ADSL newbie - attenuation, noise and speed help on Sky BB

[joelyuk]

Hello all,

I've just moved into a student house ready for Uni, and unfortunately come from a land of Virgin Media cable and 100mb broadband, sigh!

The landlord has Sky BB with a SR101 router. When I checked out the stats page for it, and conducted a speed test, I nearly died when I saw the line is currently syncd at 730kbps down and 415kbps up.

The exchange for us is literally over the road, I could walk to it in 60 seconds. And my understanding is that really should be giving a better speed! In fact, Sky, and most BB providers recommend that the line speed here would be 12-18mb, which its clearly nowhere near.

Anyway, I noticed that it looks like the previous occupants had BT Infinity, as there is a Openreach modem and BT Home Hub still sat next to the new Sky modem. I also noticed that there is a reasonably new BT Openreach faceplate with dual sockets (one above the other) as the master socket. There is nothing else plugged into this.

When I arrived, the landlord had set up the modem by plugging the modem in the filter, and the filter into the standard socket. This gave an attenuation of around 80db, noise margin of 8db approx.

I took the filter out, and plugged the modem straight into the mini socket on the faceplate. This seems to have changed the attenuation to 15db, and the noise margin to 16db also.

My question is - is this better, and will we ever see anything better than 730kbps (before I start jumping from the roof)?! Or do I need to somehow get the landlord to ring Sky to complain?

Stats from the modem are below (connected directly to the faceplate, which is where I've left it now)...

Broadband Link	Downstream	Upstream
Connection Speed	765 kbps	415 kbps
Line Attenuation	15.5 dB	9.9 dB
Noise Margin	16.3 dB	20.20 dB

Manufacturer	Sky
Model	SR101
Firmware Version	1.15j.2639.R
ADSL Firmware Version	A2pD035o.d24

Any information is helpful, as I say I come from the world of cable, so my ADSL knowledge s very poor. Thanks all!

[Scubbie]

First things first, I am going to assume that you are unfamiliar with ADSL setups in order to play it safe. Forgive me if you do know a little more that the basics.

It sounds like you have a filtered faceplate from your description. The Sky Hub SR101 should be plugged into the smaller socket at the top of the BT faceplate. I am guessing that it looks like this:



This picture also shows where you should plug in the router.

If it is like this, it may have the word 'Openreach' raised instead (as in next picture), then this is the best filtered faceplate that you can have at present. Once you have plugged in the router, if you can post the stats from this position it would be appreciated.




Also, the 2nd socket is intended for the telephone. This socket is filtered and will explain why you are getting such a poor connection speed.

If what you have isn't like these pictures, could you take a picture and post that please.

[joelyuk]

If it is like this, it may have the word 'Openreach' raised instead (as in next picture), then this is the best filtered faceplate that you can have at present. Once you have plugged in the router, if you can post the stats from this position it would be appreciated.

Hi Scubbie, thanks for the reply.

I do have one of those faceplates and had removed the inline filter and plugged the modem directly into the top socket.

This dropped the attenuation from around 80db to the 15db I posted previously, although noise margin jumped to 16db too. (the connection stats copied from the Sky pages are in my previous post, and this was from using the top faceplate direct socket, not the inline filter how the landlord had set it up.)

I guess my concern is just will I get a faster connection now my attenuation is around 15db and noise margin was 16db. I read up about DLM and profiles after posting last night, and I guess this is maybe what I need to happen now as I guess it's syncd at such a low speed after being incorrectly double filtered for so long (BB has been installed for several months before me, seems previous students just accepted it as they aren't computing students!). Of course in the world of cable, these changes are all instant and that's what was confusing me I think.

But still any info on whether those stats look right now to get more than 730kbps would be good!

Thanks again.

[Scubbie]

Dropping the Line Attentuation to 15dB is absolutely perfect.

Could you post the full stats with things set up this way please?

Once we can see this, we can take it further. You should NOT be using a filter in the telephone socket at the from of the Master Socket as the broadband signal should be getting to it.

[joelyuk]

Could you post the full stats with things set up this way please?

Here's the stats with the modem lead plugged straight into the faceplate:

Router Statistics
System Up Time: 08:00:45

Port	Status	TxPkts	RxPkts	Collision Pkts	Tx b/s	Rx b/s	Up Time
WAN	MER	105378	119368	0	36714	1412906	07:44:46
LAN	Down	0	0	0	0	0	00:00:00
WLAN	Up	240584	191475	0	853461	49141	08:00:19

Broadband Link	Downstream	Upstream
Connection Speed	765 kbps	415 kbps
Line Attenuation	15.5 dB	9.9 dB
Noise Margin	16.3 dB	20.20 dB

[mattan]

It could be that the inline microfilter was faulty, resulting in the 80db attenuation. Now this has been removed, the attenuation has dropped significantly. Sky's DLM should kick in within a few more days and you should start to see the router re-syncing overnight and pushing up the connection speed. If it doesn't, then you'll need to get the landlord to call Sky and ask them to restart it.

With those stats you should end up with over 20Mbps.

[Scubbie]

Those stats look a lot better now.

What I am going to suggest now is for you to check through things first. Once these are all completed your landlord, who I assume is the account holder, will need to contact Sky. There are checks in place to ensure that it is the account holder calling, so it will have to be him/her.

Using a corded telephone, could you plug it into the telephone socket on that master socket and dial '1'. Listening carefully the line should be pretty quite as it is quite short. There may be a little high-pitched noise like a fax machine, but this should be minimal. There may also be a little 'static' his in the background too.

What you are listening for is lots of noise or any crackling.

If there is any noise of this type then you have a faulty telephone line.

The next thing is the cable that links the Sky Hub to the socket. For the present time, please do not use any extension or super-duper lead bought from somewhere to allow the router to be placed further from the socket than need be. The grey lead supplied with the router should be used.

It could be that the inline microfilter was faulty, resulting in the 80db attenuation...

The microfilter wasn't faulty, he had a microfilter plugged into the telephone socket which had already had the ADSL signal filtered out. How could the signal get through?

Since someone had previously had FTTC installed, the filtered faceplate was left from then.

[mattan]

The microfilter wasn't faulty, he had a microfilter plugged into the telephone socket which had already had the ADSL signal filtered out. How could the signal get through?

Since someone had previously had FTTC installed, the filtered faceplate was left from then.

I mis-read. Wow. Just goes to show it's not all filtered out!

[Scubbie]

No worries. I was concerned about how things were actually connected. It was the BT Infinity and dual sockets references that caught my eye.

What I am thinking is that DLM has been run and capped everything due to the poor signal at the router. Provided that there are no other issues, then getting Sky to re-run the initial DLM process will resolve it quickly, however this is dependant on the Landlord contacting Sky.

[Isitme]

If the system works properly, they may not need to contact Sky. DLM should see that the line has improved and kick in to retrain it. But as we all know, the system does not always work as it should.

There is just one point I would make and that is if the filter was originally plugged into the phone socket, there should have been no response on ADSL. This could suggest that either the plate is not working properly or has been installed improperly. I would advise removing the faceplate and filter and plugging in the micro filter and router to the Test socket and taking the stats. If the noise margin goes up by anything much, then the filter plate is faulty. Removing the faceplate is quite easy, only tool required is a small screw driver.

The line should be capable of 22-23000kbps, provided there are no external faults.