Extremely slow broadband and at the end of my tether with Sky.

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

well, they all say i can only get 2.5Mbps but here i am sat at 5.5Mbps, sometimes hitting 6Mbps!!!

[gwiddecombe]

Originally Posted by IAmNotTheEnemy

well, they all say i can only get 2.5Mbps but here i am sat at 5.5Mbps, sometimes hitting 6Mbps!!!

Thats a very nice surprise to be getting that! There must be quite a margin of error in these speed checkers. I was also reading the following on attenuation:

0-42 dB - 2Mbps (strictly adhered to wef Aug 2005)
43-60 dB - 1Mbps
> 60 dB - 512kbps

With 73.5 db downstream and 46.4 db upstream that looks very bad. Is there any way line attenuation can be improved?

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

move closer to your exchange...

attenuation is a measure of length - igher the attenuation, the longer the line...

on gdmt, the most you'll see attenuation is 63.5...on adsl2+ you tend to (now) see the true attenuation figure...

[gwiddecombe]

Hi, everyone
Sky have just emailed me, it looks like they are beginning to suspect a wiring issue at the property. The have made some changes to the configuration of the line as there were quite a few errors before and they believe the connection is much more stable. Strange thing is during the day even though my line is capped at 1mb at the moment I will get a full 1mb connection. However when it gets to evening this drops off to 160kbps - the black modem wont even connect. Is it just that Sky don't have sufficient capacity on their network for busy periods? I have replied requesting they put me back to the ADSL 1 format as well. Fingers crossed. Thanks.

[Isitme]

Is it just that Sky don't have sufficient capacity on their network for busy periods?

No, all phone lines get noisier at night, this causes the noise margin to fall and subsequently the speed. Your line being on the borderline as it is, suffers more than most.

[gwiddecombe]

Hi, after numerous emails to Sky I was forwarded to tier 3 on saturday. Also even after emailing Sky asking to be put back to A.DMT on the last few occasions, nobody actually confirmed I had been put back to it. However after emailing them yesterday stating I require confirmation that this had been done I have got confirmation and my speeds have magically improved!! I had 1024mbps connection speed for the whole of yesterday evening and still getting that speed today (they have capped my line at 1mbps). So far so good, but continuing to monitor!! Why they couldnt have just done this in the first place is beyond me though as its put me through a lot of needless calls and eaten up considerable amount of my time. Thanks again for the a.dmt suggestion. So far, so good!

[Isitme]

The term is actually G.DMT

What do your stats show now? There is a good chance you can have the cap lifted a bit to give you slightly more speed.

[gwiddecombe]

Hi, after 2 months of poor service to say the least my broadband issues still havent been resolved (sky have confirmed I am on G.DMT). I dont understand what has gone wrong as my connection used to be near perfect, connecting at around 1.5mbps previously. However now the connection speed drops considerably after about 6pm, often to speeds as low as 212kbps and often failing to connect at all. Sky must have altered something otherwise my connection wouldnt have been fine beforehand. What infuriates me the most is that every time I email a response to Sky they ask me the same questions such as "ensuring the router is plugged directly into phoneline without extensions", which I have replied a million times that I have already tried this. They also mentioned sending an engineer out to check out my phone line, however this has never materialised and Sky seem reluctant to do this.

Current Stats Pasted below

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 2509 3397 0 469 2367 00:19:55
LAN 10M/100M 3234 2789 0 1917 425 00:25:44
WLAN 11M/54M 144 0 0 20 0 00:25:36

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 320 kbps 160 kbps
Line Attenuation 63.5 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 8.1 db 6.0 db

Edit: Just to make people aware that during the day (when I'm at work) the connection will always connect at the capped speed of 1024 kbps

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

Sky won't 'do' something to the line - it's the line itself falling over and giving you problems...

best bet might be to get BT to do the line work for you - bypass Sky - and just pay for it...investment for the future...

[krysis]

Well if you live 7km from the exchange i'm guessing you have maxed out the line getting speeds like that with over 60 attenuation. It's the line it has just packed it in i think.