ADSL Jargon and Speeds

Hintza

Can someone please set me straight on this.

I have a new router which seems to be working wonders for my speed

Currently 8015 kbps (this will drop a bit in the evening) at router about 7200 at PC when I do a speed test

I download a movie via Newsleecher and the max speed I get is 850 KB/s this can get throttled back to either 600 or 400 at times.

We are about 2 miles from exchange an the engineer is impressed by my speed.

Can someone please break this down into plain English for me.

gonzo127

sorry if this isnt what you need but basically

the 8015kbps is the speed your router is sync'ing at, this however is rate adaptive in that depending on line length (the longer the line the lower the speed) any other line interferance or even normal network contention this can go up and down, hence the usual use of upto when companies advertise speed as this can and does change based on lots of different factors

however in real life you will never get quite that sync speed on a speed test due to overhead on the line etc so getting 90% of your sync speed on a speed test is reasonable and generally normal

the speed at which you down load is usually in a different measurement - this is where is gets confusing for most people as you have bits and bytes with the normal prefix of kilo or mega or giga and you get 8 bits per 1 byte so above you will be
syncing at 8015 kilobits per second
speed testing at 7200 kilobits per second
downloading at 850 kilobytes per second - which when you times that by 8 gives you 6800 kilobits per second, which isnt a bad speed at all considering your speed test resul

GunJack

gonzo's spot-on

in order to see if you are getting what you should be, post your full line stats, i.e. attenuatin in dB down/up, snrm down/up, ans sync speed down/up. Log into your router for this info

grimsalve

And Newsleacher is probably traffic shaped by your ISP

Hintza

DSP Firmware VersionA2pB025f.d22kDMT StatusNo Defect
Operational ModeADSL2+
Upstream1022
Downstream8191
SNR Margin(Upstream)9.9
SNR Margin(Downstream)6.7
Line Attenuation(Upstream) 17.8
Line Attenuation(Downstream)32.0

debitcardmayhem

Hintza wrote: »

DSP Firmware VersionA2pB025f.d22kDMT StatusNo Defect
Operational ModeADSL2+
Upstream1022
Downstream8191
SNR Margin(Upstream)9.9
SNR Margin(Downstream)6.7
Line Attenuation(Upstream) 17.8
Line Attenuation(Downstream)32.0

OK GunJack forgot to post have a look here http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/max_speed_calc.php and it will give you an approximation , since you're on ADLS2+ you should , may , possibly with a following wind etc etc, get 13Mbps

debitcardmayhem

OH btw who is your ISP and what package are you on up to 8Mbps or 20/24Mbps ?

ChiefGrasscutter

The OP must be on a 20/24 service
The max sync on 8Mb is 8128
The op is on 8191
Goodness knows why the sync is not higher at an attenuation of 32 though.......

LucianH

GunJack wrote: »

gonzo's spot-on

in order to see if you are getting what you should be, post your full line stats, i.e. attenuatin in dB down/up, snrm down/up, ans sync speed down/up. Log into your router for this info

GunJack - many thanks for this post. I did not realise that this information was available from the router. I too have been struggling with poor download performance and I've been trying to work out if it's the ADSL performance (I live in the sticks), my hardware or my ISP. I've looked at my stats but they don't mean much to me. These are they:

Downstream:
- Connection Speed = 5280 kbps
- Line Attenuation = 32 db
- Noise Margin = 8 db

Upstream
- Connection Speed = 832 kbps
- Line Attenuation = 9.5 db
- Noise Margin = 11 db

What does this tell me? I realise that this will be time of day dependent (these are the readings as of now) but do you consider that I should I be getting good download performance (and look at changing my ISP) or have I got a problem?

Also, how do I know if I'm working on ADSL2+ (whatever that is)?

GunJack

ChiefGrasscutter wrote: »

Goodness knows why the sync is not higher at an attenuation of 32 though.......

because, in all likelyhood, in both this and the OP's cases, the internal wiring/equipment setup isn't optimised for broadband

Some basics like no ring wire, router in master socket, etc. Lok here for advice on internal wiring:-

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

and

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php

GunJack

Lucian - on your line you should be syncing at 7.7 meg downstream, or 13.8 if on ADSL2+.

I suspect you're on an old ADSL 8 meg business type service, the 832K upstream is a bit of a giveaway on that.

In your router interface, somewhere around the connectionsdetails, look for Modulation type of ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ or a G.DMT 992.x , this will confirm your service type