DLM after £7.50 deal

[fig]

I only just signed up with Sky about 2 months ago. I have a 2 meg line and the initial 10 day configuration set the line at exactly 2048Kbps. I was well happy with the stability and speed. It seemed slightly quicker than AOL, who was my ISP for at least 2 years prior, even though it was the same speed and roughly the same ping times etc.

A couple of weeks ago I received an offer to renew the contract for 12 months reducing the price from £10 to £7.50. It worked out that I was only really adding a month or 2 to the original contract length, so how could I resist? I wish I had...

Since the DLM started this time, my connection dropped to 1534 and now 1024. The upstream hasn't changed.

What I don't get is why the DLM this time is so different from the what happened 2 months ago. It started of at 2698 and worked downwards to settle at 2048. This time it started at 2048 and sunk to 1024. I emailed Sky about it and they manually sent another copy of the automated order confirmation email. I guess that was some kind of hint that I should know all about DLM and exactly how it all worked.

Apart from rebooting the router a few times, I've no idea why it would half the connection speed.

Here's some stats..

Uptime: 0 days, 1:11:55
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 608 / 1.024
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12,0 / 15,0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31,5 / 63,5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 9,0 / 13,5

Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 3 / 18
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0

I know the attenuation is high, but I've had a pretty stable 2 meg connection for over 2 years.

Will I get the 2048Kbps back any time soon?

[PaulSky]

Put the sky router back on and get new stats. Your noise margin isn't exactly brilliant for some reason so also post explaining the physical setup on your line (what is connected to it, where they connect and are they on filters).
Rebooting the router too often may have caused the system to see an instability but without a new set of stats we won't know.

[fig]

I realised that it's actually been 20 days since I signed up for the new contract. So I emailed, explaining everything again. By the time I woke up, a guy called David had manually tweaked my connection.

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 416 / 2.048
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12,0 / 17,0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31,5 / 63,5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 16,0 / 4,0

The upstream has been reduced, but that's not a problem for me. The noise margin is a little lower than it usually is (5.5-6.0).

I'll keep an eye on the FEC errors to make sure there isn't too many, but there's definitely more than usual. FEC errors aren't really important though eh? Right now I'm seeing 1 every 2-3 seconds down and 1 every 30 seconds up.

@PaulSky
The router is connected to the master socket using a filter. I'm about 3.7Km road miles from the exchange though.

When my connection dropped to 1534, my first instinct was that there was something wrong at my end. So I checked all the cables, filter, made sure there was no interference from my cordless phone etc. I was constantly checking to see if each thing that I was doing made any difference by resyncing the router. The next day, I was reduced to 1024.

[User05]

I have no idea as to why 'David' capped the upstream to 416kbps. FECs shouldn't cause any issues whatsoever, but keep your eye on header, and more importantly, CRCs.

[mossmanfly]

Ive had the same thing, I didnt know that DLM was taking place so rebooted my router now I seem to be stuck at 3071kbps and max up so far is 614kbps where before I had 768kbps all the time no matter what, even though the info on my Sky account says i have been set at 4096 and 800.

I did call up and the lady said DLM was being run again probably as the 1st time I was rebooting it for a few days as I was not getting my normal speeds, was over today 27th July, but still the same.

Whats the email to ask them to manually set it again? As im going on all the Sky customer site and its a mine field and I havent managed to find a signal email.

Cheers

[fig]

My connection's been fine today. 1 or 2 downstream CRC/HEC errors, less than 1 an hour anyway. The stats are identical to my last post after resyncing twice to test. My ping is very poor though, around 100ms when it's usually about 40-50ms max when my connection is idle. Should I get in touch about that and my upstream cap?

@mossmanfly
An the very top right of the account/my sky page, go to help centre, then broadband, then "need to contact us?", enter "broadband" as the query, select the topic "sky broadband connection issue", then finally select email on the right.

Quite a journey.

[mossmanfly]

Cheers Fig, will email them in a few days. Im off on Holiday in 10 days anyway so plan to turn the router off anyway, so might email them when I get back.

[User05]

My connection's been fine today. 1 or 2 downstream CRC/HEC errors, less than 1 an hour anyway. The stats are identical to my last post after resyncing twice to test. My ping is very poor though, around 100ms when it's usually about 40-50ms max when my connection is idle. Should I get in touch about that and my upstream cap?

They can reduce the max delays to 8ms in order to improve ping, but your downstream will probably have to be capped a little for stability, especially if the SNR is dropping to 4db. The upstream can be uncapped whilst they're at it - around 768kbps should be about right. Oh, and if you do call up, make sure they keep you on g.dmt.

[Angel_Rex]

i have the netgear 934gt - how can i check the CRC errors on that?