Couple of questions on long distance broadband

agrinnall

I live approximately 9.5 km from my exchange, which is non-LLU. My ISP options are limited and I have BT broadband. The cable is rumoured to be aluminium in parts of the route. The router stats are shown below, BT speedtester shows IP profile of 500 Kbps and my download speed is usually around 450 Kbps, which I think is unlikely to be improved without significant infrastructure improvement.

ADSL



Type Interleave Path


Status SHOWTIME


Downstream Upstream


Data rate(Kbps) 736Kb 448Kb


Noise Margin 8 8


Output power(dBm) 123 154


Attenuation(dB) 75 31

I have two questions for the broadband experts, the first for me and the second for my neighbour.

1) I often find that my speed drops to zero or an unusable level (usually at least once a week, often more). If I restart my router I get a new IP adress and and my speed goes back to it's normal level. Does anyone know why this happens and if there is a way of either preventing it or getting the speed back without restarting?

2) My neighbours (also with BT) have had much lower speed than me for the last 2 months, usually around 135 Kbps. It's now being handled by the BT Chief Exec's office, who have suggested that their line is changed to a fixed rate of 500 Kbps (this is how they explained it to me, they are non-technical so it may not be what they were actually told). Does anyone know what this means, and what the drawbacks might be?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

macman

Your ISP options are not limited-you have a choice of dozens. All you do not have are any LLU options.
However since changing ISP's will not improve your line speed, and since BT seems to have offered to try and do something about it, I'd stick with them for now.

iniltous

I think if they offered your neighbour a fixed rate service then the dynamic line managment (DLM) of ADSL Max (rate adaptive) is probably disabled so speed shouldnt worsen but then again it will never get any better, having said that at 9Km's or more from the exchange, you are doing well just getting a sync....if your neighbours service is worse that yours its possible that they may have faulty kit, and if they havent already they probably want to eliminate that as the cause of the difference between them and you, plenty of on line help...search for improving adsl speed

Anthonis

Personally I don't know how you are connected and what device you use. 9km is hell lot. Basically to get best results you have to :
1. Ensure that connection contacts are clean and that wires are plain and totally healthy.
2. Router must be connected at first connection box, not in 2nd, 3rd... You have to reduce cable length as much as possible.
3. Use router with high signal chipset. Routers like old netgear can be reflashed to modified firmware and you can try to control signal strength.

agrinnall

Thanks to the three of you who took the time to reply. So nobody knows the answer to question 1?

Iniltous - Thanks for the info about DLM and ADSL Max, I think you're probably right about what they are planning to do, and it should give them a better service, we have very little chance of anything faster than what we've got now without significant investment, if that miracle ever happens I guess they'll need to have DLM enabled again. Openreach have finally replaced the neighbour's router (with a Home Hub 3) after replacing all the infrastructure between the pole and the master socket but none of that has fixed the problem.

Mark_In_Hampshire

Question 1 is more detailed and could be answered by examining the log files from your router from the times of the connection drops, to see what diagnostics can be gathered. The ISP could help with this. In some instances, solving this issue can actually improve speeds. That said, at your distance from the exchange it's remarkable it works at all;

Question 2 is plain daft since if the line cannot manage more than 135kbps then it can't manage a fixed service nearly four times faster. However it may be that their line is unstable and the fixed rate plan has been hatched to try and keep the line at a given speed so the line management doesn't drop it all the time in response to the poor line. This might work, however if the line is poor it will simply make the connection unusable. In such a case, it isn't impossible for the ISP to declare the line as being unable to support ADSL and the service is then withdrawn.

It's perfectly possible for you and a neighbour to have different line speeds, potentially more so as the lines are longer. Basically both are near the edge of service capability, possibly, your neighbours nearer to that edge so the service is even more marginal.

agrinnall

Thanks Mark, I had the same view about switching to fixed service, it's not going to happen until next week so we will have to see what actually happens when they do it.

They used to get a download speed of around 350 Kbps, not as good as me but better than they get now, for some reason the speed dropped about 3 months ago and nothing Openreach have done has got it back. Of the 4 properties within a 30 metre radius 3 get similar speed, it's only this 1 property that has a significantly lower speed. Other properties a little further away from the exchange (maybe 100 metres) also get the same sort of speed that we do.