem and the one the other end of your phone line, in the phone exchange.

It that's fine, then it's "bandwidth throttling" somewhere in your providor service (maybe everyone is simultaneously connecting to www.americafree.tv ?).

But, if it's the local modems, then yes check your own wiring. At 8Mbits/s, that can make quite a difference. Any phones on the line, or whether CAT5 has been used if indoor cable's a long one.

(Also - just possibly - electrical interference form other devices?).
 

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I've disconnected every phone in the house,i'm running a wireless network and the lowest rate i've seen it is 48mbps,here are my actual figures from Nildram:

Maximum stable rate 576Kbps
Line speed 288Kbps (at present)
Fault threshold 403Kbps
Maximum Product Line Speed:upto 8Mbps

As you can see my line speed is lower than my fault threshold,i've rung Nildram about this same problem last week and complained about it,they said they would get a BT engineer out to check out my line etc and call me back to say what the problem is but i've never heard anything back since.
It was at 7400kbps at one stage so the line is capable.
Don't know what else to do:confused
 

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The line MIGHT be just one factor in a more complex situation! For example, you could possibly be getting intermittent interference, which would occasionally slow the ADSL speed.

Other relevant things are possibly various "tweaks", for example packet lengths, etc. If experimenting, be careful, make sure you can get back to "original, default" mode, and have the modem driver software (CD?) available to re-install if necessary.

((( Er, presumably you are using the frequency splitter (filter) to separate phone and modem?
See: www.adslguide.org.uk/guide/summary.asp ))).
 

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Yeah,using the micro filters.I know the line is capable of higher speeds,i've had 7300kbps for a couple of days,which was nice.
Nildram are now offering customers a free re-grade back to thier old connection,so thye must have a lot of irate customers.
Don't know whether to go back ot it??
 

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I think it's important to try and establish whether it's the line/modem, or your supplier's network, before doing something like that .....

The line does sound unlikely, as your modem CAN work up to 8MB/s, and interference which would make it drop back that much seems unlikely ....

maybe engineer visit will help .....

Once you've got line officially tested and ok'd, then easier to (regrettably) drop speed and ask for refund ......
 

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I've had the line checked today,this is the e-mail i received of Nildram:

Currently this case is being investigated by BT. Please will you check that you have microfilters on all equipment connected through a micro filter and you have upgraded the firmware of your router.

The reason that I ask this is today at 11:07:54 your Downstream Line Rate was set to 4544k and at 11:41:45 the Line Rate was dropped to 288k. This could be due to faulty wiring, defective filters or interference from electrical equipment.

Initial results from BT conclude that they cannot find a problem with the circuit, we have passed the case back to BT and asked them to continue the investigation.

We will endeavour to resolve the problem that you are experiencing.



I know its not the micro filters as i've put a new one in,the only electrical equipment near it is the router itself,with the firmware upgraded and as far as the wiring goes,it all looks hunky dorey:confused
 

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Does your modem have any ethernet ports. You could hard wire your connection as a temporary test.
 
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