BB Speed advice... very old house/cabling..

[Gr44]

Hello guys....

I have a question I'm hoping I can get some advice on. Basically we've had broadband for good 5+ years now with BT. I'm happy with their service and it's been getting faster over time ( started at 512K - now we're running at 2mb )

Although they have been offering a good service, it used to just be me who would use the internet on a regular basis, now in our household we run a business and 2 complete ebay addicts along with myself who wants to play games and the such. Sharing a 2megabit connection is starting to take it's toll.... we also currently pay BT £18 a month for it and we are out of contract ( have been for years! )

I've looked on the BT website, they say our postcode can get 6.5meg and our phone number can get 2meg. Upon phoning them they say the max we can get is 2MB.
I know we're very near the exchange but I don't know how near ( anyone have a way to find out?! ). I've phoned up BE as they're raved about on here... they said I can get upto 18meg!

BE refuse to offer any sort of promise on the connection speed... I don't want to move service and pay more for would could end up being the same ( or less ) of a service. BT say they can't provide more than 2MB.

I have a feeling might be right, as our house is ~100 years old, has over-head lines and aging copper. Short of ( god-forbid ) gettin a fiber line put in by Virgin I don't see how I can improve on the 2meg connection I'm currently getting. Is there anyway I can confirm what ( if any ) speed increase BE would give me... or anyway I can some how improve the copper running between our house and the exchange?

Forgive me if the latter is a stupid question... but I don't know much about telephony and such! A couple of years back our line was so bad the guy went into the pylon and changed our circuit to another one and that improved things so I'm guessing there ( might ) be scope to get something similar done again?

Thanks in advance!

Sean

[killie99]

go to www.samknows.com and use the availability checker. Will tell you how far you are from the exchange (a bit crude as it's straight line distance) and the estimated speed (click on the BT ADSL link on the availability checker page)

[Gr44]

It says:

ADSL is available in your area
Your exchange is also enabled for ADSL Max services

According to BT Wholesale, your line should be able to support a 2Mbps or greater ADSL connection.

Standard ADSL RAG results:
You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
You can receive 512Kbps ADSL
You can receive 256Kbps ADSL

You are approximately 415 metres from the exchange (straight line distance).

However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.

So 2mbps or greater.... thats helpful! I'm guessing it says 2mbps because im currently running at 2mbps.

[Optical668]

Personnaly id stick with the 2mb, im on 8mb BT and i get just below 3mb and i live in the middle of like Bristol not far the exchange at all.

[killie99]

At 415m from the exchange I'd expect AT LEAST 6mb. (unless the loop goes off on some weird route before it gets to your house). I'm 2.5km from my exchange and I get 2.5Mb on max adsl
Can you have a look on your router and post your attenuation and SNR figures?

[Gr44]

Thanks for your help killie99, I'm at work at the moment but will check when I get home and post back ( ~5pm )

Like I said though... it's a very old house and uses over-head cabling so I think that might play a big part if it won't go any higher

BT SAY that I'm on their option 1 which should be 8mb though and it doesn't connect higher than 2.... I don't know if that is true or not though. They also said I'm paying £18 a month but I think I'm paying £25... need to check statements!

Will post back shortly!

[Gr44]

Right, back at home.

I was unable to find anything about Attenuation or SNR in my router though... it's a Linksys WAG300N I came across this though if it's off any use?

Status: Up
Downstream Rate: 2272 Kbps
Upstream Rate: 288 Kbps

Encapsulation: RFC 2364 PPPoA
Multiplexing: VC
Qos: UBR
Pcr Rate:
Scr Rate:
Autodetect: Enable
VPI: 0
VCI: 38
Enable: Yes
PVC Status: Up

No idea what any of it means though!

[Gr44]

Just updated the firmware to see if it had that information but nothing

[GAteKeeper]

Try the diagnostic logs section, they normally list the TX/Rx pwr and attenuation

[Gr44]

In the diagnostic section you can only ping IP addresses. I pinged google but no details on there about SNR or anything.

Logging was off... I turned it on but theres nothing coming up in the box yet.

[Wombatwilson]

do you mean a wrt300n?

[Gr44]

No it is a WAG300N....

Same as this one here:

http://www.dsl-warehouse.co.uk/product.asp?pr=wag300n

I've checked the logs again and it looks like it might have information more relavent now though - see copy and paste below.

Please also note, I tried connecting to the 'speed test' thing to see what that came back with ( 2000kbps ) so I wasn't connected via the normal BT servers during most/all of this time. Don't know if that makes any differance.

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:12 - ADSL G.992 started 
Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - 6mb OFDM 13.0 dBm | 9mb OFDM 13.0 dBm | 12mb OFDM 13.0 dBm | 18mb OFDM 13.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - 24mb OFDM 13.0 dBm | 36mb OFDM 13.0 dBm | 48mb OFDM 13.0 dBm | 54mb OFDM 13.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - 1L CCK 13.0 dBm | 2L CCK 13.0 dBm | 2S CCK 13.0 dBm | 5.5L CCK 13.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - 5.5S CCK 13.0 dBm | 11L CCK 13.0 dBm | 11S CCK 13.0 dBm | XR 13.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - HT20mcs 0 13.0 dBm | HT20mcs 1 13.0 dBm | HT20mcs 2 13.0 dBm | HT20mcs 3 13.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - HT20mcs 4 13.0 dBm | HT20mcs 5 13.0 dBm | HT20mcs 6 12.0 dBm | HT20mcs 7 6.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - HT40mcs 0 13.0 dBm | HT40mcs 1 13.0 dBm | HT40mcs 2 13.0 dBm | HT40mcs 3 13.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - HT40mcs 4 13.0 dBm | HT40mcs 5 13.0 dBm | HT40mcs 6 12.0 dBm | HT40mcs 7 6.0 dBm 

Sat, 2000-01-01 00:00:13 - Dup CCK 13.0 dBm | Dup OFDM 13.0 dBm | Ext CCK 16.0 dBm | Ext OFDM 16.0 dBm

Edit:

In my haste I forgot to thank everyone!

I'm grateful for all your inputs thus far and I look forward to ( hopefully ) getting a bigger pipe soon

[killie99]

I can't tell from that what is up/down and attenuation but if you are syncing at 2mb on standard DSL then you will almost certainly (but occasionally things don't work out like that!) get a much higher connection on the max service. Ask BT to regrade you to max and see what happens.

[Gr44]

According to BT I am on Option 2 which is 8MB download... I believe that is the max service?

I'll phone them up again tomorrow and confirm what is what. Is there a program or anything I can use to get attenuation details?

[Gr44]

Aha...!

After some googling and some installing of telnet on my vista I think I have the details you want!! please tell me this means _something_ to you guys?! : )

# adslctl info --stats
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime  Channel: FAST, Upstream rate = 288 Kbps, Downstream rate = 227
2 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode:                   G.DMT
Channel:                Fast
Trellis:                ON
Line Status:            No Defect
Training Status:        Showtime
                Down            Up
SNR (dB):       28.2            29.0
Attn(dB):       23.0            13.0
Pwr(dBm):       16.0            11.9
Max(Kbps):      10528           1196
Rate (Kbps):    2272            288
                        G.dmt framing
K:              72(0)           10
R:              0               0
S:              1               1
D:              1               1
                        ADSL2 framing
MSGc:           1               1
B:              72              10
M:              1               1
T:              1               1
R:              0               0
S:              1.0000          1.0000
L:              584             88
D:              1               1
                        Counters
SF:             524540          524538
SFErr:          4               0
RS:             0               0
RSCorr:         0               0
RSUnCorr:       0               0

HEC:            4               0
OCD:            0               0
LCD:            0               0
Total Cells:    47786343                0
Data Cells:     2128786         0
Drop Cells:     0
Bit Errors:     0               0

ES:             2               0
SES:            0               0
UAS:            10              0
Total time = 2 hours 23 min 57 sec
SF  = 524540
CRC = 4
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 2
Latest 1 day time = 2 hours 23 min 57 sec
SF  = 524540
CRC = 4
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 2
Latest 15 minutes time = 8 min 57 sec
SF  = 31582
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 0
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
SF  = 52930
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 0
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
SF  = 0
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 0
15 minutes interval [-30 min to -15 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF  = 52931
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 0
15 minutes interval [-45 min to -30 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF  = 52989
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 0
15 minutes interval [-60 min to -45 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF  = 52930
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES  = 0

[killie99]

both snr and attenuation figures are great, you should be able to get much more than a 2mb connection. I honestly think they have you on a fixed rate line. For reference, my attenuation is around 50dB, SNR 10dB (yours Att is 23 and SNR is 28dB which is a HUGE improvement on my stats and as I said, I get around 2.5Mb on max adsl). Read this page http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm to familiarise yorself with what these numbers mean.
Do you have a NTE5 socket in your house? If so take the front plate off and plug your modem into the test socket to find out how much the internal wiring in your house is degrading the signal but I honestly think the stats you are reporting should be getting you a much faster connection.