Getting CST to un-cap speed?

[ShortySco]

Hi all!

Been lurking for a while and thought now was a good time to ask for your good advice

History.

I got sky broadband ~9 months ago and had a perfect 13meg connection for around 6 weeks. Then i begun to get a problem that if i disconnect the internet i just get a flashing orange light when i try to reconnect.

Sky dropped the line speed several times over the months to attempt to resolve, no joy.

This week they have replaced my router (black, no aerial) with a new Netgear V1 (White, aerial, DG834GT) and it works again.

However i'm still limited to 8meg, and upon calling Sky, i'm told there is nothing they can do as it works now, and they also say the line can't handle more than 8meg (Not what they have told me on numerous occasions before) anyway.

I guess it's possible that what they say is correct, but my gut tells me not.

Does anyone have any simlar experience/advice, or should i just be happy with what they give me.

Thanks for your time,

Shorty

P.S - A tier two guy told me last week i could call and have my speed re-instated.

[Smithy99]

We really need your router stats to help.

Both from where it is connected now and the test socket behimd the master socket if you have one would be ideal.

[ShortySco]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Sorry, i should have known better, here are my stats.
While connected at extension.

(Down/Up)
Connection Speed - 7776/768
Line Attenuation - 32.0db/21.5db
Noise Margin - 11.4db/14.0db

While in the test socket...

(Down/UP)
Connection Speed - 7773/746
Line Attenuation - 35.0db/20.8db
Noise Margin - 7.3db/10.5db

Plugging it back into the extension i got (Thought this may be relevant as it's changed)...

Connection Speed - 7776/746
Line Attenuation - 35.5db/21.0db
Noise Margin - 7.3db/10.5db

I note also that it says "collisions - 0", don't know if this is relevant, but sounds important, can i give any other useful info?

Thanks again.

Shorty

P.S - I am ~2km from exchange (worked out as 2.3km line length, by dividing my downstream attemuation by 13.8, a formula i found here in the forum) and ran pipex at a solid 8meg for several years prior to sky (and ran at a solid 13meg to start with on sky)

[Brian69]

Hi Shorty.
Based on the stats you have provided, Sky are right. Your SNRM is not high enough to support higher speeds. The question is why.
The tests from the test socket and the extension are broadly the same ( I'll ignore the change in attenuation, routers oftern display bogus readings for this, and if it had increased by 3dB then your sync speed would have dropped more).
To start with, are all your extension sockets dead when you are using the test socket? If they are is there any noise on the phone line?

[Isitme]

Also are you definitely using the Test socket? It is the one revealed when you unscrew the 2 screws and remove the Master socket faceplate. It seems strange that your stats should be almost identical, even worse, from the Test and an extension socket.

[krysis]

Originally Posted by Isitme

Also are you definitely using the Test socket? It is the one revealed when you unscrew the 2 screws and remove the Master socket faceplate. It seems strange that your stats should be almost identical, even worse, from the Test and an extension socket.

I've seen it before. It is very strange my be a faulty socket or wiring issue to the home. But it is odd to see an even worse connecton in the test than an extension.

Your line won't hold much more than what it's sitting on. Well I could maybe hold another half a meg maybe but CST won't do it becaus your SNR will get worse.

Even if you ran at a solid 13 meg with sky, it was probably the max the line could hold. Anyway the line quality does deteriorate and quite quickly if you are stressing the line out with Max speeds.

[Brian69]

Originally Posted by krysis

I've seen it before. It is very strange my be a faulty socket or wiring issue to the home. But it is odd to see an even worse connecton in the test than an extension.

Your line won't hold much more than what it's sitting on. Well I could maybe hold another half a meg maybe but CST won't do it becaus your SNR will get worse.

Even if you ran at a solid 13 meg with sky, it was probably the max the line could hold. Anyway the line quality does deteriorate and quite quickly if you are stressing the line out with Max speeds.

It's a pity, but speed problems at the test socket are not that uncommon. They are often caused by a NTE-5 master just fitted as a replacement on to star wired phone circuits, or extensions incorrectly wired to the network terminals.

[mossywell]

Welcome, ShortySco! Moved to Router Stats to get some detailed stats on this one.

Saturday, any thoughts on this? FWIW, this is my take...


Putting aside SNRs, Attenutations and so on, I think it's safe to say that if the line worked at 13Mbps flawlessless for 6 weeks, then it's capable of supporting 13Mbps!

So, the pertinent question is why has the attenuation changed from 32 to 35.5? (It's as if your house has moved 250m further from your exchange!) At 32, 13 Mbps sounds reasonable. At 35.5, 11 would be a good figure. (Either way, it's more than the 8 that Sky say is your maximum!) So, have you seen any BT engineers poking around outside recently? Also, the SNR seems to be fluctuating a lot. If it is 7 when the speed is 8 Mbps, then your line will start to generate errors as the speed increases, so no point in nagging Sky quite yet. So, another question is what's up with the SNR? I think we need to see some detailed stats, so take a look at the stickies at the top of this forum and post some detailed stats.