Sagem F@ST2504 maximum connections

[chriswyatt]

I doubt it but is there anyway to increase the maximum connections on this router? The other people who use the router are constantly downloading / torrenting and I believe this uses up the maximum number of connections on the router, it makes the internet almost completely unusable as I just get ping timeouts most of the time.

At one point I had the DG834GT with the unofficial firmware and it didn't have this issue, I had no problems pinging websites and it worked even with everyone in the house downloading stuff, I'm guessing it allowed more simultaneous connections. Sadly that router packed in and Sky just sent us a rubbish Sagem router instead.

Also, I thought about going through a proxy server, would this just open up 1 connection and keep it open? Also would anyone recommend a good free proxy I could go through if this was the case? Thanks.

[simonmpoulton]

Have the people downloading capped there download rates so that the total cap of all them added together equals your sync speed minus 1mb?
If not then get them to do that and you should be fine.

[Mr Spouse]

A proxy server isn't going to help if your router can't connect through it. One of the problems with P2P is that old connections sometimes don't get closed properly so you can quickly exceed the set limit.

If you can connect ok when others are not using the internet then another option is to get them to reduce the number of simultaneous connections allowed in their P2P clients. If they are using UPnP to set the router ports, switching that off may be one way of slowing down or stopping torrents!

[chriswyatt]

Actually, I'm not certain that other people torrent, but one particular housemate does download stuff constantly (TV shows, films etc.) and it does basically make the internet completely unusable. Our internet is really slow at the moment (373kb/s download) but it should at least be able to connect to websites even if downloading is really slow? I would be reasonably happy if I could just access basic websites albeit slowly but most of the time not even this is possible. Even when our connection was running at normal speed it still had this issue of completely locking up with everyone downloading.

I'm assuming it's just people downloading stuff over HTTP, a few days ago there was just 2 of us online, the guy upstairs had 3 YouTube videos simultaneously downloading upstairs and I couldn't use the internet at all downstairs, that shouldn't require that many connections so the limit must be ridiculously low. I guess most things are coming through port 80 as I don't think UPNP works properly on our Sagem, I can never get it to work with my torrenting application anyway. Even manual forwarding is buggy and I have to keep removing and readding my configurations to get them to work. I often wonder if ISPs deliberately cripple port forwarding to make it harder to torrent.

I don't pay the bills otherwise I would've been on to the phone with Sky ages ago and got them to sort out our crappy connection, everyone else doesn't seem to mind that much except me.

Like I said the other router with good firmware would connect to websites within seconds even if people were downloading stuff so I'm convinced it's a mixture of crap router and crap connection. If I could afford it I'd probably chuck it in the bin and get a half-decent router.

[Smithy99]

What are the router stats? How to get your router statistics

If your flatmate is using torrents etc then even if your speed doubled he would just keep eating it. The sppeds you quoted, are these when he and everyone else is not using the connection?

[chriswyatt]

The speed quoted is just the connection speed (i.e. the one on the router page).

These are my stats, apologies for the formatting but I couldn't find a way to make a nice table on here:

Router Statistics

System Up Time: 35:01:00

Port  Status  TxPkts   RxPkts   Collisions  Tx B/s  Rx B/s  Up Time
WAN   PPPoA   1217848  1571690  0           1212    38085   34:57:35
LAN           40129    0        0           644     0       35:01:00
WLAN          1607437  1261616  0           39431   1842    35:00:33

ADSL Link         Downstream  Upstream
Connection Speed  384 kbps    542 kbps
Line Attenuation  59.5 db     36.9 db
Noise Margin      14.8 db     10.0 db

[Smithy99]

Can you find your TEST socket? if so you need to post them from there, it should be the very first thing connected to the incoming BT line from outside.

How to test your ADSL in the Master Socket

[chriswyatt]

I think it possibly is in the test socket, we've only got the one socket downstairs and then an extension that runs upstairs. I did ask the guy that owns the house if that was the only socket and apparently it is, that and the extension that runs upstairs. Also I checked to see if everything was filtered properly and that does seem to be the case as well.

Thanks for all your help by the way. I'm thinking I might just have to phone Sky myself, what sort of things will they ask me as I'll need to get this information first-hand and pretend I'm the person who's name the package is under I suppose.

The line speeds only gone down recently, we're not sure if it's DLM or just a problem with the BT line, it's sort of hard to tell.

I did find an interesting thing where sometimes the connection would completely go down, when using the phone upstairs and just dialling one number this would sometimes sort the line out. I managed to do this a few times so I don't think it's a coincidence. I guess just dialling one number causes some switches to go at the exchange or something and then leaves us on a good line. I also found the same thing at my parents' house where water was getting in the box at the top of the road, sometimes using the phone would fix our line (temporarily). My parents managed to get it sorted with numerous calls to BT, but it took them a long time to recognise there was a problem and fix it, and many frustrating phone calls.

I'm wondering if temporary line problems due to being routed through a faulty line have caused the connection to be capped as we haven't been able to get any higher than about 300-400kbps for weeks and weeks.

[simonmpoulton]

Your stats actually explain a lot, you are capped heavily at a speed far too slow for simultaneous downloading and browsing or video streaming and browsing. The bandwidth simply isnt there to support what your trying to do on the connection. The test socket is a socket located behind the faceplate of a standard BT NTE5 master linebox (see the quick link on the left regarding the test master socket). Going by the stats you have posted up however you should be getting at least 3mb if not 4mb (so 8-10x faster than what you have)
The only way to get this sorted is to get on the phone to sky about it (preferably when your connected to the test socket) and say that DLM has reduced your speed to an unacceptably slow rate and you want the cap removed.

[Isitme]

when using the phone upstairs and just dialling one number this would sometimes sort the line out

This usually indicates a high resistance fault, ie, a bad joint on the line. This is probably the reason your speed has been capped down so low. Get the owner to get the fault fixed, easier said than done I know, but it is the only way to get your broadband sorted.