Speed problems

[Scubbie]

Hi Scubbie, my house is in a row of terraced houses and therefore right next door, just feet away from my neighbour so I am in no doubt we are connected to the same cab.

The sagemcom modem is plugged directly into the test socket as described using the leads supplied in the kit, I've tried so far 3 different filters although they were all provided by sky, no extension leads whatsoever.

I will have to purchase a corded telephone in order to try for noise but I will see if I can blag one from a family member just to test for noise.

Thanks for the reply, again very much appreciated

No problem with the terraced housing situation, without actually seeing you home it is something that needed to be clarified, just in case.

Could you borrow a microfilter from your neighbour? Often in the past it has been a whole batch of Sky microfilters which have been faulty. This would give you an opportunity to rule them out.

As for the telephone, it is recommended for everyone to have a corded telephone anyway. Wireless telephone won't work in the event of a power-cut to your home.

Why do the test with a corded phone though? Simply because you can pick up interference with a wireless phone & some suppress mild hiss.

Im getting really slow speeds in my area (about 4 mbs down and 750kbs up) been with sky BB for over a year now and im thinking of joining virgin because the service is not as good as it should be.

If you have a problem, start a new thread and ask for some help or advice. If you want to join Virgin: Bye!

[Pabscars]

Im getting really slow speeds in my area (about 4 mbs down and 750kbs up) been with sky BB for over a year now and im thinking of joining virgin because the service is not as good as it should be.

Word to the wise

I've just moved from virgin to Sky, the only reason being the speed was ok but the quality was dire.

If your a gamer like me, latency and more importantly jitter are more influential than raw speed, dont be duped into thinking speed means a faster and therefore better connection because it doesn't work that way.

Despite my speed issues at the moment, my gaming has improved no end because it uses very little bandwidth, so all I would say is do your homework and find out if your in an area close to studentville, as you stand a fair chance of the VM service being pant's because fast cheap broadband, the type virgin supply goes down great with the bandwidth hungry student's, busy downloading or should I say torrenting the entire internet.

[Pabscars]

No problem with the terraced housing situation, without actually seeing you home it is something that needed to be clarified, just in case.

Could you borrow a microfilter from your neighbour? Often in the past it has been a whole batch of Sky microfilters which have been faulty. This would give you an opportunity to rule them out.

As for the telephone, it is recommended for everyone to have a corded telephone anyway. Wireless telephone won't work in the event of a power-cut to your home.

Why do the test with a corded phone though? Simply because you can pick up interference with a wireless phone & some suppress mild hiss.

I will have to stick my hand in my pocket and buy a BT filter from somewhere, Sky are supposed to be sending me another new one but given what you have said they cant be trusted.

Yep I figured a wireless phone could'nt be trusted to do a line test, again if needs be I will have to purchase one, which in the event of a power cut may prove useful.

Cheers again for the help, and I'll keep you posted on any progress

[Scubbie]

The reason why I was suggesting for you to borrow a microfilter from a friend is purely to use a known good working microfilter.

In the long term most people on this forum would recommend a Filtered faceplate as these are often much more reliable.

[Isitme]

One thing you could try, if you are friendly with your neighbour, is to take your router into his house and plug it in to his connection. If it gets much the same speed as his own router that would rule out the router as being the problem and point to your wiring. If the speed drops, then it is the router that is the problem.

[Pabscars]

The reason why I was suggesting for you to borrow a microfilter from a friend is purely to use a known good working microfilter.

In the long term most people on this forum would recommend a Filtered faceplate as these are often much more reliable.

Thanks for the linky, I will have a look at those.

Well given the wife and I were doing a car boot today, I took advantage and got hold of a corded phone and another filter. Ive not had chance to test anything yet as weve just got back home but I will endeavour to give it a bash this evening.

Cheers

[Pabscars]

One thing you could try, if you are friendly with your neighbour, is to take your router into his house and plug it in to his connection. If it gets much the same speed as his own router that would rule out the router as being the problem and point to your wiring. If the speed drops, then it is the router that is the problem.

Although I get on ok with my neighbour, I'm not sure he would be happy with me doing that, it might just be pushing the boundaries a bit, if you know what I mean.

I dont think it would make much odds anyway, I'm pretty sure my line has been manually set now, because the last tech support person I spoke to said they had adjusted it to give me maximum stability. How true this is I'm unsure, but my speed never changes now whenever I reboot or when it reboots on it's own.

Thanks for all the input though,

[Pabscars]

I also wanted to mention, I've changed the PSU and since then I don't think it has rebooted, and at the moment has been up for 20 hours or so.

Ive also swapped the grey cable that goes from the filter to the modem with one I found that had ferrite magnet's on, which I presume is OK ?

[Scubbie]

Good luck with the testing.

Ive also swapped the grey cable that goes from the filter to the modem with one I found that had ferrite magnet's on, which I presume is OK ?

A Ferrite ring is useful to suppress REIN and is often used with Video & Speaker cables to reduce any interference picked on them so that you can enjoy the result.

REIN can be a problem with some people with ADSL, but your symptoms don't support this in your case.

There is no harm in using it, so long as the cable is made from good material and isn't too long.

[Pabscars]

Good luck with the testing.



A Ferrite ring is useful to suppress REIN and is often used with Video & Speaker cables to reduce any interference picked on them so that you can enjoy the result.

REIN can be a problem with some people with ADSL, but your symptoms don't support this in your case.

There is no harm in using it, so long as the cable is made from good material and isn't too long.

Hello again, right I've been having a play this evening and have tried plugging a corded phone directly into the test socket with no filter in place, then dialled 1 and listened for noise.

I didn't hear any crackling at all just a very very mild hiss, which I'm presuming is normal but I don't have any basis to draw from.

Next I fitted the newly acquired filter and have noticed the downstream noise margin has dropped considerably, please see below.

ROUTER STATISTICS

System Up Time: 0:06:45
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 102 91 0 9163 19095 0:05:42
LAN Down 0 0 0 0 0 0:06:45
WLAN Up 7192 6253 0 3592374 584632 0:06:26
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3488 kbps 800 kbps
Line Attenuation 55.5 dB 31.5 dB
Noise Margin 8.8 dB 11.0 dB

Any advice welcome as I dont know if the drop in noise margin is a good thing or not.

Finally since the PSU swap, I've had zero reboots, were getting there