Just got activated

[Lethal]

Hi

I just got activated today, and I realise Sky do a 10 day activation period but my line stats have changed significantly from when I was on O2.

Previously I had 38dB down attenuation and ~6 SNR, but on the sky router it says 35dB attenuation and 18 SNR.

Is this right?

[Scubbie]

Your telephone line will have been moved from O2's kit to Sky's kit at the telephone exchange. It is possible that they have used some better quality cable for your new connection, but this isn't always the case.

As for Line Attenuations, I have been noticing recently that the newest router from Sky appears to be reporting a lower Line Attenuation than previous Sky routers on the same line. This can be for a number of reasons, but it appears that the figures are slightly lower than normal.

As for the noise margin, each ISP has a different method that they adopt for configuring the lines. In Sky's case they are quite conservative and have adopted a default target for the Noise Margins to be around 7dB. Generally you won't see a 6dB Noise Margin on a Sky connection.

This results is a slightly slower connection than O2, but one that is normally quite stable. This isn't to say that you didn't have a stable line previously, but it does mean that a higher percentage of Sky customers will have a stable line.

[Lethal]

Thanks for your reply.

Will the SNR go down? It is currently synced at 4Mbps which I understand they do at the start.

[Scubbie]

The initial connection speed is always around 4096Mb/s d/l & 605Mb/s upload (unless your line cannot handle this speed).

Any adjustments will go up or down depending on the available noise margin.

If you have a noise margin of 18dB, then you should have room for an increase in you connection speed. I can't say much more because we need to see all the figures for both the upstream & downstream connection.

[timc]

The difference in attenuation is most likely because initially you'll be on ADSL rather than ADSL2+ - the latter increases the attenuation by 2-3dB.

[Lethal]

Hmm even so, it's a huge jump from the 6-8dB SNR we got with O2.

Full line stats:
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 4096 kbps 512 kbps
Line Attenuation 35.0 dB 22.0 dB
Noise Margin 18.3 dB 14.0 dB

[Scubbie]

Once the DLM process starts (it can take up to 3 or 4 days to kick in) you speed will increase and the noise margins will fall.

You are also on ADSL1 at the moment, so you Line Attenuation will increase a little as well.

[Isitme]

Hmm even so, it's a huge jump from the 6-8dB SNR we got with O2.

But what was your speed with O2? Much higher than the speed you have now, if your line was configured properly. I would say you will finish with a speed of 11-12Mb and a noise margin of 7db.