Any broadband/phone line experts here?

[StevePSB]

I've had a seriously sh*t broadband connection since I moved house and got my account/connection re-instated at the new address. I'm seriously f*cked off with it all but am worried that there may be an underlying problem with the phone line/connections within the house and/or my router but don't know really how to be sure I can rule those things out.

In short I had an initially ridiculously slow connection (down to 400kbps at times), my ISP turned on 'interleaving' and things seemed to improve and I was getting relatively solid connection speeds of 1200-1500kbps (still poor, quite a bit worse than at my old address, but better than 400kbps!). I asked my ISP if that was as good as it was going to get, they said they would do something else that might improve the situation ('remap the circuit') and since then, co-incidence or not, my connection has been nearly useless.

I am now left with about 10 - 15 minutes of surf time where, whilst watching an online speed test, my connection speed varies wildly from one second to the next from about 300kbps to 1000kbps before it drops the connection and struggles to re-connect for ages. Sometimes if I turn the router on and off again I will get a connection for another few minutes before it drops again. For the record, my connection has dropped several times and been very reluctant to re-connect whilst typing this.

I'm a bit worried that the problem is partly or fully to do with something within the house, be it dodgy phone wiring (the house is new) or my router going down (it was always fine at my old address though) and then if it is escalated to a phone engineer coming round he finds it's something in the house that is the issue and stings us with a huge bill for coming round.

Anyone know much about this subject? Thanks in advance to anyone who can shed some light!


StevePSB

[gregf]

Gday Steve.

I don't know what is different over there but here goes.

Is it an ADSL connection or cable ?
I asume ADSL with your mentioning the phone line.

If so ADSL or ADSL2 ?
I assume ADSL from speed mentioned.

If ADSL is the line filter installed ?
If you have a spare try changing that.
I assume same one which was fine.

Has the configuration parameters on the router been changed or do they need to be ?
Check with your ISP.

Is the telephone working ok ?
If yes that discounts chance oflocal line problem.

If ADSL are you further away from the exchange ?
ADSL line speed drops as you move further away.
Signal strength could be acting in a similar way.

Do you or a friend have a spare router.
Try that and if it plays up you know it's not your router but further upstream.

Log in to your router and see if there are error messages or diagnostics.

If it is a problem upstream of your router
then the ISP and phone line provider are
responible. Try getting your ISP to escalte
to the telephone company before you do it.

That's all I can think of now.
Not an ADSL expert.
-Greg.

[gregf]

Ask the ISP if using interleaving requires a change to router settings. Not sure what
Interleaving is myself.

Try turning it off again and see if it returns to 1.5Mbs.

Also I assume your router is also. your ADSL modem.
If you have a seperate modem then I know
a few tricks about that.

[gregf]

Agree it sounds like a line quality problem.

Or a distance from exchange issue.

[redsock]

If you can access the router "homepage", can you do a screen shot (Press Printscreen and paste it into paint) of your line readings, like the picture posted below.

If your SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) margin is low, then we can work from that. If not we can explore other avenues.

[StevePSB]

[StevePSB]

My router is my modem. I am running it wired via en Ethernet cable as my PC has no wireless card.

Filters/cabling checked. The problem persists whatever cable, filter or phone socket I am using. Phone line is fine.


StevePSB

[redsock]

Hmm, right, we can rule out the SNR then as that seems to be fine, as is your attenuation in regard to your Line rate. (I'm guessing you're about 3/4 miles or so from your exchange ?)

I'm tempted to say you should ask your ISP about contention issues (how many others are connection to the same "pipe" at the exchange.) If your speed tests results are fluctuating wildly, that's a good indication that there is heavy use on the line. Your upload speed is slow (should be at least 448 which does indicate that there could be "sharers" on the same "pipe" as you.)

What ISP are you with ? With a Voyager modem is it BT by any chance ? What you could ask them is if it's possible to swap what board you connect to at the exchange. It might be possible to put you on another.

I know from when I had a problem a few years ago with a noisy line, that they physically swapped my phone line at the junction box in the road from one main trunk to another and also at the exchange.)

You could maybe also show them the router stats and see what they think? If your wiring is spot on then that does mean that the problem is more towards their end.

[StevePSB]

My ISP is Madasafish, who (I *think*) are now owned by BT. I suspect I am about three miles or so from the exchange.

They're supposed to ne phoning me tomorrow. Hopefully they'll be a bit more helpful than they have been these last few weeks. I've had all the usual stupid questions about filters, other items plugged into the sockets in the house, using the test socket and also had someone tell me my three year old router is likely to be faulty (as they 'all go faulty after a year' apparantely, even though it was working A1 fine before the house move ) and also been asked if I'd like to leave my ISP (of 5 years or more) instead of them doing what I ask them, taking me seriously and sorting the problem out.

Here's hopiing for someone with more than a couple of brain cells helping me out tomorrow!


StevePSB

[redsock]

Grr ! And to think Madasafish were one of the top ISPs a few years ago ... At least they weren't bought out by one of the Tiscali - Pipex - AOL conglomerates ...

Strangely, their suggestion of swapping ISP may actually be of use ... IF you still had a bad connection after swapping, you could 100% nail down the problem between you and your exchange then ...

Can I ask a cheeky question ? Do you do a lot of P2P ? They may have a draconian approach to file sharers and could be throttling your line ?

[Glenny4]

Get on Virgin-media cable if you can, i know they cut speed on there, but does not stop me downloading 20GB a day, of all the year round

Since a came online in 98, i must have backed up about 15TB by now

[StevePSB]

No phonw call today, but I see my support ticket has fresh work on it - all very technical and beyond my limited knowledge on internet connections. I think a lot of the information they've added is for their benefit, not mine and includes responses from (I assume) BT where amongst other things they suggest getting the 'end user' to check filters, cables, router, ask if there has been any work on the phone lines since things started going badly wrong on Thursday etc... etc.... I added to the ticket to head them off at the pass that nothing has changed and I have again tried various cables, filters, sockets to stop the questions being asked AGAIN!

Didn't think I'd get online at all tonight. Up until 15 minutes or so ago, fron getting in at 6pm-ish onwards I've seen nothing but a flashing / resetting ADSL light on my router. Noiticed the ADSL and Internet light were stable a few minutes ago and took the opportunity to get online before it resets again.

And no, I don't do P2P, so that reason can definitely be ruled out.


StevePSB

[StevePSB]

Finally, I have a stable connection. Shame it is still only in the region of 1Mb, and that I fear is more down to where I live than my ISP.

As I first thought, It was nothing to do with my router, cables or phone line - the ISP have fixed it their end, although I have no idea what the problem was nor what they did to fix it.

Anyone know if moving to someone like Virgin (their normal service - I can't get their mega fast fibre optic thing) would be any better? I assume it'd still have to come through the normal phone line, yet it mentions speeds far greater than those I am currently getting. I'd be ecstatic to get 5Mb, put it that way.


StevePSB

[gregf]

Crikey, that's slow.

I get about 10 Mbits/second, measured at the modem.
The graph http://www.tpg.com.au/dslam/faq.php says I would be about 2.7Kms
from the exchange which I think is about right.

I pay AU$30 /month which is ....£13/month, 4GBpeak 8Gb off peak.
I only use about 1Gb/month.