talktalk internet poor signal speed

teleaddict

Can I please pick your technical minds?
I have been with talktalk for over 5 years and until recently have always been pleased with the service.
At the beginning of December I took up an offer to get a you view box & renew my contract.
The you view box arrived along with a new wireless router (wifi-n) so I set it all up. Things were fine initially, now its complete pants. Download speeds are about 3mbs. My old wifi-g router was averaging 10+ MBS. All my portable devices state the internet connection is unstable and even the you view regularly buffers.

Can anybody offer any advice to get my speeds back up again?
If I buy another router would that help?

:mad:

A.Penny.Saved

Get the line stats from the router to check the quality of your connection. You need to login to your router to do that. That will show your connection speed, attenuation and signal to noise ratio.

kwikbreaks

Are you measuring the speeds wire or using WiFi? I'm guessing WiFi in which case using InSSIDer (or free as an Addroid app) to find the clearest channel and changing the router to use that may help.

It looks like Metageek are charging for the latest InSSIDer now so I've linked to a site that offers the old version - look out for any crapware that may accompany that download. I haven't used it personally.

Repositioning the router may too.

teleaddict

A.Penny.Saved, I've had a look at the router info.
It states ADSL line speed up-1017 down-4096, Line attenuation up-11.0 down-24.9, SN margin up11.3 down-22.3.
Can you plese explain what this means in everyday terminology? Thanks
(I've just checked with speedtest.net now & its showing ping 55ms d/l 3.43mbs & u/l 0.84mbs)

teleaddict

thanks for the link kwikbreaks, I'm running Linux so the downloads are no good. I've used wifi analyser to check the wifi signal and its well clear of any "conflicting" channels.

kwikbreaks

The slow speed is caused by the high downstream noise margin. Reboot your router and check the figures again straight after. Default target noise margin is 6dB and if it gets set higher by the line management routines it's because there has been some instability. If reboooting doesn't result in a higher sync and lower noise margin you may have to call TalkTalk support. Do you have any phone extension sockets? Plug in extensions?

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm is a writeup on how to optimise your internal phone wiring.

macman

A linespeed of 4MBps should be more than adequate to run iPlayer and other on-demand services.

teleaddict

Thanks for the responses folks. I checked my side of things without any joy. I ended up phoning talktalk & after the chap at the other end of the phone line "adjusted" my settings I'm back to having 13+ Mbps

penrhyn

Good to know, I would retake your router statistics and keep them for a benchmark in the event of future problems.

PS I would have thought with a 25db line you would be getting nearer 16Mbps.

kwikbreaks

It might be because it's WiFi. If the sync is that low then the Kitz socket advice needs reading and acting on otherwise, apart from the lower sync, there may be a repeat of the instability causing the very low speed.