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Thread: Problems with Bulldog

  1. #1
    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
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    Problems with Bulldog

    Well, after a long wait and a lot of hassle, Bulldog have finally upgraded me from 1MB to 8MB. It's taken so long mainly due to the exchange not being upgraded till recently, but also due to a fault which occured last Thursday and was only fixed yesterday by BT engineers. Anyway, after lots of calls and lots of moaning (from me to Bulldog and BT) I'm back up.

    However, after this massive wait and major inconvenience of having no internet since last Thursday, I found out I have been upgraded to the glorious speeds of 1.3MB.

    At this point I was like:

    I'm using a Netgear DG834 Router (not the best, I know, but I can't afford to upgrade it yet) and I've looked at Netgear's site but they say nothing about the maximum speeds you can use this with. So I'm wondering why my service is so slow.

    I'm 1.4km away from the exchane where I live, but samknows.com says "According to BT Wholesale, your line should be able to support a 5.5Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max.". I presume my router doesn't support ADSL Max? It doesn't surprise me at all that Bulldog failed to mention this when I signed up for 8MB even though I told them I had a DG834.

    However, they did send me a free USB modem, which I will resort to using if I have to. It's a Speedtouch 330. Sadly, it plugs into the USB so one computer will have to be on for all the others to be able to use the net over the network!

    Is this the only way around this? Can my DG834 be upgraded (I think it has the latest firmware already, so probably a no) to run at 8MB? Or should I contact Bulldog to see if there's anything wrong with the line?

  2. #2
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    I moved from Bulldog to F2S some time ago and have never looked back. Bulldog ADSL was poor and unstable, and the service & support worse than bad. F2S have had a poor reputation for service and support following their takover by Pipex (they were excellent before that), but I understand they are now making real efforts to fix than. As my ADSL with them has always beed good and reliable, poor technical support has not been an issue as I have not needed any support. My connection with F2S was 512, and then I re-graded to 2Meg with no problems, and then I re-grated again to MAX. I am a fair way from the exchange, in rural Cambridgeshie, and I have now settled down to 4 and a bit Meg, and it is pretty stable.

    The first thing you have to remember with MAX is If you go with MAX then you must be prepared to expect 2 or 3 weeks of unstable and unreliable connections and lots of annoying drop-outs. Mine with F2S initally stabalised nicely - but it was rarely up for longer than a few days solid. My previous 2 Meg link with F2S would stay up for hundreds of hours. - I just checked and it has been up for over 500 houes now - 3 weeks - and that coinsides with a power-cut we had during a storm, so I feel it is now stable and reliable.

    One friend who regraded to Max with F2S never got a stable connection again, and his broadband became unusable for about 2 months; he tried replacing microfilters and even bought a new ADSL modem/router, but it remained just as poor. He has now cancelled and is going with BT - as they will provide both line and be ISP so he hopes the 'finger-pointing' will stop and he will get a stable service...... He has now moved to BT - and is still unstable....

    On the Router front I don't think the 'old' DG834 will support MAX (it didn't exist when the kit was desighned) or 'standard' ADSL faster than 2 Meg (could be wrong....) but I can thoroughly recommend the NetGear DG834PN, I have one and it is rock solid, I got one for my brother-in-law and he is very happy with it, and now four other people have got them based on my recommendation and all are very pleased. I have been running the DG835PN for about 8 months now. Everyone I know who has one seems to be very pleased with it.

    My DG835PN replaced a 2 1/2 year old DG834G - which is still alive and well and running another friend's home network with a 2Meg link.
    Last edited by EtheAv8r; 23-08-2006 at 01:30 PM.
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  3. #3
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    Post

    Quote Originally Posted by EtheAv8r
    On the Router front I don't think the 'old' DG834 will support MAX (it didn't exist when the kit was desighned) or 'standard' ADSL faster than 2 Meg (could be wrong....)

    My DG835PN replaced a 2 1/2 year old DG834G - which is still alive and well and running another friend's home network with a 2Meg link.
    Well the DG834 does support 8Mbps ADSL Max (depending on firmware) as I am currently connected to my exchange at 8Mbps though speed is normally between 2Mbps and 6Mbps typically depending on day/time. I would recommend you visit the Netgear website to download the latest firmware (V3.01.25) which supports ADSL2+.

    Hope this helps!
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    Quote Originally Posted by geezerone
    Well the DG834 does support 8Mbps ADSL Max (depending on firmware) as I am currently connected to my exchange at 8Mbps though speed is normally between 2Mbps and 6Mbps typically depending on day/time. I would recommend you visit the Netgear website to download the latest firmware (V3.01.25) which supports ADSL2+.

    Hope this helps!
    I second this have a dg834 with the latest firmware running great on MAX....u need that firmware update!

  5. #5
    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
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    Cheers guys, that's good news about the router. I did have a look at Netgear's site but couldn't find anything about ADSL Max with regards to this router.

    I already have the latest firmware (3.01.25) so it may be something else, maybe a bad line or the service isn't right. I'll give it a week and see what happens.

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    Perhaps you could post your noise/attenuation statistics here from the router stats page?
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  7. #7
    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
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    Code:
    ADSL Link 		Downstream 	Upstream
    Connection Speed 	1120 kbps 	416 kbps
    Line Attenuation 	48 db 		15.5 db
    Noise Margin 		5 db 		5 db
    Dunno what it all means though...

  8. #8
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    Well I can see that your downstream attenuation is high - hence the low connection speed. It isn't guaranteed that you will get 5.5Mbps as I understand there is a clause that it depends on final testing to be honest!

    Contact your ISP and speak to the technical team quoting the high downstream attenuation (resistance) figure. Take a quick look at your BT socket and try a different microfilter so as to eliminate these (the latter will no doubt be asked by the 'techies' at your ISP).

    Good luck!
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  9. #9
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    whether you go with option4 'adslmax' or option2 'llu', your line will always be limited by the quality of the copper pair, interconnects, interference and filter quality (not to mention router performance..) . You realise why they started so small with 512 mbit - because it would guarantee that people would at least get what they bought in the greatest number of cases.

    Why BT called their linespeed-adsl 'adslmax' ? to avoid the confusion of calling it 8meg when folks get 5-6 megs at best (the mistake made by llu operators like easynet(ukonline), bulldog etc)

    to my knowledge nobody on BE/orange/wanado has actually achieved adsl2 speeds either - 24meg is hard enough to get if you have 10 cm of shielded high-quality copper between an adsl router and a dslam. this is why the 24meg adverts disappeared. yes the spec says.. no the reality is....


    as geezer1 says- ask for a line quality test to be done and their advice on the results.
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    adslmax = adsl1 spec uncapped (no bandwith limitation enforced artificialy - the line is trained as high as possible (for speed) but kept within limits to avoid an unsavoury S:N Ratios)

    your normal adsl router if it follows adsl1 spec should handle adslmax fine.



    BT do not do residential adsl2 yet and for that you would need a new router.
    SmoothNuts!~yaman_an@*.dsl.pipex.com > change my rating to exceptional tbh

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