Connection speed

1196rachel

Forgive the lack of/misuse of technical terms...

For my home broadband I'm on Virgin, on an old tariff of £14.99 per month for "unlimited" downloads.
Recently I tried to switch but my house seems to be out of the range of most service providers with faster download speeds.
I have previously been on a 0.5Mb connection as this was all my line could support, but for some reason recently there's been a change in what some of the online checkers say I can get - it now ranges from 1.0Mb to 1.5Mb with some providers who would previously give me 0.5Mb now saying they can't offer anything.
Using a speed checker at home I seemed to be getting 0.7Mb which is much better than the average 0.2Mb which I was getting, but I still can't watch iPlayer.

Has my line improved, and do I need to do anything to see any improvement - or is this as good as it's going to get?


Also, I signed up for BT and cancelled - they still sent the homehub but haven't asked for it back. Will they charge me?

kwikbreaks

It is unlikely in the extreme that your line has improved. It may be that your exchange now supports ADSL2+ but that will only help much on shorter lines than yours appears to be.

If you post up your router stats then some advice on what your line may be able to support will be possible...
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

preable

What are you router stats

1196rachel

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 4042 5442 0 149 698 01:24:09
LAN 100M/Full 0 0 0 0 0 02:18:04
WLAN 11M/54M 6463 6057 0 513 117 02:18:21


ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 583 kbps 603 kbps
Line Attenuation 54.5 db 42.0 db
Noise Margin 9.65 db 6.0 db

1196rachel

Sorry, I can't seem to make it much tidier than that!

kwikbreaks

You've posted the most important bits.

With 54.5dB attenuation you should be syncing a lot faster than you are. That suggests that your internal wiring is poor. In fact your sync is so poor I'm tempted to think you may even have something that isn't filtered - do you have - Sky Box, monitored burglar alarm, fax machine, plug in bell, or anything else that connects to your line that isn't filtered.

Is your router on an extension? If so is it a plug in one?
Have a read - http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

1196rachel

I live on an unadopted road and the phoneline cable comes from a telegraph pole across the road and is tacked onto the outside of my house. The master socket is just inside the front door and last year was checked by BT Openreach after I lost broadband altogether after a kitchen refit.
The router is on the master socket but the line has always been tempremental. BT Openreach told me it was fine - so much so they wanted to charge me a fortune for coming out.
I haven't got anything like you mentioned attached to the socket - only a cordless phone with answerphone and another related handset.

Would I be any better off if I got BT to fit me a 2nd line? Assuming I could cancel the first.

1196rachel

I bought an iplate from BT as I was told would alleviate any problems with internal wiring but my broadband doesn't work at all with it.
Any suggestions?